by Stacy Gregg
And then she explains her scheme to me, and I have to admit, it is brilliant. But we are running out of time. Tomorrow is the day that they will take Claude from me forever. We have to put our plan in motion and I can only hope it works.
***
That night, alone again, I pack my paints and I lie down in the straw beside Claude. I can hear his breathing, rasping and low, as I stroke his mane and I whisper goodnight to him. I’m going to leave his stall this time and go home and eat dinner, have a shower, resort to reading Rose’s diary at 3 a.m. when I cannot sleep …
“I’ll see you tomorrow, Claude.” I give him a kiss on his forelock and stand up to go. And I promise him this will not be the last goodbye, but as I shut the door behind me, I worry that my promise is a lie.
20 July, 1853
I write in this diary now shivering and shaking, frozen to the bone and harrowed to the core but counting myself lucky to be alive. The events of today, I must get down on paper while they are still fresh in my mind – for they have changed my world forever.
It began with the tides. I had noticed over the past days that the swell of the high tide was growing much higher than usual. Each day when the sea swept in, it kept on going, higher and higher, way above the usual tide marks, until it was flooding the estuaries and swamping the rice paddies and the marshlands so that the landscape was underwater and utterly unrecognisable.
“Late spring is the season of the king tides,” Mimi explained. “A natural phenomenon. The cycles of the moon cause the sea to swell much higher than usual. You must be wary when you travel now because the waters can deepen further than you expect. Tides here in the Camargue have always ruled the land, and they can be treacherous.”
This morning the sky was red, which is a sure sign of bad weather, and Mimi had suggested perhaps it might be wiser to stay home today and paint. But I was determined to go outside. I hate to be cooped up. I promised her I would not stay out all day and would get Pierre to bring me home in time for lunch. I was ready for a fight over this, but she seemed satisfied with my plan.
“The storm won’t arrive before then,” she said, eyeing the skies with a confidence of someone who has spent a life here in the Camargue reading the weather.
Pierre was in a sullen mood, partly because of the inclement weather and also about being sent out to herd back three black bulls that had escaped their pens. Even though he admitted to me, as we set off, that it was his fault they’d got free! He had left their gate unlocked.
“They are idiot creatures, escaping in such bad weather,” he griped. “And now we are out here too, and why? We should both be indoors!”
“I think stormy weather is exciting,” I insisted. There was no rain yet but already in the distance the clouds were rolling black towards us and there was an ominous rumbling. Suddenly, a fork of lightning flashed against the rose-grey streaks of the clouds and Babette gave a most fearful whinny and almost bolted! Pierre had to clutch at the reins to stop her.
“To be out riding with a storm brewing isn’t exciting! It’s madness!” Pierre snapped at me. His complaints were thankfully lost on the wind from there on in as the weather worsened. Pressed up against his back, perched in my ridiculous little basket like a pet monkey, I didn’t bother to try to speak as the headwinds whipped my words away as soon as they left my mouth.
As we rode on, I stared out at the horizon, watching the way the sky tinted as if it were a stained-glass window in a great cathedral, and the way the clouds shifted shape and rolled in the wind like tumbleweeds. I had never seen so many colours in the landscape, nor the light so extraordinary. I wished I had my paints on hand, instead of just a sketch book. I closed my eyes to try to imprint the coloured image into my memory so that I could paint it when I got home again. I even began to match the hues in my mind with the colours in my palette, mentally dipping the brush a little here and there to recreate the sky on my imaginary canvas.
“The sky is so pink!” I said to Pierre. “And that cloud there, it looks like a flamingo!”
“It looks like a storm, that’s what it looks like!” Pierre was not in the mood for my romantic nonsense. And, possibly to avoid speaking to me any longer, he urged Babette on into a canter, and the wind against our faces got even fiercer and made it impossible to say another word as we headed for the marshlands.
Over the past weeks the grass had regrown in the coastland where I had first encountered the herd. The new growth had lured the horses back again. Pierre saw them back there grazing the day before, so he was almost certain that we would find the horses there again today.
“You must promise to be careful around them today,” Pierre lectured me. “Don’t take risks or get underfoot. Storms always make horses crazy.”
As if to prove his point, Babette, who is a very sane mare, began skittering about beneath us as if there were snakes in the water at her feet – which for all I knew there were. The looming storm was making all creatures change their nature. The birds, apart from the flamingos, had taken to the skies and headed out to sea to ride out the worst of the weather.
To me, being out at sea looked utterly terrifying! I could see the surf roiling and churning on the coastline like an angry monster. Waves rose up like a sheer cliff face of grey-green water to toss and crash in a froth of turmoil on to the sand and then push their way higher and higher up the beach. And the estuarine tide came in around Babette’s knees now, encroaching on the marshlands, the water levels creeping higher and higher.
The Camargue horses, though, were accustomed to the sea beneath their hooves. They spent their days knee-deep in the wild surf, their whiteness merging into the white froth of the crest of the waves. They knew how to scout for dry land to stand on, and now the wild herd had found the elevated plain of the marsh grass they were content to weather out the storm.
“See?” I pointed to the horses up ahead grazing on the grasses. “It’s still dry here. I’ll be fine.”
But Pierre was not so convinced.
“I’m not leaving you,” he growled at me. “Do your sketches. I’ll wait.”
“How are you going to fetch the bulls if you have me on board?” I pointed out to him. “Pierre, it makes sense to leave me. I can draw the horses for an hour or two, you corral the bulls and then when you are done you can come back to fetch me.”
Pierre objected further, though, refusing to give in to my plan. “Where am I supposed to even put you down? This ground, the marsh grass that we stand on, it will all be under water in a matter of hours!”
“This grass is always above sea level,” I said. “I’ve never seen it underwater. And by the time you’ve mustered your bulls and returned for me I’ll be done!”
I began to unbuckle myself from my chair so that Pierre had no choice but to dismount and lift me down.
He sat me on the driest patch of grassland he could find, not far from where the horses grazed.
“I’ll be back in two hours,” he said as he mounted. I waved him farewell as he cantered off through the water then turned my focus to the horses. They were entrancing to watch. Their behaviour had been intensified by the stormy weather, and there was a wildness and drama to their movements, the way they swished their tails and shook out their manes. I took out my sketch book and captured two colts rearing up in battle, hooves flailing at each other. And then the stallions, with their powerful necks crested and arched as they trotted the perimeter of the herd, guarding their precious mares against an unknown and unstoppable danger that they sensed all around them. I did a sketch of them too.
The mares were less active. They stuck close to their foals, but they did not really graze much, I noticed – they were too anxious. And Loulou was acting particularly oddly. She kept sniffing at her flanks and she refused to stay still, pacing about and raising her muzzle to the air with nostrils flared, trying to catch the scent of a predator on the wind. I was sketching her as she did this when she gave a funny little shake of her mane and then, suddenly, she dro
pped to her knees and lay down. She was flat on the ground and now she gave a grunt and thrashed about on her side and then stood up again and shook her whole body.
As I watched her, she repeated this once more. This time she lay flat on the ground and didn’t get up again. Then she kicked at the air with her hind legs.
“Loulou? What’s wrong?”
Loulou cow-kicked at her own belly with a hind leg and rolled over in the grass, flipping one way and then the other. Then she lay on her side, and let out a miserable groan. I looked at the protrusion of her enormous belly, rising up like a whale in front of me and I knew. Once, in our stables at Fontainebleau, one of the Thoroughbred broodmares had birthed a foal and my papa had woken me from my bed and taken me out to the stables so that I could watch it happen. Now, I was seeing the same familiar signs of a mare in labour and I knew: Loulou was about to foal.
But what a time and a place to have a baby! All around us the wind whipped mercilessly and the rain was beginning to fall from the storm clouds that boiled and seethed above us. How could nature be this perverse? And then I remembered what Mimi had said about mares giving birth in a storm so that the weather would mask the smell of the foal. The tempest would act as a protector and give the newborn a chance to rise to its feet and suckle without fear that predators might scent it on the air and attack.
This birth was hardwired into Loulou by nature. Her sudden labour in the storm was a bloodright handed down from her ancestors. And now, from here, everything would happen very fast. Horses were quick to deliver their foals. That Thoroughbred mare I had watched in the stables at Fontainebleau had given birth in a matter of minutes, not hours. Loulou’s delivery would be quick too.
Except it wasn’t.
Almost half an hour passed as I watched her heave and strain. She stood up several times over this period, kicked at her belly as if confused and then dropped to the ground again. And nothing happened.
When a whole hour had passed by and there was nothing to show for it, I began to panic. Her coat by now was drenched with sweat from her efforts. Sometimes she would raise her head to sniff her belly, or kick at her belly with a hind leg. She was in great discomfort, I could see that. The foal should have come by now, but there was no sign of anything emerging yet.
I looked to the horizon, hoping that Pierre might be done with the bulls and be returning for me, but there was no sign of him either. And now, Loulou was giving pitiful whinnies of distress. The foal was not coming out.
As if the weather wanted to speed matters onwards, the clouds were closing in, sweeping darkly across the skies to gather above us and the rain began to fall harder, sweeping down in bitter sheets. Soon it had soaked me to the skin and my sketch pad was utterly ruined. Not that I cared as I was no longer interested in my drawings, my entire focus had become Loulou and her unborn foal. The mare was still flat on her side, but she was no longer heaving and straining. She was lying utterly motionless and I would have thought she was dead except I could see her belly faintly rising and falling. She was breathing still, but exhaustion had beaten her and she had no energy left to push the foal out. She could not deliver it on her own. And I thought of the alternative – that if she did not give birth then both mother and baby would die like this. There was nobody here to help her.
Except, there was me.
But first of all I needed to get to her, and how was I going to do that?
There was only one way, and that was to crawl. I threw myself forward, propelling my body with all my strength so that I fell down hard, face-first, into the grass. I tasted dirt and choked a little on it. And then I pushed myself up on my arms, and surveyed the distance between myself and the mare. It was maybe four horse-lengths to get to Loulou from where I now lay. Not so very far. Yes, I could do this.
My legs were a dead weight as I dragged them behind me, crawling like a soldier in the trenches. I slithered on my belly, using my elbows to lever myself, trying to keep my momentum and inching forward on my forearms. With each drag I felt the grass poke and scratch me through my wet clothes, digging into my elbows, arms and stomach as I pulled myself across the ground. Soon, the cloth of my shirt had been ripped away and I was crawling on my bare skin. Pain shot through my arms as I put one forward and then the other, time and again, inching and inching. It was so slow! Was I even getting closer to Loulou? And then, I began to see my progress. With every painful belly slither, I was getting nearer. One arm in front of the other, brace, drag, pull, do it again. Until, at last, I was there, right behind the hindquarters of the mare.
“Loulou!” I was panting, exhausted. My arms were bloody and grazed, but I had made it. “Loulou, be brave … good girl, I’m just going to slip my hand up here to feel inside you …”
I pushed aside her tail, and then as I put my hands there I felt the mare kick! Loulou, startled by my touch, had lashed out and struck me in the shins! The kick was hard and it was square against my legs. For all I knew it had broken a bone. Yet I didn’t feel it. My legs, after all, were already numb and paralysed. So it didn’t hurt at all and I carried on. I spoke soothing words to her and I pushed, harder this time with my fingers, so that a moment later I felt my whole hand enter the birth canal and then my forearm had gone inside the mare.
Very gently, I began to feel where I expected the foal to be. A foal is born front feet first. So I should have been grasping for a front hoof. But that wasn’t what I felt at all. The foal must have turned the wrong way so that it lay sideways twisted in her belly, creating a breach. No wonder she couldn’t deliver like this!
I took my arm back out and thought hard on what to do next. I would have to turn the foal somehow while it was still inside her so that I could get it out. I elbowed my way forward once more so that now I was moved a little closer to Loulou’s hindquarters. It was a precarious position. If she kicked out now she would strike me clean in the guts and that would hurt, possibly it would even kill me. But I needed to reposition myself like this if I was to be effective. Now, carefully, talking to her all the while, I put one hand inside to grasp at the foal and then pushed the other arm in too.
I had two things in my favour, I realised. The first was the size of my hands – tiny and slender, the hands of an artist – so I could reach inside and navigate to the foal. The other crucial factor was my knowledge of anatomy. Those days at the abattoir had given me a profound understanding of the internal workings of the horse. It was as if my eyes could look through Loulou’s skin to see inside, to know exactly what I was dealing with here. I could do this.
I reached deeper with my left hand and at the same time I pushed with my right, trying to turn the foal, to move it from breach so that I could … ah ha! I had a foreleg in my left hand! I was sure of it. I pulled, not too hard, be careful, move just a little, still pushing with the right. The foal was turning further. I could grasp a second foreleg now. I took one leg in each hand and I pulled. Two tiny hooves emerged, trapped inside a rubbery white sac. Through the opaque membrane I could just make out the dark shape of the foal inside the birthing sac, a tiny head, the muzzle and the ears and then the neck and shoulders. And then … in a mad rush the foal’s hindquarters slithered out, and I was caught up with it, the foal and me in a wet, fetid heap on the ground. I had been right in the path of the foal and the creature was now lying on top of me. I remembered back to the birth in the stables at Fontainebleau, how my father had helped the newborn foal to breathe by rupturing the birth sac to let the air inside. I needed to do this too as this foal’s sac hadn’t ruptured, and it was still trapped in its protective milky membrane. If the foal didn’t get the sac torn, then it couldn’t breathe. Except with the foal lying on me like this, I couldn’t move.
I tried to wriggle my body out from the beneath the foal, but it was too heavy! And so I focused on moving just my right arm. If I could free it, then I’d be able to rip the membrane and clear the foal’s air passages with my fingers. Squirming and contorting myself, I eventually managed to wrenc
h the arm free. I grabbed the milky membrane with my trembling hand and found it surprisingly strong! It took a few tries before I had ripped a large enough hole that I could see the wet, dazed foal nestled inside the sac. I put my fingers up its nostrils and inside its mouth to make sure the airways were clear. Then I waited for what seemed like a lifetime for its breathing to begin, and just as I was panicking that it would never come, I saw the creature startle with a gasp. The foal had awoken! It began to take in air and then its eyes opened, deep brown pools, lashes fluttering. It was alive!
And I could sense my own breath now that the panic was over for the foal and I realised I too was having trouble breathing. The foal was lying directly on top of me and its not-inconsiderable weight was crushing my ribcage. I squirmed and pushed, struggling to free myself, and managed to get a bit of leverage and wedge myself forward, just enough to get my ribs clear and the air back in my lungs to breathe again. But that was all the movement I could muster. I was still trapped beneath the foal.
I was wondering what to do about this when the foal solved the problem for us both. It was alert now, and going through its own natural struggle. It’s instinct for a horse to try to stand from the very moment it is born. This foal was no different, and now that it could breathe, its only mission in life was to get on all fours. The foal struggled against my legs and belly, four legs splayed akimbo, trying and failing to rise up. As it struggled, I squirmed too and in a brief moment when our struggles worked in unison, it made just enough space for me to crawl out from underneath and drag myself out by my elbows.
Panting and heaving, I pulled myself clear and then I managed to turn back to watch in wonder as one of the most remarkable miracles of nature unfolded before me.
It takes a human baby perhaps a year to find their feet. A newborn foal can find theirs in less than thirty minutes. So it was that I watched as the foal – a colt, a baby boy – developed his ability to rise up and stand erect before my very eyes. He began by splaying his four legs awkwardly, failing and falling time and again, lurching forward, stumbling, crashing. Loulou, meanwhile, was also getting back to her feet. She was exhausted too, but she was so proud to have birthed him! She was whinnying encouragement to the foal and she’d begun to lick him dry, cleaning his coat of the mucus and muck of the delivery. But the rain fought back her efforts to dry him. It was falling heavily now and the endless downpour soaked the newborn to the skin. It soaked me too. I had goose bumps and was freezing. And all this time the seawater kept rising. It was creeping up the marshlands, so close that the waves were lapping at us. If the foal did not stand soon, he would be in the water. And then I realised with a chill that it was the same for me. The marsh grass I sat on was all but gone – I could only see the tips of the stalks poking up through the water.