‘You did,’ Luca said. ‘But any passing pedlar could have told you so. It happened in May this year.’

‘But it was not a passing pedlar who told me so, for I was up in the hills with my goats. Every dawn I left the village and took the goats up the paths to the higher fields where the grass grows fresh and sweet. Every day I sat in the fields with them, and watched over them. Sometimes I played my pipe, sometimes I lay on my back and watched the clouds. When the sun sat in the top branches of the silver birch tree I ate the bread and cheeses that my mother had tied into a cloth for me. Every evening as the sun started to go down, I brought my flock safe home again and saw them into my neighbours’ fields and stables. I saw no-one, I talked to no-one. I had no companion but an angel. Then one day, God spoke to me and He told me that the infidels had taken the holy church of Constantinople. He said that the sea had risen so high that they had rowed their galleys right over the land, over the harbour wall, and into the harbour. He said that the greatest church in the whole world was once called Hagia Sophia and that now it is in the hands of the infidels and they will make it into a mosque, take down the altar and defile its sacred aisles, and that this is a true sign of the end of days. Did I hear right or no?’

‘They took the cathedral,’ Luca confirmed uneasily. ‘They took the city.’

‘Did the priests pray at the altar as the infidels came in the door and cut them down?’ Johann asked.

Luca glanced to Brother Peter. ‘They served the Mass until the last moment,’ Brother Peter confirmed.

‘Did they row their galleys over the land?’

‘It can’t be true,’ Luca interrupted.

‘It wasn’t exactly true,’ Brother Peter explained. ‘It was a trick of war. They mounted the galleys on great rollers and pushed them across the land into the inner harbour. The devil himself guided them to put the rowers to the oars and the drummers to the beat so they looked as if they were rowing through the air. Everyone said it looked like a fleet of galleys sailing along the road.’

Luca shook his head in amazement. He had not heard the story before but the boy nodded, as if he had seen the terrifying sight and then the sacrilege himself. ‘God told me that the infidels would come and bring terror to every village in the world, and that just as they have come through Greece they will come on and on, and nothing can stop them. He said they would come into my own canton, they will come to every village in Switzerland. He said that they are led by a young man only a little older than me. Is that right?’