She bowed her head. He had a moment’s fierce joy that she listened to his instruction. ‘I know there is nothing more important than his work,’ she said humbly. ‘And besides, I don’t have any influence over him.’

Brother Peter nodded, and went upstairs to find Luca.

Luca and Brother Peter spruced themselves up in the attic bedroom as well as they could, given that all the clothes they had were those they were wearing during the flood or had since bought from the limited stores of the tailor of Piccolo.

Luca took his boots down to the kitchen to beg for some oil to polish them. ‘I’ll meet you in the dining room,’ Brother Peter promised. ‘It will look better if we arrive after each other, than if we go in together. Will you tell our lord that you spoke with the infidel?’

‘Why not?’

The clerk shrugged. ‘Clearly, my lord is no friend to him. The moment that he saw him he called for us to arrest him.’

‘The infidel knew the history of the wave. I had to ask him about it. I had to be able to report what might have caused it.’

‘Will you tell Milord that I would not come with you to write down what the infidel said?’

‘If he asks me directly. But I thought you were obeying your conscience? I would have thought you would have been proud to tell him that you refused to speak with his enemy?’

Again Brother Peter shrugged. There was no way of telling whether he would be commended for his discretion in avoiding the infidel, or condemned for failing to do his duty as Luca’s clerk.

‘This is nothing!’ Luca asserted. ‘Whether we spoke to him or we avoided him is nothing to the rest of it! We nearly died. We saw the Crusade. We were on our way to Jerusalem, walking on the bed of the sea. We were driven back by a wave as big as a church steeple that drowned everything in its path. Extraordinary things are happening all around us nearly every day.’

Brother Peter heaved up a pair of ill-fitting breeches and fastened the rope from his gown around them to hold them up around his thin hips. ‘I’ve never known him come out from Rome to an inquiry before,’ he confessed. ‘It makes me nervous.’

Luca hesitated. ‘He has never come out to meet an inquirer at his work before?’

‘Never.’

‘Why would he come for me?’

‘That’s what I am asking myself.’

Freize was to serve the dinner and was in the kitchen, helping the flustered landlady spoon up a meat stew onto trenchers of fresh dark bread. Ishraq and Isolde were to dine in their room. ‘I’ll carry up the food for the ladies,’ Freize offered.

‘I’ve come down for it,’ Ishraq said from the doorway. ‘And I’ll bring the things down again. I knew you would be busy in the kitchen.’