‘Yes,’ the crowd breathed. The children responded readily, at once, but even the older people, even the villagers who had never heard this message before were persuaded by Johann’s quiet authority. ‘Yes,’ they said.

Johann tossed his head so his blond ringlets fell away from his face. He looked around at them all. Luca had a sudden disconcerting sense that Johann was looking at him with his piercing blue eyes, as if the young preacher knew something of him, had something to say especially to him. ‘You are missing your father,’ the boy said simply to the crowd. Luca, whose father had disappeared after an Ottoman raid on his village, when Luca was only fourteen, gave a sudden start and looked over the heads of the children to Isolde, whose father had died only five months ago. She was pale, looking intently at Johann.

‘I can feel your sorrow,’ he said tenderly. Again his blue gaze swept across Luca and then rested on Isolde. ‘He did not say goodbye to you,’ Johann observed gently. Isolde bit her lip at that deep, constant sorrow and there was a soft moan from the crowd, from the many people who had lost fathers – at sea or to illness, or in the many accidents of daily life. Ishraq, standing beside Isolde, took her hand and found that she was trembling. ‘I can see a lord laid cold and pale in his chapel and his son stealing his place,’ Johann said. Isolde’s face blanched white as he told her story to the world. ‘I can see a girl longing for her father and him crying her name on his deathbed but they kept her from him, and now, she can’t hear him.’

Luca gave a muffled exclamation and turned to Brother Peter. ‘I didn’t tell him anything about her.’

‘Nor I.’

‘Then how does he know this?’

‘I can see a bier in a chapel alone,’ Johann went on. ‘But nobody mourns for the man who has gone.’ There was a sob from a woman in the crowd who fell to her knees. Isolde stood like a statue, listening to the young man describing the loss of her father. ‘I can see a daughter driven from her home and longing to return.’

Isolde turned to Ishraq. ‘He is speaking of me.’

‘It seems so,’ Ishraq cautiously responded. ‘But this could be true of many people.’

‘I see a girl whose father died without her at his side, whose brother stole her inheritance, who longs, even now, to be back in her home, to see her father again,’ Johann said his voice low and persuasive. ‘And I have good news for you. Good news. I see this young woman, her heart broken by her loss, and I can tell you that she will return. She will return and take her place again.’

Isolde clutched at Ishraq’s steady hand. ‘He says I will return!’

‘And I see more,’ Johann went on. ‘I can see a young man, a boy. A young boy, and his father lost at sea. Oh! I can see that boy waiting and waiting on the quayside and looking for the sails of a boat that never comes home.’