“It is hard to know. The vet came to assess the extent of his injuries but he couldn’t get a needle in to sedate him. Claude fought violently every time he tried to get close to him.”

Alexandre was still holding my arm. He looked at me very hard and serious now. “Promise me, Maisie, when you are in his stall you will keep your wits about you. Claude is not the horse that you knew. In this condition right now he is dangerous. There is talk from the head of the Célestins that he may still have to be put down.”

“Oscar would never allow that!” I was horrified.

“Oscar has no say in such matters,” Alexandre said. “Claude is not his horse, he belongs to the Célestins. If his wounds are too extreme, what else is there for it?”

So I understood now how grave the situation was as we hurried side by side through the courtyard in the rain. Up ahead in the corridor I could see Claude’s loose box with the lights on inside.

“He’s alone in there. The vet is coming back again soon,” Alexandre said. “In the meantime, perhaps if you sit with him? But please, Maisie, be careful. I tried to approach him earlier and …”

Alexandre pushed back the long sleeve of his raincoat and I saw that underneath his shirt was ripped and there was a nasty purple bruise with two livid red marks where Claude had clearly sunk his teeth into his flesh.

“He did that to you?”

“I was trying to check the wound,” Alexandre said. “He got angry. It was my fault, I should have tied his head off, but then he gets so furious if he is restrained …”

None of this – the attacks, the fear, the fury – sounded like the Claude I knew.

At the door, Alexandre stepped back. “He might react better if it is just you that he sees,” he explained.

I unbolted the lower door of the stall and walked inside.

“Claude?”

He was in the furthest corner of the stall, lying prone on the straw. The way his head hung down low so that his muzzle rested over his forelegs on to the floor almost broke my heart straight away, and the sound of his breathing! It was so loud it echoed in the stall, each gasp more laboured and rasping than the last.