He took a firm hold of them and together they forced a way towards the burning entrance.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

My hands were covered in blood, as thick and glossy as scarlet satin. Not mine. Mon Dieu, I wish it were mine. It was Cosette’s.

Have you ever seen a white horse covered in blood, the dense hairs glistening bright red? It twisted my heart. My Cosette’s breath was coming in deep tormented gasps and my own matched hers, but I spoke calmly to her as I bathed the terrible gash. It ran from her withers at the base of the ridge of her mane, across the muscular left shoulder, right round to the front of her chest in a back-to-front C-shape. It was the mirror image of the one on my own cheek.

I’d tethered her in the barn and wrapped my arms around her. She placed her heavy head on my shoulder, her skin trembling and muscles quivering, breath blowing hard, whiskers twitching. A terrified sound was coming from deep in her throat.

‘My poor Cosette,’ I murmured, and hurried to fetch water and bandages from the house.

Outside was ordered chaos. Gardians know how to deal with fire and had formed a line to cart buckets of water and to handle a hose from the pump, but it was too little, too late. The flames had won. Wounded horses and people were receiving attention, Mathilde flitting between them with salve and sheets torn into strips.

I saw Léon directing cars and lorries to block the entrance to the farm. No one could leave or enter. It jolted me into the realisation that this was now a crime scene and he was doing his job. But I wanted everyone to go, to leave, to get off our land. Léon would call for a support team and there would be questions. More and more questions.

I craved quiet.

*

My hands swept over Cosette’s heaving chest. I didn’t know whether I was soothing her or she was soothing me, as the tremors pulsed inside both of us. The veterinary surgeon was sewing together the raw and splintered edges of her wound and she proved herself as brave as any bull, though the blackrimmed sockets of her eyes were pale with shock. He had injected her with a sedative and when he looked at me he’d laughed and asked if I wanted one too.

I nearly said yes.

People came and went. I spoke to no one. My hand never left my horse. Inside my head the sound of screams and the crackle of flames kept crashing into the question of who had set the fire?

Why?

First Goliath. Now the horses.

The same person? Or a different person?