‘Freize,’ she said. ‘I am determined to go to the Holy Land.’

‘You’ll get corns on your feet,’ he warned her. ‘And you’ll never be able to wear a pretty shoe again.’

It was inarguable, and he knew it. Despite her serious intentions she was silenced.

‘You’ll smell,’ he said, clinching the argument with a mighty blow. ‘And you’ll get spots.’

‘Freize,’ she said. ‘This is not a whim, it is a vision. I am sure that my father would want me to go. Ishraq is determined to go. We are going. Nothing will stop us.’

‘What about a nice boat to Bari?’ Freize suggested.

‘What?’

‘Go by boat,’ Freize repeated. ‘We can ship the horses and the baggage and the ladies by boat, we three men can walk with the children and help as we are required to do. The ladies can get there without walking, get there before us, find themselves an inn and wait in comfort till we arrive.’

He looked at Isolde’s mutinous face. ‘My lady, dearest lady, you will have to travel in heat and dirt when you get to the Holy Land. Don’t think you are taking the easy way. Discomfort will come. If you want to trudge along in burning heat and miserable dirt, attacked half the time by madmen in turbans, scratching yourself raw with flea-bites, sleeping in sand with cobras under your pillow, your ambition will be satisfied. But do it when you get to the Holy Land. There’s no particular merit in walking on rough ground in Italy.’

‘Actually,’ Brother Peter intervened. ‘If the ladies were to be at Bari first then they could make sure that the ships were waiting for us. We’ll be – what? – three days on the road? Perhaps four?’ He turned to the two of them. ‘If you were willing to go ahead, I could give you the papal letters of authorisation, and you could get the food ready for the children, and make sure there were enough ships. It would be very helpful.’

‘You would be helping the pilgrimage, not escaping the walk,’ Luca said to Isolde. ‘This is important.’

‘I don’t know . . .’ She hesitated.

‘Perhaps they can’t do it alone,’ Freize said. ‘I could go too. Perhaps I had better accompany them.’

Luca gave him a long narrow gaze from his hazel eyes. ‘You go by boat as well?’

‘Just to help,’ Freize said. ‘And guard them.’

‘And so you go by comfort in the ship and escape a long and uncomfortable walk,’ Luca accused.

‘Why not?’ Freize asked him. ‘If my faithless heart is not in it? If I would only blunt your resolve with my sinful doubts? Better keep me out of it. Better by far that only those who have the vision should take the walk.’

‘Oh very well,’ Luca ruled. ‘Isolde, you and Ishraq and Freize will go by boat to Bari, take all the horses, and we will join you there within three days. Freize, you will keep the girls safe, and you will find ships that will take the children to Rhodes, agree a price, and take the papal letter of credit to the priest and to the moneylenders.’