He had learned to race through the marshes on a white horse with the wind tearing his lungs out, bringing danger charging into his neatly arranged ambitions, and it changed his life. Because Léon found he was good at danger. He had a calm head for it. He discovered a new Léon Roussel tucked away behind an unopened door inside the old Léon, and for this he had to thank Aristide Caussade, a man with such passion for his bulls and his horses that he swept others up into it.

He was doing so now, his voice loud and bold, encircling his listeners the way he encircled his bulls. He was relating stories of Goliath’s glory in the arena, delighting those who had come to mourn but found themselves laughing instead. Many of them were remembering a brush or two with the champion bull during the weekly course Provençal. As reckless razeteurs, they had attempted to steal the ribbons from Goliath’s lethal horns. Did the bull ever kill anybody? Yes, he did. In fact most of them bore scars to remember him by, Léon included.

Léon moved unobtrusively through the crowd. Watching faces, studying smiles. Listening. But he could detect no gloating at the disaster that had hit the Caussades. Oddly, unexpectedly, the gathering started to sing, softly at first but growing louder, reaching out to the edges of the field. It was a familiar old folk song that the gardians would sing around the campfire under the stars, giving praise to the prowess and speed of the Camargue bulls in contrast to the slower, more stupid Spanish bulls. These were bull people. They would never slaughter a champion.

But there were two men present who weren’t.

Outsiders. They might think that in their dark suits and black ties they blended in with the other mourners, but they were mistaken. They stood out like white wolves in a black bull pen. Léon manoeuvred through the crowd until he stood shoulder to shoulder with the taller one of them.

‘An interesting occasion, don’t you think?’ Léon commented in English.

‘Hell, yes. Never seen the like.’

‘Driven over from the air base for it, have you?’

‘We have. It is impressive, the respect you have for animals here. I grew up on a ranch in Texas and I’ve never seen anything like this. It is powerful, isn’t it, Matt?’

‘Sure is. That old guy at the graveside is quite something, isn’t he?’ said the one called Matt.

‘How did you hear of the bull’s funeral?’ Léon enquired casually.

They laughed. Of course they laughed. This was just local entertainment for them. Or was that what they wanted him to think?

‘We have a damn efficient set of jungle drums at the camp,’ Matt laughed again. ‘Nothing gets past them.’

‘I can believe that.’