It takes a human baby perhaps a year to find their feet. A newborn foal can find theirs in less than thirty minutes. So it was that I watched as the foal – a colt, a baby boy – developed his ability to rise up and stand erect before my very eyes. He began by splaying his four legs awkwardly, failing and falling time and again, lurching forward, stumbling, crashing. Loulou, meanwhile, was also getting back to her feet. She was exhausted too, but she was so proud to have birthed him! She was whinnying encouragement to the foal and she’d begun to lick him dry, cleaning his coat of the mucus and muck of the delivery. But the rain fought back her efforts to dry him. It was falling heavily now and the endless downpour soaked the newborn to the skin. It soaked me too. I had goose bumps and was freezing. And all this time the seawater kept rising. It was creeping up the marshlands, so close that the waves were lapping at us. If the foal did not stand soon, he would be in the water. And then I realised with a chill that it was the same for me. The marsh grass I sat on was all but gone – I could only see the tips of the stalks poking up through the water.

I scanned the horizon for Pierre, but there was no sign of him anywhere. The storm was raging, the waves kept rising and I was alone, surrounded by an endless sea.

Chapter 15: The Hammer Falls

The next morning at dawn, I went to the newsagent across the street and bought a copy of the International Tribune. Claude, my painting and I were the cover story, our photograph above the article by David Fisher with a headline that read:

TRAGIC END FOR HERO HORSE

In the story, David Fisher wrote about how Claude had saved the life of more than a hundred tourists inside the Louvre who had been in the path of the terror attack.

Now, he wrote, we are repaying this national hero, this icon of French resistance, by ending his life.

By mid-morning, the public outcry had reached a fever pitch. The radio news stations were filled with nothing else. Everybody was talking about the bravery of Claude and the injustice of his fate.

Nicole’s phone started ringing at that moment. It was Augustin at the Paris Art School.

He had seen the picture on the front of the paper, he said. My portrait of Claude, from what little he could see in the newspaper photo, was quite different from my previous paintings. He liked it very much. And wouldn’t it be appropriate and fitting if we were to move the auction schedule of lots and make space for it so that it could be sold tonight at Lucie’s?