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under the slab where I’d soon be joining them. I heard that many of the bodies had been carried downstream; they had been lifted out at Toulouse. I decided to go.
    It was horrific. Nearly two thousand houses had collapsed. Seven hundred people were dead. Every bridge had been smashed up; a whole district lay buried in mud, razed to the ground. Twenty thousand people were dying of hunger, walking around in rags, half naked. The city stank of dead bodies; everyone was terrified of catching typhoid. There was a funeral procession in every street. Charity couldn’t heal these wounds. Walking through the devastation, I saw nothing. I had my own dead to think of; I was devastated too.
    They had retrieved many of the bodies, they said. A lot of them were already buried in some trenches in a corner of the cemetery. The thing is, they’d taken care to take photos of anybody that couldn’t be identified. I found Gaspard and Véronique in these upsetting pictures. They had died in the middle of their wedding kiss. They were clutching each other so fiercely – mouth clamped to mouth, their arms wound tightly around their backs – that you would have had to break their bones to separate them. They were photographed together , and together they sleep under the earth.
    This is all I have: this frightening photograph of two beautiful children, disfigured and bloated by the water, their livid faces fearless with their love for one another. I look at them, and weep.

1
    After the victory, four soldiers set up camp in a deserted corner of the battlefield. Night had fallen. Corpses lay all around, and the men were having a hearty supper.
    Sitting on the grass, they grilled lamb, not waiting for the slices to be cooked through before tucking in. The glowing red flames threw a flickering light over the soldiers, casting misshapen shadows far into the distance. At times the firelight glinted off the weapons strewn around them; and one might have noticed, in the darkness, some of the men who slept with their eyes open.
    The soldiers laughed riotously, unaware of these eyes watching them. It had been a day of fierce fighting. Not knowing what the next day would bring, they made merry with their rations and were grateful for the respite.
    Night and Death swooped down onto the battlefield; their beating wings cut through the ghostly silence.
    When the food was finished, Gneuss sang. The cheerful air boomed out into the sad, gloomy night and echoed back like a dirge. The soldier raised his voice, surprised to hear this peculiar lament. An awful scream rang out from the darkness.
    Gneuss stopped dead. ‘Could be that we didn’t finish the job,’ he said to Elberg. ‘Investigate.’
    Elberg took a piece of burning wood from the fire. For a few moments his comrades could track his movements by the light of the flame. They saw him crouch down and prod some of the corpses. He ferreted around in the bushes with his sword. Then they lost sight of him.
    Nobody spoke for a while.
    ‘Clérian,’ said Gneuss at length, ‘the wolves are out tonight. Go and check on our boy.’
    It was Clérian’s turn to vanish into the dark.
    Fed up of waiting, Gneuss and Flem huddled into their coats and bedded down around the guttering flame. They had just drifted off, when another awful scream rang out. Flem got up without a saying a word and headed for that same spot where his two comrades had vanished.
    So Gneuss was on his own. The shrieks coming from that black hole frightened him. He tossed some twigs onto the fire, hoping that more light would set his mind at ease. Flames the colour of blood shot up. They cast a glowing ring on the grass. Inside it, the bushes pranced around, and the corpses seemed to twitch.
    Now Gneuss was afraid of the light. He scattered the burning twigs and stamped out the flames. But when darkness shrouded him once more, he shuddered. He didn’t want to hear that deathbed scream again. He sat down, and then he got up, calling out for