JULY TURNS TO AUGUST. At the port, the sea air provides some relief from the heat. But MacGahan’s assignment is taking her inland, to Peshtera, and to Batak, where there is word of a massacre.

Russian and Bulgarian are just enough alike for Kolya to make himself understood; a few times he mumbles something about the dialect being unfamiliar. If MacGahan’s noticed his deception, she doesn’t show it. They travel in carts to Peshtera, but the difficult journey into the hills can only be made on horseback; the Turkish authorities forbid the local inhabitants from hiring them any.

Over coffee and honey pastries, the governor of Peshtera tries to foist a minder on Kolya and MacGahan. ‘The people are unpredictable. Liars. A woman travelling with her son …’ (such is their deception) ‘… surely I don’t to need to tell you what they’re capable of?’ MacGahan refuses point-blank. At night, Kolya slips out and haggles for horses and donkeys.

In the hour before dawn, Kolya and MacGahan head off with a train of twenty animals. Sunrise brings heat and the soothing buzz of insects. Pans and water bottles rattle as they move. The world smells of hot grass and donkey shit. There are four local guides and a dozen women on foot bringing up the rear, villagers from Batak, too scared until now to return home.

Kolya’s a novice rider, but he’s young and adaptable. He copies the Bulgarian guides whose movements on horseback combine looseness and brutality. Their heels pound the mangy flanks of the horses, urging them up the hillside paths.

In MacGahan, the men know they have a champion and they show her the utmost deference. Her eccentricity and ambiguity appear not to be noticed. She rides like a farm boy, has taken to wearing breeches and tucks her hair under a straw hat. The sun tinges her brown tresses with gleams of copper.

The fields are full of wheat and rye, but no one is there to harvest. The black-haired Bulgar peasants passing the other way are melancholy and silent. It’s not until 1903 that we’ll get the right word to describe them: traumatised.

We have a hard job ahead of us. Can we summon up outrage about an obscure massacre that has long ago been trumped by bloodier and better-documented ones; whose record is barely more legible than those in the secret books? Perhaps outrage is not the word. Can we care without sentimentality? Can we show sympathy to the victims without being pulled into the trap of immediately taking sides?

Let’s stay with what Kolya sees.

Cresting a rise – on foot, leading the horse by the reins, because the path is too steep – he enters a wide upland valley. There’s a sawmill by a stream. Further on, wooden roofs, a church. This is Batak, hardly prosperous, but previously orderly and thriving. The women in the rear fall silent. The buzz of insects grows ominously loud. The ungathered corn has collapsed on its rotted stalks. Two dogs are fighting over a bone. One of the Bulgar guides chases them off with a whip, but they only retreat a few yards and inch back as soon as he takes up his reins again.