The two men looked at each other, then turned to face the cage. The younger guy realised he had left an empty bucket inside. He went back over to the cage, ducked to get inside, picked up the bucket and inspected the two tree trunks, running his hand over the black tar he had painted on the oaks in the middle. Then he came back out and walked over to Franck, watching the dog the whole time.

‘Yeah? What d’you need it for?’

‘That’s my business.’

Julien cast an eye over Alpha, who was still staring fiercely at him.

‘Your dog’s strange; he uses his eyes more than his nose. There’s wolf in him; he’s some kind of cross.’

The old man broke open his rifle and removed the two bullets. Offering his expert opinion, he said, ‘It’s probably crossed with a Saarloos. The Braquier kids up in Saint-Clair used to breed them with German shepherds for fun.’

‘What are you hunting with that?’

‘That’s none of your concern.’

The men collected their things. The older one got into the passenger seat but the younger man went over to Franck, taking his wallet out of his back pocket.

‘Let’s forget about what just happened.’

‘Agreed.’

Julien held out a small business card. ‘Take it, just in case.’

‘What’s this?’

‘Our number, for tracking wounded quarry. You never know, your hunt might take a turn for the worse.’

July 1915

July 1915

After three days living up there, Joséphine felt a sense of liberation. She was free of her burdensome life in the village, free of the obsessive fear of gendarmes they all lived with every day. In the countryside the gendarmes had become harbingers of doom, and every day people trembled at the thought of having anything to do with them.

It was a huge change for Joséphine to live in the simple drystone hut. There were no creature comforts here, but in the basic one-room structure, with a door on one side and a little window on the other, she felt as if she were floating above the world. Finding herself in the middle of the summer pastures, she felt as if she had left the war behind and broken her connection with the village where the spectre of death hung over everything. She had never lived in such a state of destitution, with nothing more than a stone sink and an oil lamp. The hard bed was only slightly softened by a little woollen mattress, but despite it all she had never felt so free. In the middle of the grassy hills she felt alive, with nothing to guide her but the sun and the colours of summer, as if nothing of her life before had ever existed.