‘The burns as well as several other wounds were inflicted after death. He used a candle to singe the eyes, the breasts and the skin in some areas. I think he was significantly calmer at that point compared to when he struck the first blows because the damage is more deliberate: the marks are symmetrical, inflicted with less violence …’

‘And yet he must have realised that she was dead!’

‘Certainly, but that didn’t stop him. So, in addition to making his victim suffer, he also took pleasure in mutilating her.’

‘Perhaps he was also thinking about the shock the person discovering the body in such a state would feel. If that was the case, he certainly achieved his goal with me.’

‘Don’t do yourself down, Quentin. I know you well. “The reed bends but does not break.”’

Finally, the medical officer examined the crotch.

‘Sexual intercourse did not take place. That’s all I can tell you. We could carry out an autopsy but I’m not sure it would tell us any more. In any case, I don’t have time to do it. As you know, I have my work cut out improving our temporary hospitals, training assistants on the job …’

‘Of course.’

‘There’s just one aspect that intrigues me.’ The doctor took the right hand. The tips of the middle finger, thumb and index finger were spattered with black marks. ‘It’s ink.’

‘She must have written a letter recently,’ Margont suggested. He changed his mind at once. ‘Not one letter in isolation but a whole series. And yet she had no family.’

‘She was working at an inn, you told me. Perhaps she kept an account book …’

‘The person who employed her told me she helped out with the serving and did the housework. There was no mention of account books.’

The two men replaced the lid of the coffin.

‘Good luck, Quentin. Don’t take unnecessary risks.’

Margont nodded assent. It was Jean-Quenin’s stock remark, the advice he gave to his friends before every campaign. And in peacetime it was, ‘Eat less, and less quickly’, ‘Take more exercise’ and ‘Don’t read at night in poor candlelight.’

‘The same to you, Jean-Quenin, and thanks once again.’

Margont helped to reinter the coffin, then walked down the hill from the graveyard on his own, trying to think of other things. But every time he set foot on a bump or bulge in the ground he thought he was treading on and desecrating a tomb.

CHAPTER 7

DURING the return journey Margont thought back over his life. He often did so at the start of a campaign. His past reminded him of a baker’s dough that had been kneaded by too many hands, each with their own idea of what shape to give the future loaf. Eventually, he had been brave enough to choose his own way, despite the opposition of those around him. Arrogance had saved him from doing what others wanted.

He was born in Nîmes in 1780 into a family of winegrowers and his father, Georges Margont, had died of a fit of apoplexy in 1786. As his mother could not provide for her son and two daughters, she decided to move to Montpellier to live with her brother, Ferdinand Lassère, a hardened and religiously inclined bachelor whose ambition was to turn the young boy into a priest or a monk. ‘What an absurd idea!’ Margont frequently exclaimed, remembering the time when he was forced to read the Bible and to pray every day.

His uncle sent him to study at the Benedictine abbey of Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert. This monastery, founded more than a thousand years earlier and situated in the gorge of the River Verdus, was a resting place on the pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela. Its architecture was a mixture of Romanesque and Southern French styles. Built on to the magnificent, astonishingly high nave were a cloister and a few buildings that marked the boundaries of a verdant quadrangle. For four years this place had been Margont’s whole world. He had practically never been allowed to leave it. When he had complained about the lack of freedom, the monks had tirelessly repeated to him that solitude would open up his mind to God.

At that time the community of Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert was a far cry from what it had been in centuries past. Although only six monks remained, life inside those walls still continued in the time-honoured tradition: long hours of prayer, meditation, contemplation and services. Fortunately for Margont, study also played an important part in the activities of the monastery. He was taught reading, writing, Latin, Greek, mathematics, history, geography and theology. His marks were good or outstanding except in theology, where his results were nonexistent because the simplest of questions (‘Who died for us on the Cross, Quentin?’) elicited a deliberately wrong answer (‘Joan of Arc, Brother’).

In a monastery almost everything is forbidden, particularly anything you might want to do. So Margont spent hours reading in the cloister garden. This space represented the last bastion of freedom, even if it was surrounded by monks and walls. Words gave him access to other horizons, other thoughts and other lives. No one around him seemed to understand that without books he would have ended up not a monk but insane. Nobody, that is, except Brother Medrelli, a well-respected monk who taught history and mathematics. It was he who took this rebellious pupil under his wing. He became his mentor and gave him private lessons, in addition to the already extensive regular curriculum. He hoped to see him become a cardinal. According to the monk, when this young ‘believer’ claimed he was without faith, he was being insincere. Brother Medrelli was open-minded, understanding, tolerant and warm-hearted. He provided Margont with a constant supply of books and allowed the boy to accompany him on the rare occasions when he went for a walk (even if it meant running to catch up with him at the Devil’s Bridge, as happened on one famous occasion when he attempted to escape). Margont gave him the affectionate nickname ‘my friend the citizen-monk’. Even today the two men still often wrote to each other.

In 1790 the Republic, as represented by the National Assembly, abolished all religious communities. Margont cried as he emerged from the main door of the abbey. He was free.

He returned to his uncle’s in Montpellier. Lassère still wanted to make a priest of him. Father Medrelli, knowing him better, wrote suggesting he should take up medicine. His mother, for her part, wanted him to buy back the family vineyards in order to follow in his father’s footsteps.

‘To satisfy you and to please my uncle as well, perhaps I could make communion wine,’ her son would sometimes say bitterly. It was no longer the walls of Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert that closed in around him but everyone else’s wishes.

Thankfully, at Brother Medrelli’s insistence, Margont continued to study. He still read voraciously and loved to go for long walks through the streets of Montpellier. During his adolescence he became an ardent supporter of the republican cause and decided to get involved in politics. The world was changing and he wanted a hand in making it change even more and faster. His plan met with a frosty reception as at the time a number of politicians had lost their heads in more ways than one.

In 1798 he enlisted in the army and followed Bonaparte on his Egyptian expedition. On his return he had time to indulge his love of haphazard study. But from 1805 onwards there was one war after another. He had taken part in numerous battles, including Austerlitz, Auerstädt, Eylau and Wagram, and had had the opportunity to live in Berlin, Vienna, Madrid and many other places, making up for the time wasted within the four square walls of Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert.

Since then, like many others, he had been waiting for peace. A genuine peace, not a new peace parabellum, like that of Amiens in 1802 or Tilsit in 1807, during which all the countries concerned were actually levying troops and putting the finishing touches to their future battle plans. He wanted this forthcoming peace to be based on republican and humanistic ideals and for that he was prepared to fight, for the rest of his life if necessary.