‘Lust?’ Brother Peter said thinking of the usual confessions of young men.

‘He says he is a virgin and I believe him.’

Brother Peter’s head was spinning. ‘Can this be true? A pure young man? An innocent?’

‘Brother – I believe in him. If he will allow me, if the bishop will give me leave, I am going with him.’

‘You?’

‘I know. I must seem ridiculous. I am a comfortable parish priest, grown plump and lazy in a good living. But this boy knows that the end of days is coming. He told me some of the signs. They are all as the Bible predicts them. He has not been taught what to say, it has been revealed to him. He says we must be in Jerusalem if we hope to be saved. I believe God has told Johann of the end of days. I will close up my house and go with the Children’s Crusade to Jerusalem, if I am allowed. I want to go more than anything in this world.’

Brother Peter rose to his feet, his head whirling. ‘I must send my report,’ he said.

‘Tell them,’ the priest urged him. ‘Tell them in Rome that a miracle is happening right here and now. A miracle in this little town, before us, worldly fools. God be praised that I am here to see it. God be praised that into this sinful house should come Johann the Good to lead me to Jerusalem.’

Brother Peter and Luca wrote the report together, while Freize found a stable lad willing to undertake the long ride to Avezzano.

‘You’ll take the old Roman road,’ Freize explained to the lad who had been summoned into the dining room to take the precious letter. ‘It’s clear enough, you can’t miss your way.’

‘When you get there, you must go to the Church of St Paul and ask for the parish priest,’ Brother Peter told him. ‘He will tell you his name is Father Josef. You can give him this letter. He will send it on.’

Luca watched Brother Peter double-fold the letter, and light a taper at the dining room fire. From his little writing box, Brother Peter took a stick of sealing wax and held it to the flame, dripping the scarlet wax in three separate pools on the fold. While the wax was still warm and soft he took a sealing ring from a cord around his neck and pressed it into the hardening wax. It left the image that Luca had seen, tattooed on the arm of the man who had recruited him into the secret order. It was a drawing of a dragon eating its tail.

‘You will wait,’ Brother Peter told the round-eyed lad who looked at these preparations as a man might watch an alchemist make gold. ‘You will wait that night, and the next day. You will stay in the church house and they will give you food and a bed. In the evening you will go to the church again, see Father Josef and he will give you a letter to bring to me. You will take it, keep it safely, bring it to me without reading it. Do you understand?’