‘No questions?’ Ishraq asked him with a little smile. ‘Inquirer, I thought you always had questions. I thought you were a young man who could not help but question?’

‘I have many,’ Luca gave a little laugh. ‘Dozens. But from all I have seen, for the moment, I believe Johann. I take him on trust.’

‘I too,’ Brother Peter said. ‘The answer should come from Rome, the day after tomorrow. I think they will command us to go with the Children’s Crusade, and help them on their way.’

Ishraq’s eyes were shining. ‘He said that I should go home,’ she said. ‘I have never thought of the Holy Land as my home. I was taught to call Lucretili my home; but now, suddenly, everything looks different.’

‘You won’t be different?’ Isolde asked her, speaking almost shyly. ‘You won’t change with me? Even if you find your family in Acre?’

‘Never,’ Ishraq said simply. ‘But to be in my mother’s country and to hear her language! To feel the heat of the sun that she told me about! To look around and see people with skin the colour of mine wearing clothes like mine, to know that somewhere there is my family, my mother’s family. Perhaps even my father is there.’

‘He spoke to you as if you were a Christian and would see the Last Day like the rest of us,’ Brother Peter observed.

‘My mother would have said that we were all People of the Book,’ she replied. ‘We all worship the same god: Jews, Christians and Muslims. We all have the one god and we only have different prophets.’

‘Your mother would be very wrong,’ Brother Peter told her gently. ‘And what you say is heresy.’

She smiled at him. ‘My mother was a woman from Acre in a country where Jesus is honoured as a prophet but where they are certain he is not a god. She was with me in Granada, in a country of Christian, Jew and Muslim. I saw with my own eyes the synagogue next to the church next to the mosque, and the people working and reading and praying alongside each other. They called it the Convivencia – living alongside each other in harmony, whatever their beliefs. For the enemy is not another person who believes in a god, the enemy is ignorance and people who believe in nothing and care for nothing. You should know that by now, Brother Peter.’

Three days after they had sent the message to Rome, Freize, waiting outside the little church, saw his horse, Rufino, coming down the hill and through the main town gates. He called his name, and the horse put his head up and his ears forward at Freize’s voice, whinnying with pleasure, and went towards him.

Freize took the reins and led the horse down the steep steps to the quayside inn. In the stable yard he helped the weary lad from the saddle, took the sealed letter from him and tucked it inside his jerkin. ‘You’ve done well,’ he said to the lad. ‘And you’ve missed nothing here. There’s been a lot of praying and promising and some planning, but the Children’s Crusade is still in town and if your Ma will let you – and I would have thought she would forbid you – you can still march out with them. So go and get your dinner now, you’ve been a good boy.’ He dismissed the lad and turned to the horse.