by Stacy Gregg
For the rest of the day I was absorbed in my work as I painted the herd while they grazed around me. And at dusk, the lead mare rallied them by snapping and baring her teeth, and they set off once more at a canter through the marshlands. By the time Pierre came to take me home, they were gone and I was alone. But I had captured them on my canvas and I rode back to Flamants Roses with Pierre and Babette feeling light-headed with joy. This is much better than painting flamingos.
May 17, 1853
A week has gone by since my last diary entry, I see. Things have changed. The herd no longer fear me, and even the young colts will graze right up close beside me. I caught one of them today with his muzzle covered in paint from sniffing my palette! They are such curious creatures. I had to use my blouse to wipe his face clean.
The twelve, as I call them, are a tightly knit herd. The three mares heavy with foal captivate me most, and the one that I think most beautiful is the lead mare. I like how she is broad through the rump and has a thick shoulder, but her proportions are somehow still elegant and she has a very pretty head with a dished muzzle – quite unusual for a Camarguaise. Oh, and there is such a swagger about her! She moves with an air of authority through the herd, and all it takes is for her to flip her ears flat back and the other horses, the two yearling colts in particular, scatter in fear!
As well as the two colts in the herd there are three fillies. I think one of the fillies might be the offspring of the lead mare, because they often stay close together and groom each other. I would say the filly is little more than a year old. She has lost her baby fluff but is still leggy and gangly with a tufty outcrop where her mane will one day grow and her coat is still dark – somewhere between charcoal and brown. In time, it will lighten to dapple grey and then to white like her mama.
I have started drawing the herd in my sketch book. I am working on an image with all twelve horses in the frame, their poses completely natural and realistic. My ideas are still just at the rough sketch stage, but I can see things coming together in a way that pleases me very much. Soon, hopefully, I will be ready to put the sketch book aside and begin to paint on the canvas.
May 30, 1853
The herd has moved on, the grass is gone, and so now instead of them coming to me, I’ve had to go to them. Pierre tracks their location and each morning he takes me to where they are. I travel lightly these days, to make his life easier, with just a sketch book and my lunch. Because my aim is to create art that is much grander in proportion my canvases have naturally become bigger. The new work will be done on a canvas stretched almost three metres. Mimi and Pierre have set it up for me to paint. It’s so huge it takes up the whole length of my bedroom! I am not painting yet, though – I am still sketching, making drawings every day in my book as I sit and watch the horses.
They’ve grown so accustomed to my presence – yesterday I was even emboldened to touch the young filly. She was sniffing around my lunch basket so I spoke softly to her and reached in to grab a peach.
“Here you go,” I offered, holding my palm flat with the peach on it.
The filly took it and promptly dropped it. I had to pick it up and hold it instead and hope that her teeth didn’t nip me as she nibbled on it. In the end she ate all around the stone and gobbled the whole thing. I have called her Jolie.
June 10, 1853
A foal! He was born last night, delivered during the storm. Mimi says that horses in the wild instinctively give birth on a night like that because they know the rain and the wind will hide the scent of the newborn and protect it from predators.
Last night, the wind had arisen and the dark clouds were brewing across the salt flats of the Camargue when I went to bed. I woke once in the night and saw the lightning flash and thought to myself, “I bet a foal will come.” Sure enough, by the time I found the herd, he’d been born. I have called him Laurent. He is the most beautiful thing. Two of the mares remain very pregnant still, including the lead mare, whom I have named Loulou.
We need another storm to bring the foals out!
June 15, 1853
The second foal is a gorgeous little filly! This morning when I found the horses, quite near to Flamants Roses in a quiet field with a small grove of tamarisk trees, there was the mare with her new foal at foot. And most amazing of all, she was so proud of her new offspring, she came all the way up to me with her foal just so that she could show her off. I reached up from my sitting spot and patted the foal on the velvet of her nose. She was so soft, I felt my heart melt and then the foal, surprised at the affection of my touch, gave a little snort and bounced and frolicked about putting on a display for me that made smile long after the horses had gone.
The lead mare remains heavy in foal and her belly is enormous. I imagine she is quite exhausted with being pregnant. Each day I come to see her expecting her baby to be there at her feet.
In my bedroom tonight, I began to map out the ideas from my sketch book on to the big blank canvas. The painting is taking shape. I have a name for it now: Grignons de Camargue.
I haven’t left Claude’s side for three days straight. I’ve slept here on a camp bed that Alexandre brought in for me. Well, I say I have slept, but really I find it impossible to sleep. I worry that if I close my eyes when I wake Claude will have slipped away from me. His life still hangs by a thread. The vet came again yesterday and dressed the wounds and gave him more sedative and painkillers to make him comfortable. Alexandre says the vet wants to move Claude to the clinic so he can X-ray the leg and operate. He thinks the leg is broken and that, as I suspected, there could also be internal wounds. Alexandre says the Master of Horses has to approve the surgery. I’m not sure what the delay is, but Alexandre seems very uncertain about it all.
Marcel has not been back since this morning. I worry that when he returns it will be to take Claude from me. Until he does, I am glued to Claude’s side and all I do is paint and paint and paint.
When I lift the brush now, it’s as if I am possessed by a fever. I feel light-headed, hot-cheeked and my pulse pounds at my temples as I pour my heart out on to the canvas.
The painting I’m making is almost two metres long, which is large but nowhere near as large as the canvas Rose used when she painted Grignons de Camargue. It must have been so hard for her, I realise now, being in the wheelchair. How did she do it? Because I find myself using my legs constantly, crouched and prowling like a big cat at the bars of a zoo enclosure as I work my way along the canvas, back and forth and back again. My clothes become drenched in sweat as I work for hours on end without a break until, physically driven to the brink of exhaustion, I collapse on the straw and take in deep gulps of air and then I rise to my feet and I continue once more. My shoulders and my arms hurt. My hands can barely hold the brush. But there, in front of my own eyes, I can see it now. My painting is beginning to take shape.
It seems so long ago now – was it really just a few days ago that Françoise and I were in the Pompidou Centre? On the fourth floor there was an exhibition of a famous British artist. His name was Francis Bacon, and I had thought his paintings were terrifying. He painted people as though they had been turned inside out, their portraits as bloody and meaty as one of Rose Bonifait’s trips to the abattoir. At the time, I thought his paintings were gross and ghoulish and yet I couldn’t stop staring at them. Their darkness compelled me. Now, my own work shares that same bleak beauty. I paint with death looking over my shoulder. I can feel its talons grasping at Claude, clawing at his open wounds and proud flesh, trying to drag him down and away from me forever.
“He’s going to die, isn’t he?”
I put down my brushes and turn to find Françoise standing and watching at the stable door.
“I didn’t hear you,” I say. “Have you been there long?”
“Not very,” she replies. “I came because I thought you must be hungry so I brought you this,” she says, holding up a paper bag with a sandwich.
She doesn’t move to step inside. She looks so pale a
nd grim, and there are tears running down her cheeks at the sight of Claude.
“His wounds are very bad, aren’t they?” Françoise says. And she asks me the question once more. “Is he going to die, Maisie?”
“I don’t know,” I say with brutal honestly.
Yesterday, I could hear Alexandre and the vet having an argument right outside Claude’s stall. They were speaking very angrily in rapid French. I couldn’t understand a word of it, but at the end I heard Alexandre say something to the vet and then the vet must have stormed off. When Alexandre entered the stall a moment later, I asked him what they’d been fighting about, but he shrugged it off. “We are both trying to do what is best for Claude,” he said cryptically. He knows more than he is telling me, I’m sure of it.
“Claude can’t die,” Françoise says, and her words shake me out of my thoughts once more.
“If he dies, it’s all my fault, you see? He saved my life. If it weren’t for me, he wouldn’t be here.”
“It’s not your fault,” I tell her firmly. I want to tell her that Claude knew what he was doing and if he had the choice he would do it again. I am certain of it. “I know,” I say. “He put his life on the line for all of those people inside the glass pyramid of the Louvre. Claude saved them because he’s a noble horse of the Garde républicaine. Claude knew that it was his duty to protect the innocent. He’s a hero,” I tell Françoise. “And he did what he had to do.”
Françoise nods, sniffles a little and then tries to bravely smile. “Can I see your painting?” she asks.
Until now the canvas has been hidden from her. I paint with my back to the rear wall of Claude’s stall. Standing at the doorway Françoise cannot see anything except the back of the canvas frame.
“It’s not ready,” I say. “I’m not finished.”
“Please?” she asks again. “Just a look?”
I hesitate. This painting is so private. Until now it has just been me and Claude, but I need to steel myself and allow the world in to see it too. The world – starting with Françoise.
I walk across and open the door to the stall and beckon her in and close it again behind her. Not that it needs to be shut, I suppose. Slumped on the straw, Claude is hardly likely to rise to his feet suddenly and bolt for freedom. He doesn’t move at all as Françoise walks past him to stand behind the canvas.
Françoise stares at the painting, transfixed. She says nothing. I think she must hate it.
“It still needs work,” I try to justify myself. And then I hear her make a strange, strangled cry. “Françoise? Are you OK?”
She bursts into tears! And before I can begin to comfort her she is out of the door saying, “I have to go!”
In the silence after she is gone, I feel my heart pounding. My pulse is racing again and I begin to paint, as if working the brush against the canvas is the only way to strip the fever from my body. While I paint, I listen to Claude’s breathing and how it has become so laboured, it is as if each breath is a struggle, a slow, final gasp. I fear the hesitation between breaths, but then I hate the sound of it too – it is filled with his pain.
I’ve been painting non-stop for hours now and I’m totally spent. I have no strength left in my arms. But it doesn’t matter because the work is finished at last. I put my brushes down and stagger back and stare at it dumbfounded with exhaustion. And then it seems as if I have finished just in time because the door opens and Alexandre is there, and the vet is there too and he carries with him a black surgical bag like a doctor would use.
“Maisie,” Alexandre says. “We need to talk.”
His words hang like the blade of a guillotine. I can feel the air in the room around me turning cold.
“What’s in the bag? What are you doing to him?” I say to him.
At this moment the vet begins to speak to Alexandre in French and I don’t understand a word of it and then Alexandre snaps back at him, also in French.
“What’s he saying?” I ask Alexandre. “What’s going on? Tell me!”
“He says the leg is very likely broken,” he admits. “And there are internal injuries too and Claude is very hard to manage. And surgery is very expensive and seldom succeeds. The horse may never be ridden again.”
“I know all of this,” I say. “I’ve heard it before. But what else is he saying to you?”
“The vet has discussed Claude’s situation with the Maître de Chevalier – the Horse Master here at the Garde. The Horse Master’s job is to manage the Garde républicaine, and he says we are not in the business of rehabilitating injured horses, especially ones that have no chance of returning to full duties ever again,” Alexandre says. “The Horse Master says that to keep Claude alive now is both inhumane and a waste of resources. If Claude cannot return to active duty as a ridden member of the Garde then it is the Horse Master’s opinion that he should be euthanised.”
My head is pounding. My heart thumps so hard in my chest, I can feel it inside me like it’s fighting to get out.
“Murdered?” My voice is shaking.
“Not murdered. Put down. Maisie, it is the humane thing to do,” Alexandre replies.
“Do you really believe that?” I say, with undisguised fury in my voice.
“It is not for me … it is the Maître who is in charge. And the vet says this is the only way.”
“And what does Oscar say?”
Alexandre looks at his boots. “He doesn’t know.”
“Alexandre! You haven’t told him?”
I look at him in disbelief. “Claude is Oscar’s horse! You have to tell him and he’ll stop the Master.”
“Claude doesn’t belong to Oscar.” Alexandre shakes his head. “The horses here are the property of the Célestins. The Garde républicaine can do whatever they want.”
“Oscar should know!” I persist. “He would want to be here. You know he would. He’s your friend, Alexandre, please do it for him? Give Claude one more day so that Oscar can be fetched from the hospital to be at his side at least if you’re going to do this.”
Alexandre looks hard at me, pursing his lips. “Oscar is recovering from brain surgery and cannot be seen. And meanwhile, the horse is suffering.”
“Give him one more day.” I stand firm.
Alexandre nods. “OK, Maisie. I’ll try. But I am not the decision maker.”
He turns to the vet. They speak French once more, this time in hushed tones, although I don’t know why they bother as I don’t understand any of it anyway. Then the vet shakes his head, argues back, moves over closer to his black bag, which is lying on the straw of the stable floor. And I think he is going to open it, but he doesn’t. He picks it up and gives me a nod and leaves.
“I’m going now to the hospital,” Alexandre tells me. “We’ve won Claude another twenty-four hours, and if they will allow me inside, I’ll tell Oscar what is going on. After that, we must act. Claude is in pain, and we have to think of the horse and do what is right.”
***
Do what is right. Alexandre’s words hang in the air after he leaves. Am I being selfish now? I don’t want Claude to die. But he is suffering. I can see it. I have painted his pain on my canvas and I know that his wounds are very bad. The vet thinks it’s hopeless. Alexandre too. So what right do I have to do this to him? Perhaps I –
“Maisie!”
Nicole is at the stable door. She isn’t alone. She has a man with her. He wears a beige trench coat and a shirt and tie. He is a funny-looking sort, inquisitive like a rat; bright eyes behind black-rimmed spectacles, short-cropped mouse-brown hair cut so close to his head it looks almost like he is bald. He carries a camera slung over his shoulder and a notepad in his hand.
“Nicole!” the sight of her makes me well up with tears. “Alexandre was just here. He says the Master of Horses, the head of the Republican Guard, is going to kill Claude!”
“What?” Nicole is horrified. “They can’t!”
“Alexandre says they have no choice!” I say. “He had the vet with
him with the black bag and everything. The Master, the head of the Guard, says they have to. They won’t pay for him to have surgery and Claude is very sick and the leg is probably broken and he’s being difficult to treat and they are horrible! Horrible!”
“Calm down, Maisie, calm down. It will be all right,” Nicole says, but she looks like she might cry too.
“They want to have the horse put down?” The man in the black spectacles speaks with a London accent like mine!
“I put them off,” I say, “but only until tomorrow.”
The man looks over the stable door at Claude.
“But this is the horse that stopped the van,” he says. “Do they realise they’re about to kill a national hero?
“They don’t consider him a hero,” I say. “To them, he’s just a horse.”
“Well,” the man says with great assurance, “I think we can change that.”
I am baffled. And then Nicole speaks up. “I’m sorry Maisie, I haven’t introduced you. This is David Fisher. He is a reporter for the International Tribune newspaper. He phoned to interview me about Françoise and what happened at the Louvre and then we got talking about Claude and the painting that you are doing of him. I brought David down here because I think perhaps he can help us.”
I don’t see how this man can help. We have twenty-four hours. Claude has been given a death sentence. But I know better by now than to underestimate Nicole Bonifait. She has come here with a plan.
“You are going to tell David your story, about what happened that day at the Louvre,” Nicole says. “And then he’ll take a picture, of you and of Claude and of the painting.”
