‘There’s more coming,’ Isolde called from the open window above them. She pointed north, over the roofs of the little town where the road wound down the hill. ‘I can see them on the road. There must be several hundred of them.’

‘Anyone leading them? Any adult in charge?’ Luca called up to her, completely distracted by the sight of her tumbled hair and the half-open collar of her shirt.

Isolde shaded her eyes with her hand. ‘I can’t see anyone. No-one on horseback, just a lot of children walking slowly.’

Almost under their feet a small girl sat down abruptly and started to sob quietly. ‘I can’t walk,’ she said. ‘I can’t go on. I just can’t.’

Freize knelt down beside her, saw that her little feet were bleeding from blisters and cuts. ‘Of course you can’t,’ he said. ‘And I don’t know what your father was doing letting you out. Where d’you live?’

Her face was illuminated at once, sore feet forgotten. ‘I live with Johann the Good,’ she said.

Luca bent down. ‘Johann the Good?’

She nodded. ‘He has led us here. He will lead us to the Promised Land.’

The two young men exchanged an anxious glance.

‘This Johann,’ Luca started, ‘where does he come from?’

She frowned. ‘Switzerland, I think. God sent him to lead us.’

‘Switzerland?’ exclaimed Freize. ‘And where did he find you?’

‘I was working on a farm outside Verona.’ She reached for her little feet and chafed them as she spoke. At once her hands were stained red with her blood but she paid no attention. ‘Johann the Good and his followers came to the farm to ask for food and to be allowed to sleep in a barn for the night, but my master was a hard man and drove them away. I waited till he was asleep and then my brother and I ran away after them.’

‘Your brother’s here?’ Freize asked, looking round. ‘You have an older brother? Someone to look after you?’

She shook her head. ‘No, for he’s dead now. He took a fever and he died one night and we had to leave him in a village; they said they would bury him in the churchyard.’

Freize put a firm hand on Luca’s collar and pulled him back from the child. ‘What sort of fever?’ he asked suspiciously.

‘I don’t know, it was weeks ago.’

‘Where were you? What was the village?’

‘I don’t know. It doesn’t matter, I am not to grieve for I will see my brother again, when he rises from the dead. Johann said that he will meet us in the Promised Land where the dead live again and the wicked burn.’

‘Johann said that the dead will rise?’ Luca asked. ‘Rise from their graves and we will see them?’

Freize had his own question. ‘So who takes care of you, now that your brother is dead?’

She shrugged her thin shoulders, as if the answer must be obvious. ‘God takes care of me,’ she said. ‘He called me and He guides me. He guides all of us and Johann tells us what He wants.’