Luca looked at Brother Peter. ‘Sultan Mehmet is nineteen years old,’ he confirmed.

‘God told me that this is a war for young people and for children. The infidels are led by a young man; I heard my calling. I knew that I must leave my home.’

The two men waited.

‘I took my crook and my knapsack and I said farewell to my father and mother. The whole village came out to see me leave. They knew that I was inspired by God himself.’

‘Did anyone leave with you?’

He shook his head and stared at the window as if he could see on the dim pieces of the horn panes the poverty of the dirty village street, the dreary lives of the people who scratched a living from the thin mountain soil, who were hungry and cold every winter and knew, even in the warmth of summer, that the cold and hunger of winter would come again. People who confidently expected that nothing would ever change, that life would go on in the same cycle of hard winters and bright summers in a remorseless unchanging round – until the day that they heard that the Turks were coming and understood that everything had suddenly got worse and would get worse still.

‘Children joined me as I walked,’ Johann said. ‘They heard my voice, they understood. We all know that the end of days is coming. We all want to be in Jerusalem for judgement day.’

‘You think you’re going to Jerusalem?’ Freize demanded incredulously from the doorway. ‘You’re leading these children to Jerusalem?’

The boy smiled at him. ‘God is leading them to Jerusalem,’ he said patiently. ‘I am only walking with them. I am walking beside them.’

‘Then God has chosen an odd route,’ Freize said rudely. ‘Why would He send you to the east of Italy? Why not go to Rome and get help? Why not take a ship from there? Why walk these children such a long way?’

The boy looked a little shaken at Freize’s loud scepticism. ‘I don’t lead them, I don’t choose the route, I go where God tells me,’ he said quietly. He looked at Brother Peter. ‘The way is revealed to me, as I walk. Who is this man questioning me?’

‘This is Brother Luca’s servant,’ Brother Peter said irritably. ‘You need not answer his questions. He has no part in our inquiry.’

‘Oh, beg pardon for interrupting, I’m sure,’ Freize said, not sounding at all sorry. ‘But am I to give your leavings out at the door? Your followers seem to be hungry. And there are broken meats from your breakfast, and the untouched bread. You dined quite well.’

The boy passed his plate and the bread in the basket without giving it another glance. ‘God provides for us,’ he said. ‘Give it all to them with my blessing.’

‘And see that the food is shared fairly when it comes from the monastery,’ Brother Peter ordered Freize, who nodded and went out. They could hear him stamping to the kitchen and the back door. Brother Peter turned his attention back to the boy. ‘And your name is?’