First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2020

Published in this ebook edition in 2020

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Text copyright © Stacy Gregg 2020

Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2020

Cover images and decorative illustrations © Shutterstock

Stacy Gregg asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of the work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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Source ISBN: 9780008332358

Ebook Edition © October 2020 ISBN: 9780008332365

Version: 2020-09-11

For Maalika

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter 1: Going Once, Going Twice …

Chapter 2: The Thirteen-Million-Dollar Horse

Chapter 3: The Chance of a Lifetime

Chapter 4: The Diary of Rose Bonifait

Chapter 5: The Horse Guards

Chapter 6: The Stag and the Pheasant

Chapter 7: The Wheelchair Mystery

Chapter 8: I Hate Paris in the Springtime

Chapter 9: Terror at the Louvre

Chapter 10: Flamants Roses

Chapter 11: Death’s Dark Spectre

Chapter 12: Wild Horses

Chapter 13: The Black Bag

Chapter 14: The King Tide

Chapter 15: The Hammer Falls

Chapter 16: Gardians of the Camargue

Chapter 17: Sold!

Epilogue

Keep Reading …

Books by Stacy Gregg

About the Publisher

The crowd gathered in the golden chamber of the famous Paris auction house had come tonight with their wallets bulging. Elegant ladies in sparkling evening gowns sat on high-backed gilt salon chairs, clutching bidding paddles in their manicured hands, while their well-dressed husbands sat beside them looking nervous at the amount of money they were about to spend. Already tonight a small fortune had gone under the hammer. The annual auction of works by the graduates of the Parisian School des Beaux-Arts always attracted the clever art collectors who knew that one day the paintings they picked up in this room for relative peanuts could snowball in value and be resold for millions.

Throughout the evening the bidding had been steady but unremarkable. Now, though, there was an electric tension in the room as two men dressed in white coats and gloves carried the next painting to the front and placed it gingerly on the easel beside the auctioneer.

At the very back of the auction chamber, Maisie rose on tiptoes to get a better view. Crammed in, where it was standing room only, she was terrified she would do something dumb, like raising her hand to scratch her nose and bidding by mistake. There was no way she could afford to buy this painting! Which was ironic, really, since Maisie was the artist who had painted it.

“Lot number sixty-seven!” the auctioneer, Monsieur Falaise, announced to his audience. “This substantial work, in oil on canvas, is entitled, Claude.”

Monsieur Falaise, a thin man with a pointy chin, scanned the faces of the wealthy art patrons and felt certain that he knew which bidders would raise their paddles for this one. Over the years, he had developed an instinct for such things. So far tonight, he had watched as the bidders fought over various works of modern art – abstract and bold. This new painting, Claude, was quite the opposite of all that had gone before. The portrait of the black horse was in the mode of the classical realist masters. It was so detailed, and so lifelike. To think that it had been painted by a thirteen-year-old girl! Monsieur Falaise shook his head in disbelief. The work was so mature, and it was not just that it was magnificent in its technicalities. No, it was the heart that it possessed. The painting was imbued with such a depth of emotion it was impossible to gaze upon it without being reduced to tears. Monsieur Falaise wasn’t ashamed to say that his own eyes had welled up a little when he saw it for the first time. And even now, in the thrust and clamour of the auction room as the bidders prepared themselves for the fierce battle ahead, he could see the patrons dabbing their eyes to quell their tears as a profound solemnity filled the room. For Claude, the subject of this remarkable work of art, was more than just a horse. For the people of Paris he embodied so much of what made the city great; looking upon him made hearts break. And art that makes a heart break is always worth a fortune.

“Who will open the bidding at five thousand euros?”

At the back of the room Maisie let out a squeak. Five thousand euros! It was a staggering figure! The other works the crowd had bid on so far that night had been much cheaper. Most of them ultimately sold for less than two thousand euros. To launch the bidding straight off at such a high figure was surely madness? But Monsieur Falaise knew two things: he knew his audience, and he knew precisely what this painting, at centre stage right now, meant to the people of Paris. And he was right. Within a split second of the bid being announced there was a paddle held aloft in the front row in reply.

“I have five thousand bid!” Monsieur Falaise snapped into action. “Alors! We are underway! Who will give me six thousand?”

Straight away, another paddle went up.

“I have six, six. Who will give me seven? Yes! Seven …”

At the back of the room, Maisie watched silently as the price of the painting – her painting – continued to climb. Soon, the price was at ten thousand euros. Then it climbed higher still! Leaping up by a thousand euros at a time, again and again, until the bid rapidly reached twenty thousand. Even then, the paddle-holders didn’t slow, and soon twenty became thirty and thirty became forty!

There was a moment, at forty-five thousand, when a woman in the front row wearing a Chanel suit and jet-black sunglasses, decided to trump all the other bidders and proclaimed in an icy tone that she was raising the bid to fifty-one thousand, and a mutual sigh of defeat swept the room. Then, a grey-haired gentleman in a cravat came straight back at her and proclaimed “Fifty-three!” and the bidding was off again!

All the while, as the price climbed ever higher, Maisie felt more and more anxious. In this room, with Claude’s black eyes staring at her, she was suddenly gripped with claustrophobia and remorse. How ridiculous to come here now when the real Claude was in such pain and the clock was ticking! What had she been thinking?

Maisie turned to leave, but the crowd were pressed together like sardines.

“I’m sorry! I have to go!” She began to try and push her way out, but the occupants of the auction room were so intently focused on the drama that was unfolding before them they refused to budge. Maisie tried again, in French this time. “Je suis desolé! Pardon, pardon …”

Her pleading had no effect. Maisie could feel the room closing in on her, her heart racing in panic.

“Please! I have to go!”

And then, as if by a miracle, the crowd parted, and there was Nicole Bonifait, Maisie’s patron, so-to-speak, right in front of her, clearing the people out of the way, grasping Maisie’s wrist to guide her through.

“It’s OK, Chou-chou,” Nicole said. “Come with me now. I have you!” and Maisie felt Nicole’s arms around her, ushering her through the crush, until a moment later they were out of the room into the foyer and then through the front doors, stumbling down the marble stairs on to the wide Parisian street below. Maisie was taking deep breaths, her hands on her knees as Nicole barked at one of the waiters at a pavement café nearby to bring them one of his chairs. Tout de suite!!

The waiter hastily obliged, and Nicole sat Maisie down in the middle of the street and told the waiter to bring them water.

“Here, drink this.” Nicole gave a fluted glass full of fizzy water to Maisie, who gratefully slugged it back in a single gulp. Her head was spinning.

“I’m fine,” Maisie insisted. “Nicole, I need to go –”

“Oui, oui, Petit Chou-chou Anglaise,” Nicole soothed, “but take a moment first to catch your breath.”

Petit Chou-chou Anglaise. Nicole’s nickname for Maisie. It meant Little English Cabbage. When Nicole had first told Maisie this, she thought it perhaps was supposed to be an insult, but Nicole assured her it was quite affectionate! Nicole Bonifait was half-British herself, as she’d pointed out to Maisie when they’d first met. And in a way, it was Nicole’s English ancestry that had created the art scholarship that had changed everything and set Maisie off on this whole unbelievable adventure. Six months ago Maisie had been an ordinary schoolkid, living on a council estate in Brixton, South London. Now, here she was, sitting outside Lucie’s, the most prestigious auction house in the whole of Paris, while the rich and the fabulous of the city tried to outbid each other over her art.

“Do you feel well enough to go back inside now?” Nicole asked her. “This is your moment of glory. Your work is going to fetch a record price, I think.”

Maisie shook her head. “I’m not going back in. I don’t care about the painting. I want to go back to Claude.”

Nicole gave her hand a squeeze. “I understand completely,” she said. “Who cares about a room full of bourgeoisie? Tonight, of all nights, you should be with him, no?”

“Yes,” Maisie replied. “I’m not being ungrateful Nicole … I know how much this means to you …”

“Don’t be silly, Chou-chou!” Nicole hugged Maisie tight. “Go to him now! We have done what we can, but if these are truly to be his final hours you should be at his side.”

Maisie found that her legs were surprisingly jelly-like when she rose from her chair, but she felt a steely determination that drove her on, made her put one foot in front of the other as she turned away from the auction house, heading down the boulevard Henri IV. Lucie’s was walking distance from the stables of the Célestins, home to the mounted French police known as the Republican Guard. But as Maisie regained her strength that walk soon became a run. And it was as she was running that the tears began to come. She sniffled and choked as she wiped them away and kept running onwards through the crossroads. Car horns honked as she ignored the lights, cyclists yelled at her as she sped in front of their bikes. Then, at last, lungs aching, she reached the front gates of the Couvent des Célestins.

It was amazing to think that nearly two hundred horses lived right here in these opulent stables in the heart of Paris. These were city horses, accustomed to the hum and buzz of urban life, cared for by their riders, the noble gendarmes, the policemen of the Republican Guard.

Maisie was lucky. Alexandre, of all people, was on gate duty tonight – thank God! He had his feet up and was reading the paper and he got a shock when she knocked on the sentry box window to be let inside.

“Maisie?” He dropped the paper immediately. “I thought you were at the auction?”

Maisie’s heart was still pounding from the run. “Alexandre, please? May I come in?”

Alexandre frowned. “You shouldn’t be here, Maisie, not now … They will be coming for him soon.”

Alexandre tried to resist but he could see the quiver of Maisie’s bottom lip and the tear stains on her cheeks. He gave a sigh and reached beneath the desk of the sentry box, pressed the button, and the automatic doors swung open.

“If the guards come, you make yourself invisible, yes?” Alexandre looked hard at her, making his point clear. “You are not here.”

“I am not here,” Maisie agreed. “I am a shadow.”

“That’s my girl,” Alexandre said. And then, with a wave of his hand, “Hurry now! A shadow moves quickly! Go to him!”

Maisie slipped briskly through the gates and across the courtyard, dashing between the clipped hedges and fountains to reach the stable block, sticking close to the walls where the security lights did not reach. She tiptoed across the cobblestones, creaked through the doors until, at last, she had made her way to Claude’s stall.

“Claude?” Maisie spoke his name as she pulled the bolt and opened the door. Part of her was afraid at that moment that they would have sneaked in and come for him and he’d already be gone. But no. He was there. He nickered softly at the sight of her, and she met his dark, soulful eyes. The very same eyes she had recreated in the painting being auctioned right now at Lucie’s.

Oh, but in real life he was so much more handsome! Of all the many beautiful and noble-blooded stallions who lived here in the stables of the Célestins, he was the most breathtaking. Jet-black with four white socks on his legs and a star on his forehead. A classic Selle Français, he had always turned heads when he was ridden on parade. That first day that Maisie had seen him, he had stood out above all the rest and she knew he was special – as indeed he had proved to be.

“Hello, my brave boy.” Maisie spoke softly, and the stallion raised up his elegant crest to nicker to her. Then, exhaustion and pain overcame him and he let his mighty head fall between his forelegs like a dying swan in a ballet.

“Claude,” Maisie knelt beside him and, using all her strength, she helped to lift his head, cradling him in her arms.

“I know you’re in such pain, Claude,” she whispered as she stroked his forelock, “but you won’t need to be brave for much longer. I promise you, when they come for you, no matter how much it breaks my heart, I will stick by you. I’ll be with you at the end. I promise, I promise …”

When Maisie had first come to Paris, she had marvelled at the beauty of this city. Her favourite time was the early morning when the sunrise washed the dove-grey rooftops an iridescent pink and the River Seine seemed to be made of molten gold. As an artist, she loved the dawn and its transformative, divine light. But tonight, as she held Claude tight in her arms, she dreaded the sunrise with all her heart. For when the night had ended, and the guards of the Célestins returned, Claude would be taken from her. And the light would be gone from Paris forever.

One year earlier …

The first horse I ever loved cost thirteen million dollars. And he wasn’t even real. His name was Whistlejacket and he was a portrait hanging on the wall at the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square. OK, so it was the painting and not the actual horse that was worth all that money, but even so.

My dad had taken me to the gallery to look at Whistlejacket one rainy Sunday afternoon. I was five at the time – too young, really, to take to a gallery, but Dad says that’s how he knew I was different from other kids, because instead of being bored I was in my element amongst all those famous paintings. I took in Van Gogh’s brilliant yellow sunflowers, Claude Monet’s soft and misty irises and Botticelli’s languid reclining beauties, Venus and Mars – and I explained to Dad, my little-kid voice brimming with authority, exactly what techniques I envisaged the painters must have used, and what I liked about the composition and the colours. Dad says I was always certain about what I loved and hated about art, right from the start. I didn’t get the abstract stuff, or the surrealists. I liked art that really looked like things – landscapes and animals and portraits.

There were some amazing paintings in the gallery that day, but when I saw Whistlejacket, they all disappeared, and he was everything to me.

He was a beautiful horse – deep chestnut with a flaxen mane and a thick honey-blond tail that flowed almost to the ground. There was one perfect white sock on his near hind leg and his haunches were muscled, but his limbs were delicate and his neck set perfectly into his elegant shoulders. As he reared up on his hind legs, he turned to look at me. His dark liquid-brown eye had such a soulful expression that it seemed impossible that he wasn’t a real horse. To think that an artist had created all of this with his hands!

“I want to take him home,” I told Dad, laughing.

“We can’t,” my dad said. “He belongs here, and besides – that painting’s worth thirteen million pounds.”

I was heartbroken until we went to the gift shop and Dad bought me a box of paints and a postcard of the painting.

“You can make your own horse now,” he said.

That afternoon, I tried to paint my own Whistlejacket. I struggled hard to get the proportions right – to recreate his broad neck and the dip of his back and the curve of his rump. The legs were tricky! Especially his hooves. I found my new paints were a blunt instrument, too drippy and squishy, and so I swapped to a plain HB pencil. Using the pencil wasn’t as colourful or fun, but I wasn’t interested in painting like a little kid. I wanted to make my horse perfect, and with a pencil I could refine my picture, reworking the lines, rubbing out the bad patches and redoing them until I was satisfied.

I did lots of drawings of Whistlejacket, and each time I was finished I would show them to Dad and he’d put them on the fridge. At first they were pretty clumsy, but I got better fast. I mean, I was only five and most five-year-olds do drawings that just look like scribbles – but pretty soon I could do ones that really looked like a horse. I remember I did one that was really good, and it almost looked like him. My dad looked at it for a long time in admiration and then he said. “Maisie, you’re a prodigy.”

“What’s a prodigy?” I asked.

“Someone who is very, very good at something at a very young age. Like Mozart.”

“Did he draw horses then?”

“No. He played the piano.”

“What’s the point of being good at that?”

“Different people are good at different stuff,” Dad said.

I decided at that moment that I would only ever be good at drawing horses.

The next weekend, we caught the bus to Hyde Park. Dad had bought me a new sketch pad with thick, white textured pages, and he’d made us lunch to take with us.

“There are horses here,” Dad explained. “They keep them in stables not far away, and they’re allowed to ride them through the park.”

We sat on the grass beneath the trees that lined Rotten Row and waited, and within minutes we saw our first real-life horses! A pair of black-and-white cobs with fluffy feathered legs, Roman noses and broad backsides. I did a sketch of them as best I could as they went past, and then at home that night I painted over my original drawing to get the light and the colours right.

“Do you really think I’m a podgy?” I asked Dad. He was confused. Then he got what I meant.

“Not a podgy,” he said. “Prodigy. It means you are a young genius. You have a gift.”

So … yeah, I’m a prodigy. Or at least I was. If you look it up in wikipedia a prodigy has to be under ten! And I’m twelve now, almost thirteen, so I’m way over the hill – that is modern life for you. Anyway the prodigy thing is not all it’s cracked up to be. You’d think that being an art genius would be a good thing. I mean, I’m pretty sure everyone loved Mozart when he was a kid. But it’s totally not working out like that for me. For a start, Mrs Mason, my teacher at Brixton Heights Academy, is a total cow and thinks drawing in class is, like, a crime or something. As far as she is concerned, it would be better to be Adolf Hitler than to draw horses. At least that was the impression she gave at the parent-teacher conferences.

“She’s wasting everyone’s time and disrupting my class,” Mrs Mason said.

“Because drawing horses isn’t part of your art curriculum?” my dad asked.

“Mr Thompson,” Mrs Mason said icily. “Maisie doesn’t restrict her drawing to during art class. She is drawing horses all – the – time.”

Mrs Mason reached below her desk.

“Maisie’s maths book,” she said as she held it up and flicked through the pages. There were no sums, no formulas on the cross-hatched pages. Just horses. Lots and lots of horses.

“I could show you her English book, which is exactly the same.” Mrs Mason continued her character assassination. “She draws in science; even during religious studies! She is the most impossible, unteachable child I have ever encountered in all my years as an educator …”

Mrs Mason was so worked up that when the bell went off to signal it was time for the next parent, she ignored it! James McCavity, who was sitting with his mum in the row of chairs behind us, waiting for his turn, gave me a sympathetic smile as I sat there dumbly while she ranted. When the bell rang a second time and she was still going, teachers from the other classes who were in the school hall began to stop talking and look over at Mrs Mason, who had got quite red in the face. And then, at last, when she had run all the way to the end of her tether, my dad spoke up.

“Did you ever look at her drawings, Mrs Mason?”

“I’m sorry?” Mrs Mason was confused. “What does that have to do with it? I’m talking about Maisie’s bad manners in class.”

My dad shook his head and sighed. “Are you aware that Maisie’s mum died when she was a newborn?”

Mrs Mason looked taken aback at this. “I’m sorry,” she stammered. “I wasn’t … I didn’t know.”

“No. Of course not,” Dad said. “So you didn’t know that I’m a solo dad. I raise Maisie on my own and my time is tight. I work a sixty-hour week and I’ve had to make excuses to get off work early today. I came here expecting we were going to discuss what your school was doing to encourage and extend my gifted child.”

“Mr Thompson!” Mrs Mason bristled back. “Even Picasso had to go to school you know.”

Dad laughed and said, “You know what, Mrs Mason? You’re dead wrong, but that’s the one interesting point you’ve made today.”

Afterwards, as we walked home, Dad told me about Pablo Picasso, one of the most famous artists in the world, and how Picasso was accepted into a fancy art school when he was just thirteen.

“I bet Mrs Mason wouldn’t tell off Picasso,” Dad grumbled.

“I think she probably would,” I replied.

In a weird way, though, we had Mrs Mason to thank for what was to come. If it hadn’t been for her, Dad would never have got the idea into his head that I could be like Picasso too. He was hatching a plan right there as we walked home, but he didn’t talk about it with me yet. He just told me that Mrs Mason was a silly old sausage, and we got fish and chips and Dad told me to at least try and look like I was paying attention in class in future to keep Mrs Mason from calling him again.

He spent the rest of the night on the computer, and at one point I remember he came into the living room and began to sort through a stack of my drawings on the coffee table.

“Where’s that one you did the other weekend?” he asked me. “Those two black-and-white horses trotting in the park with the big oak trees overhead? It’s not on the fridge any more.”

I always put my best works on the fridge and then after a week or so I put them away in a drawer in my room. That was where I found the black-and-white horses.

Dad looked at the drawing and smiled. “This will do the trick,” he said. I didn’t know what he meant by that at the time, and I didn’t think to ask.

For the rest of term there was a truce between me and Mrs Mason. It wasn’t as if she started liking me or anything. That would have been too much to hope for. But she didn’t keep looking over my shoulder to see what I was doing either. I think she couldn’t be bothered facing down my dad again.

It was almost the end of term when Dad came home one evening and called me into the living room. There was something about the tone of his voice that had me really worried.

“Am I in trouble?” I asked when I saw him standing there with that serious look on his face.

Dad didn’t say anything. He held out his hand and I saw the envelope. It was made of thick creamy paper embossed with a silver seal that had words in French on it.

“Is it for me? You’ve opened it already,” I pointed out to him. The envelope was torn.

Then I saw he was shaking. There were tears in his eyes.

“Dad, is everything OK?” I was worried now. “What’s going on?”

“You’re in,” he said.

“In what?”

“The School of Arts in Paris,” Dad said. “A school term on a full, all-expenses-paid scholarship.”

“But I didn’t apply to art school,” I said.

And then I remembered that day after the parent-teacher conference, when he’d searched out that drawing I did of the two black-and-white cobs.

“You didn’t tell me you were going to apply to any art school,” I said.

“I didn’t want to get your hopes up,” Dad said. “It’s a scholarship for an English pupil to study there. They get over a thousand applicants – and only one kid gets picked.”

“And they picked me?”

“They picked you,” Dad confirmed.

“So, Maisie.” He smiled at me. “What do you say? Do you want to go to Paris?”

We went out to a French restaurant to celebrate. It seemed appropriate, considering.

“The Parisian School of the Beaux-Arts is the most famous art school in the world,” Dad said as the waiter handed us menus. I looked at the prices – eight pounds for a green salad!

“Did you win the lottery?” I asked.

“We deserve a special treat this once,” Dad replied.

“But this Paris school,” I pressed home the question. “What about that? Is it expensive?”

“Very expensive,” Dad said. “But your fees and expenses for the term are paid for. That’s what a scholarship means.”

“So you don’t have to pay anything?” I went back to the menu. “What are l’escargots?”

“Snails,” Dad said. “Dare you to order them!”

I wasn’t falling for that. I got burger and chips – in French it was called steak haché and frites. I could read the menu a little. I had taken French this year for the first time at school, and Dad always joked that the only words I seemed to retain in my brain were about food.

I squirted tomato sauce all over the frites as Dad explained to me about the scholarship.

“How will it work, though?” I asked. “If we have to go and live in Paris? How will you do your job?”

We were on the puddings by now. Dad had ordered the chocolate mousse. He gave it a prod with his spoon, but he didn’t eat. He didn’t speak for a bit either, and then he said. “It would just be you, Maisie. I need to stay and work – they won’t hold my job for that long. You’d have to go alone.”

I had just shoved a forkful of meringue in my mouth so I had to chew before I could reply.

“I can’t go and live in Paris on my own. I’m thirteen!”

“I know,” Dad said. “I’m not sure the scholarship people realised you were so young either. I think I forgot to fill in the bit with your age because in their reply they asked me what university you were currently attending!”

“Do you think they’ll withdraw the offer when they find out?”

“I don’t know,” Dad admitted.

I felt my heart sink. “So I’m not going to Paris?”

Dad ruffled my hair.

“Don’t fret yet, Mais,” he said. “I’m going to talk to them. Perhaps there’s a way we can make it work.”

***

Let me tell you something about my dad. He is not a man who admits defeat. Yes, after he spoke to the Paris school, he said it had come as “a bit of a shock” to them when they found out I was only thirteen. Apparently they wanted to cancel my scholarship on the spot. Except for one woman who stood up for us. Her name was Nicole Bonifait – she was the great-great-great-granddaughter of Rose Bonifait, the artist who started the whole scholarship in the first place. Nicole Bonifait told them that she would take responsibility for me, acting as my guardian while I was in Paris for the term. Then Dad spoke to my school in Brixton and they agreed to let me go on exchange (sucks to Mrs Mason!) and it was done!

One month later, I stood with my bags at Charles de Gaulle airport, being pushed this way and that as people hustled by me, surging through the arrivals terminal. I was in Paris! All. By. Myself.

And for a brief moment, standing there in the terminal, I felt entirely and utterly alone and completely terrified. And then, it was as if the crowds parted in front of me by magic and through the throng came Nicole Bonifait. Her flame-red hair was loose and bouncing on her shoulders as she hurried towards me.

“Welcome to Paris, Maisie,” she said warmly as she grabbed my bags from the trolley. “Your life as an artist begins here and now.”

***

We drove into the city round the Arc de Triomphe, and through the tinted windows of Nicole’s black Renault with its own chauffeur I caught a glimpse of the Eiffel Tower in the distance. Then we were whizzing along the broad avenues that run alongside the Seine and crossing over the river. I looked out of the window at pink horse-chestnut trees in bloom, and elegant cafés on every corner and felt like I was in a movie. Paris!

“This is the Left Bank,” Nicole explained. “The artists’ side of the city. The most famous names all went to art school here: Matisse, Picasso and Renoir, and Rose of course. That café on your left? Les Deux Magots? It was Rose’s favourite. Always filled with painters, talking and eating and drinking.”

Nicole saw the worried look on my face.

“Is there something wrong, Maisie?”

“I feel like I’m going to let you down,” I said. “I’m not a real artist.”

Nicole laughed. “But of course you are! You’re the chosen one, Maisie! You follow in the footsteps of the great Rose Bonifait herself. Your scholarship bears her name and her world is now yours. Even the rooms that you will live in while you are here in Paris are the same ones that Rose herself occupied when she attended the school.”

A block down from Les Deux Magots café we pulled up outside a branch of the most famous cake shop in Paris, Ladurée. I got out of the car and gazed in through the gilt-trimmed windows of the store at a display of rainbow-coloured macarons, little meringues stacked up as if they were precious jewels. We swept past its pretty windows and went in through the doors of the building, into a tiny foyer, which housed an ancient elevator. Nicole ushered me in and slammed the gold doors closed without waiting for the driver. “He’ll follow us up with the bags,” she assured me as she pressed the button for the top floor.

The elevator rose and I watched the floor numbers whizz by as we went up, up, up. “The Bonifait corporation owns the entire building,” Nicole explained. “Most of the levels are offices these days, but the upper level remains our family home …”

The elevator came to a sudden, jerky stop and the doors opened and we stepped out into a grand entrance room with an ornate gold ceiling, brilliant green swirly malachite pillars and cold marble floors. It was so huge our entire apartment back home in Brixton could have fitted into it.

“Come this way. Your rooms are in the east wing,” Nicole strode ahead, her boots clacking on the marble floor. “You’ll have your own bathroom and a small kitchen, but there is no need to cook. You’ll take your meals with me and Françoise in the main dining room.”

“Who is Françoise?” I asked.

The answer to the question greeted us in the next room. A girl about my age with flame-coloured hair, who looked very much like Nicole, was lying on a sofa piled high with long-haired caramel Persian cats.

“Maman! You’re back!” the girl leapt up from the sofa and the cats yowled in complaint as they were flung off in her wake.

“You must be Maisie!” the girl rushed to me and kissed me on both cheeks.

“You can’t imagine how excited I am to have you here.” The girl’s eyes were bright. “All the other artists who’ve come to stay have been boring adults. But now we have you, and this is going to be the best summer ever. We can go swimming and have ice creams and …”

“Françoise.” Nicole rolled her eyes. “Maisie is not here for a play date! She is here to attend art school.”

“I know that!” Françoise sniffed. “You don’t have to be boring about it, though! She can still eat ice creams, can’t she?”

Françoise clutched my arm as if I were about to bolt off. “Come on, let me show you the rooms.”

Françoise dragged me away before Nicole could stop her, and we scooted together down the corridors and through a door that led to the east wing. Here, the mood of the apartment changed. No more flashy gold and marble. The room I was standing in now clearly belonged to an artist. The worn parquet floors were spattered with paint. A row of easels in various sizes leant against the wall. Down one wall of the room the windows were almost floor to ceiling, letting in the most amazing light and giving me a view over what seemed to be the whole of Paris. “It’s very basic, I know.” Françoise was apologetic.

“It’s perfect,” I said.

“Really?” Françoise wrinkled up her nose. “I find it a bit drab and grubby, but it’s good that you like it.”

***

I phoned Dad before bedtime. I told him I’d arrived safely and that everyone was very nice. I could tell he was trying to keep the conversation light to stop me feeling homesick. Neither of us were used to being apart like this. All my life, apart from one school camp, I’d never been away without Dad. “Good luck for tomorrow, Maisie,” he said as he hung up. And those words kept me awake way after midnight as I lay in my bed and looked out of the windows at the Paris roofline under the inky night sky and felt sick to my stomach about my first day at school.

***

I should never have brought my own canvas. I realised this as I walked across the cobbled courtyard. No one else was carrying one. At the office of the school administrator, Madame Richard, I sat on the chair and waited with my stupid big canvas and my bag, feeling like a little kid in Year Zero at primary school. Madame Richard opened her door. “Maisie? Here you go!”

I thought she would show me inside and talk to me about the school. I expected at the very least she’d show me where the classroom was! Instead, she just gave me a pink slip of paper and waved me towards classroom 1C!

In the end I found it by myself. Classroom 1C was on the lower level of the building, and the number was written in black on the door.

I could hear the buzz of conversation as the door swung open, but the moment they clapped eyes on me the words froze in the air. Sixteen art students, all of them so old they looked, like, almost twenty or something, stood silently behind their easels and stared straight at me. I have never wanted the ground to open up and swallow me so bad.

“You must be Maisie Thompson?” A bearded man in a dust-brown short-sleeved shirt and black-paint splattered jeans came over and shook my hand. “My name is Augustin. Congratulations on your scholarship.”

He said the words in perfectly accented English and then he muttered, “It would be nice if they would consult me in these matters of course …”

He said this in English too so I’m sure he meant me to understand him, and the meaning of his words, that he hadn’t been the one to select me for the scholarship and perhaps was not entirely happy about it. Certainly it didn’t seem like he was congratulating me at all and he definitely seemed disgruntled about having me in his class.

“You may take the easel at the front of the room,” Augustin directed.

I felt uneasy. It meant that I would have my back to my classmates and they could look over my shoulder and see what I was doing. The idea that these sophisticated art students could see my work as I was creating it suddenly made me deeply self-conscious.

“I see you have brought your own canvas,” Augustin said. “Put it aside as we are working on paper and sketch pads at this point. I don’t think we are ready to commit our ideas to canvas for posterity quite yet.”

There were sniggers from my classmates. I turned bright red, and stared hard at my shoes. “I haven’t brought a sketch pad,” I replied.

“Then you can borrow mine for the day,” Augustin said.

He handed me the pad, and then he went back to the front of the class and began to shuffle papers on his desk. I stood nervously behind the easel, staring at him until he looked up again.

“Yes?”

“I was just wondering,” I said. “What we are drawing?”

There was another snigger from my classmates. Augustin looked imperiously down his nose at me.

“Mademoiselle Thompson,” he said. “This is my class, but you have your own mind, do you not? I’m not here to guide your hand. What you decide to draw is up to you.”

I wanted to say, well, why did I come all the way to France just so I can stand here with no direction or input then? I could draw by myself at home just as easily. But I got my pencil out and began to sketch. I was thinking about the last series of pictures that I’d done – works based around those big black-and-white cobs who hacked around Hyde Park. I decided to continue with that, and drew from my memory.

Soon, I had the outlines down and I was sketching detail, the tree boughs above them, the riders on their backs. Behind me, the rest of the class were laughing at something. I tried to ignore it, and then the girl right behind me spoke up. My French was poor but I could make out what she was saying – it was something like: “Look, sir. I have my end-of-year assignment completed ready for the auction at Lucie’s.”

There was laughter from the class as she showed off her drawing. It was a stick-figure pony with a circle for a tummy and four sticks for its legs.

“Stop wasting time, Antoinette,” Augustin replied. “Get on with your work.”

“Ah, but, sir,” Antoinette persisted. “Isn’t this all you have to do now to get into the Paris School and the auction too? Draw pictures of pretty ponies!”

There were more giggles until Augustin snapped. “Enough! All of you!”

But it didn’t stop. For the rest of the day I could hear them, making little whinnies and clip-clops. It turned out that the auction the girl was talking about was the big deal for the students. Being selected to sell your work at Lucie’s was a prestigious achievement for the best pupils at the school. At the end of term, only the superstars of the Paris School would make the cut and be picked. Needless to say, after today I wasn’t thinking that short list was going to include me. At the end of class Augustin had looked at my drawing and hadn’t uttered a single word.

He hated my work – I could sense it. And the students hated me. So that was it. I had come all the way to Paris to be teased – just as I had been back home – for drawing horses!

***

There was a bath in my private rooms. I love baths and we don’t have one at home. That night, I lay back in the tub with my eyes shut tight, and I heard the laughter of Antoinette and her friends in my head and I felt like no matter what Nicole had said, I was never, ever going to be a real artist. I didn’t belong here. I lay there and listened to the tap drip, and then I stretched my hand back to grab the soap and I felt my knuckles rap against the wood panelling of the bathroom wall. It was a hollow sound, an empty clonk. The wall panel wasn’t solid. I tested the other panels. The sound was solid. The hollow panel was different from the rest. I knocked my knuckles against it again and this time, the panel twisted and pivoted away. I panicked, thinking I had somehow broken the wall! Then I realised it wasn’t broken at all. I had somehow uncovered a secret hidden chamber. A hidey-hole, just big enough to put personal items. I peered in but I couldn’t see anything.

I got out of the bath, towelled myself down and went and got my phone. I turned on the torch function and squinted inside the hidey-hole. At first I thought there was nothing inside at all – it looked entirely empty. But then I saw something sitting on the bottom of the cupboard. I picked it up and dusted it off. It was a book, wrapped in an ancient cloth-cover. Inside, where time hadn’t faded it, the cloth was dark brown but the exterior had been bleached like bone to grey, and on the front it was imprinted with three dark blood-red gilded letters – MRB. Later, I would discover that they were initials and the M stood for Marie. It was her first name, although no one knew her as Marie; everyone always called her Rose. Rose Bonifait. And the book I had just discovered in the secret chamber that day was her diary.

July 4, 1852

I have spent all morning at the abattoir. You cannot imagine how much it upsets me, but I have to go – it’s my duty as an artist to understand the anatomy of the animals that I paint – from their skin to the very core, bone and sinew. It makes me glad every time I visit that I am vegetarian – even though Madame Gris complains so much about how difficult it is to feed me with my fussy, strange ways. One day, she will see. It will be considered normal to do as I do and choose not to eat God’s creatures.

This morning it was with the usual sense of dread that I went in. But I steeled myself and I did it, and I stopped myself from gagging. I sat in the corner as the men went about their gruesome task and I drew. I looked at every detail, and I tried to be detached and professional, as if I were, say, a vet or a surgeon. It is easier said than done, however, and two hours later, when I emerged into the sunlight with six sketches in my book, I was shaking and in floods of tears. All I could think to do was to escape the misery of what I had witnessed by doing the one thing in the world that I love more than painting. And so I went to the stables beneath our Parisian city apartment and I saddled Celine.

Of all the horses we own, she is the one. No other mare in our stables is as clever as she is, or as kind.

I remember summer holidays at the chateau in Fontainebleau when Mama would put me on terrible Sebastian. That tiny grey pony with the flashing eyes and dainty hooves! Oh, Sebastian – what a terror he was! If you were on his back then his only thought was to get rid of you! His favourite trick was to sweep underneath the boughs of a low-branched tree to knock you off. If this failed then he bucked like a bronco. And if that didn’t work he would take himself off into the field and drop to his knees, preparing to roll on top of you! If you didn’t leap off his back at this point, he would crush you, and the trick was so effective that he broke the saddle twice before Mama gave up on saddles entirely. After that, she just used a saddle blanket and a surcingle on him to save the expense of buying a new saddle time and again. Sebastian was the closest thing I have ever seen to pure evil and yet, oh how we loved Sebastian! It was only once Mama despaired of his endless naughty antics and realised that despite his diminutive size he might actually do us harm, that she retired him and bought us Celine to ride instead.

So when I say that my education as a horsewoman began with Celine it is true – because all Sebastian taught me was how to jump off very quickly to avoid being squashed.

Celine is the opposite of Sebastian. You could not find a horse more even tempered, sweeter or more compliant. She’s almost twenty now – when we first got her she was nine years old, a mare in her prime. Celine is very beautiful, and I know that shouldn’t matter, but it does with horses. She’s a rich russet chestnut, with a blond mane and tail, deep-brown eyes and clean, slender legs. Her face has a perfect dish – a little Arabian blood saw to that. And the four white socks and the star on her forehead stand out like snow against the burnish of her coat. I have so many drawings of her in my sketch book. She is good at posing. She always pricks her ears forward and arches her neck for me.

When people say that they prefer geldings because mares are moody and ill-tempered, I think to myself – well, you clearly never met my horses. Or me! I am a girl, after all, just like Celine, and I’m always cheerful and in good spirits and both my brothers, Philippe and Dorian, can be very sulky boys indeed! I am a better rider than either of them too, and a better painter. Not that I’m boastful – no one likes it when girls are proud. Papa warns me constantly about that. And I reply that no one seems to like it much when girls do anything at all. I am working on solutions to this problem.

Like when the Paris School turned me down because I was a girl. I wasn’t foolish enough to try to argue with them that my work was better than any. Instead, I accepted their rejection and I resolved to work harder still. Locked in my room, all I did was paint, night and day. I did not leave the house, save for twice each week, when I would pack up my easel and my paints and I would walk to Hospital Boulevard where the horse markets take place. Here, amongst the chaos, I would set up my equipment and I would focus my eye on the horses. The most amazing creatures went under the hammer at these auction yards. Men would enter leading cavalcades of mares, all rich bays or burnished chestnuts. There were pleasure horses for ladies to ride and work horses for pulling carts. Thick-set grey dappled Percherons and burly Ardennais were very popular and the men who brought them through to the yards for sale would plait their manes with stiff red ribbons and meticulously braid and bind their tails. Their coats shone from being strapped with hay wisps and their hooves were oiled and polished. I know this because I captured every detail on my canvases. I would stay there silent in the corner and paint and paint as the auction was underway until the last lot had been sold and the emptied-out yards stank of dung and cigarettes and sweat.

For three months I worked in this way until I had two paintings that I considered worthy of being submitted to the school. My third and best painting was a work created in the Jardin de Luxembourg, not far from our own stables. It was a portrait of Celine. In this work, I’d painted her side-on, standing in the sunshine dappled by trees. She was staring into the distance, ears pricked and eyes kind. I wasn’t entirely satisfied with the work. There was something unnatural about her legs – perhaps the angle of her hocks – legs are fiendishly tricky to do. But all the same, I knew it was a good picture. Her proportions were perfect and the colours and contours were lifelike and shiny. All three paintings were far better than any of those works by the boys who had applied to art school that year. But, don’t say that out loud, Rose! Girls are not allowed to be boastful, remember?

Anyway. I didn’t. I never boasted about these three paintings. In fact, I didn’t mention them to anyone at all. Except to Dorian. He’s the middle sibling and only a year older than me, and we’ve always been thick as thieves. We look alike too; pale and skinny, both with a dark sweep of fringe hiding our blue eyes. Dorian was eight when Mama died. I was seven and I used to cry myself to sleep every night until Papa decided that the two of us should share a room. Dorian moved into the bunk bed above mine and he would sing to me and tell me stories until I slept again.

Anyway, it was to Dorian that I turned to solve my problem with the Paris School. My brother has quite the honest face so he seemed perfect for the trick I had in mind. Together, he and I wrapped the three canvases in soft muslin to protect them, and then Dorian tucked them under his arm and with me trailing behind him we went to the apartments of the Paris School.

Being an artist is in the Bonifait blood. My papa and his father before him both attended the Paris School. So when Dorian went up to the front desk and introduced himself as a Bonifait and asked for an audience with the Directeur, the head of college admissions, Master Demarchelier, was more than willing.

Master Demarchelier didn’t so much as glance at me waiting there in my chair as he ushered Dorian into his office. That was fine by me. I sat there outside his rooms in the corridor and while I couldn’t hear what was being said behind the closed door, I knew it was going well as they were in there a long while. Eventually my brother emerged, the Directeur with his arm around his shoulder looking most pleased with himself and burbling on about his delight in finding such a gifted pupil just at the eleventh hour when new enrolments for this school year were about to close. He was about to shake hands with Dorian to seal the deal when I leapt forward and pressed my own hand into his in my brother’s stead.

“My name is Rose Bonifait,” I told him, “and I am the artist who painted these works, not my brother Dorian. So it is I, not Dorian, who will be attending your school.”

It was a scandal of course. People are so easily scandalised. That a twelve-year-old girl should be admitted to the Paris School! The master was not best pleased at being tricked. Yet even in his annoyance he had to admit my work was so good he would overlook the naughty ruse and let me in. And so, I became the first-ever girl to attend his college.

From day one at the school they all whispered about me. Nowadays they don’t even bother to whisper – they say it straight to my face. You are an impudent young girl and you do not belong here with us, the intellectual elite. It bothers them still more than I really don’t care, and I make it so obvious. Yesterday, in class, the Directeur tried to pick at the thread of my temper when he asked me what I thought I was playing at with my ridiculous costume I had taken to wearing.

“I don’t know what you mean, sir,” I said.

“You keep coming to these classes dressed as a boy,” the Directeur pointed out.

I was so sick of trying to paint in my silly lace gowns that for several mornings now, with Dorian’s permission, I had raided his wardrobe for his cast-offs. He’d given me some old boiled wool breeches in dark charcoal, a white cotton shirt and a houndstooth waistcoat. I liked the way the wool trousers and the cotton felt against my skin. And, oh, the unbelievable freedom of movement! Dorian gave me jackets too – and socks and ties and it was marvellous to be dressed at last in clothes that were comfortable.

“Mademoiselle Bonifait,” the Directeur said to me. “You must dress like a lady to attend the Paris School.”

“But, sir,” I replied. “I thought ladies weren’t allowed to attend the Paris School. And now I am dressed like a boy you do not like that either? You should make up your mind.”

Even the boys in class, most of whom hate me for being there, had to laugh at that. As for the Directeur, he huffed that I had better “change my appearance by morning”.

Well, that made me so cross I decided I certainly would change it! In the bathroom mirror that night I stared at my reflection and my long, dark ringlet curls, which I usually shaped each evening before bed by wrapping them in brown paper to keep the curl precise. Well, I thought, Monsieur Directeur, you are right. I must change. No more brown paper for me.

I got out the scissors from Mama’s old sewing kit. The blades were so sharp that when I ran my finger along to test them, I nearly sliced the tip of my finger clean off. I sheared into my long, dark ringlets and the blade cut through the hair like butter. After I’d shorn them off, I tidied up using a pudding bowl to create a shape.

The pile of hair on the floor beside me looked a bit like a rat scurrying across the floorboards. Then Dorian came in and asked me what on earth I had done.

“I look more like you now, don’t you think?” I teased him.

The short cut brings out my eyes, makes the most of my cheekbones. And it will be so practical! No more hair in my eyes when I am trying to paint. I can focus on the work. Anyway, curls never got me anywhere. The boys at the school seldom even acknowledge that I am alive, and the only other places I ever go are the auction yards and the abattoir, and curls are no use to me there either.

Back to the abattoir. As I said, I was there this morning. I had skipped my lesson at school – I suddenly didn’t feel like facing the Directeur with my new hair. His endless, painful discussions about the failings of my gender were irritating me too much for me to hold my tongue, and going instead to a place where they slaughter animals felt like a pleasant change of pace.

I’m being horrible. Truly, it is never fun to go to the abattoir. This morning, though, dealing with what I saw in that slaughter chamber upset me even more than usual, and I had a feeling of being deeply heartbroken when I emerged. As I saddled Celine, I wondered whether the stench of the place clung to me in some way because the mare skipped and danced as I tacked her up, but she settled when I mounted, and we rode out across the gravel of the forecourt of the stables and down the avenues to the park.

The Jardin de Luxembourg is still my favourite place in the world. Winding bridle paths meander between trees and around the great lake, and there is a sense of wildness to the place so that you can scarcely believe you are in the city. One day I even spied deer bounding through the forest as I rode.

Before Mama got sick, we would ride there together, and she would point out things and make me practise my English. L’oiseau is bird. L’arbre is tree. Jardin is garden. I chanted these words to myself today as I rode the bridle paths with Celine and then cantered my mare through the trees, watching the dappled late-afternoon light of Paris growing rose-pink as the evening closed in on us. By the time I returned Celine to her stall that evening, I had made my mind up about two things.

The first was that, no matter what happened to me in my life, I would always love horses.

The second thing I decided was perhaps more important. Until now, I have been quiet. I have apologised for my gender and been happy to let men consider me to be the weaker sex, have allowed them to make decisions that are unfair and unequal. But the Directeur’s silly fuss about something as pointless as my style of dress has strengthened my ambition, has turned my will to steel.

No matter what Papa says about the importance of girls being modest and demure, I know I will never be these things and I refuse to be considered less than a man. Because the second thing that I decided today when I was out riding is that I am going to be the greatest artist in the world. That is my plan – and when I make my mind up, I do not fail.

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