‘Now,’ he said quietly. ‘I am going to confess and pray. God bless you.’

Without another word, he turned into the doorway of the church and Brother Peter and Luca stepped back for him, and the priest Father Benito went inside to kneel with this most surprising prophet. The priest unlocked the rood screen and took him inside, up to the very steps of the altar, where only those ordained by God might go, and they knelt down side by side, the village priest and the boy that he thought was a saint.

The girls found their way to Luca in the private dining room talking with Brother Peter. ‘We’ve decided, for sure,’ Isolde told him. ‘Ishraq is as convinced as I am. The prophet Johann has spoken to her too. We’re not going to Croatia. We’re not going to Hungary.’

Luca was not even surprised. ‘You’re going to Jerusalem? You’re certain? Both of you? You want to go with Johann?’ He looked at Ishraq. ‘You, of all people, want to join a Christian crusade?’

‘I have to,’ she said almost unwillingly. ‘I am convinced. At first I thought it was some kind of trick. I thought he might talk to people, to work out what to say to convince them, take a bit of gossip and twist it into a prediction so that it sounds like a foretelling. I’ve seen fortune-tellers and palmists and all sorts of saltimbancos work a crowd like that. It’s easy enough to do: you make a guess and when you strike lucky and someone cries, then you know that you’re on to something and you say more. But this is something different. I believe he has a vision. I believe he knows. He has said things to Isolde, and today he said things to me that no-one in this town knows. He spoke of me in a way that I don’t even acknowledge to myself. It’s not possible that it could be a lucky guess. I think he must have a vision. I think he sees true.’ She looked down, not meeting his questioning eyes, and cleared her throat.

‘He spoke of my mother,’ she said quietly. ‘She died without telling me the name of my father. She died speaking of Acre, her home, my birthplace. He knew that too.’

‘We believe he has a true vision,’ Luca confirmed. ‘Brother Peter and I have reported it to Rome. We’re waiting for the reply. And I have asked if we may go with him.’

‘You have?’ Isolde breathed.

‘He spoke to me too,’ Luca reminded her. ‘He spoke of my father, of his kidnap by the Ottoman slavers. Nobody knows about that but the people I have told: Freize and yourself, but no one else. Freize spoke of it once to Brother Peter, but no-one in this village knows anything about us but that we are travelling together on a pilgrimage, and that I am authorised by the Holy Father. He can have learned nothing else from kitchen-door gossip. So he must have some way of knowing about us that is not of this world. I have to assume that it is as he says – that he is guided by God.’