‘Johann Johannson.’

‘And your age?’

‘I think I am almost sixteen years old. I don’t know for sure.’

‘Had you seen any miracles or heard anything before this year?’

He smiled. ‘I used to hear a singing in the church bells of my village,’ he confided. ‘When they rang for Mass I used to hear them calling my name, as if God himself wanted me to come to His table. Then sometimes, when I was with the goats in the high pasture in summer, I would hear voices, beautiful voices, calling my name. It was an angel who used to meet me in the highest meadows. I knew that there would be a task for me. But I did not know it would be this.

‘God told me of the end of days when I was on my own in the high pasture and I puzzled as to what I should do with this knowledge. I spoke to my priest and he said perhaps it was a revelation; we would have to wait till we could know more. We could not believe that what I had heard in the pasture about the Church of the East could be true. Nobody could believe that a great city like Constantinople could fall. But then a pedlar did, at last, come to the market, and he stood in the village square and there were tears in his eyes as he told us all that the Rome of the East had fallen – that the city had held out as long as it could, a light in the darkness, as the darkness grew darker; but that the Ottoman Turks were too much for it. I knew then, that my vision was true, that the voice I had heard was the voice of God, that the end of days was upon us, and that I must go to Jerusalem.’

‘You knew of the fall of Constantinople before the pedlar came and told everyone?’ Brother Peter made a note. ‘You had reported your vision to your priest?’

‘I did,’ the boy said with certainty.

‘You are certain that you told your priest of the end of days before the pedlar came?’

The boy nodded, not troubling to repeat himself.

‘And how do you plan to get to Jerusalem, from here?’ Luca asked.

‘God has told me that the sea will dry up before us,’ the boy said simply. ‘As it did before the children of Israel. We will walk to the southernmost point of Italy and then I know that the waves will part and we will walk to the Holy Land.’

Luca and Brother Peter exchanged a wondering look at his confidence. ‘It’s a long, long way,’ Luca suggested gently. ‘Do you know the way? Do you know how far?’

‘It doesn’t matter to me what the road is called, nor how far it is,’ the boy said confidently. ‘God guides me, not signposts or worldly maps. I walk in faith, I am not the toy of men who draw maps and try to measure the world. I don’t follow their vision but that of God.’