When the wave had hit the town some people had got to the higher ground in time – the church was safe, the water had rushed through it at knee height, and anything west and north of the market square was untouched by the flood. Many people had clung to something and had the wave wash over them, half-drown them but rush on, leaving them choking and terrified but safe. Some had been torn away by the force of the water, turning over and over in the flood that took them as if they were twigs in a river in spate, and their families put wet candles in the drenched candle stands for them. Nobody could light candles. The candle which had burned on the altar to show the presence of God had blown out in the blast of air that came before the wave. The church felt desolate and cold without it, godforsaken.

Luca, desperate for something to do to help restore the village to normal life, went to the priest’s house and took a flint and, finding some dry stuff in a high cupboard, lit a fire in the kitchen grate so that people could come and take a candle flame or taper and spread the warmth throughout the shaken village. He took a burning taper into the church and went behind the rood screen to the altar to light the candle.

‘Send Freize back to me,’ he whispered as the little flame flickered into life. ‘Spare all Your children. Show mercy to us all. Forgive us for our sins and let the waters go back to the deep. But save Freize. Send my beloved Freize back to me.’

Brother Peter seated himself in the church before the damp church register and started a list of missing persons, to post on the church door. Every now and then a bedraggled child would come to the door and his mother would fall on him and snatch him up and bless him and scold him in the same breath. But the list of missing people grew in Brother Peter’s careful script, and no-one even knew the names of the children on their crusade. No-one knew how many of them had walked dry-shod in the harbour, no-one knew how many had turned back, nor how many of them were missing, nor even where their homes had been.

Ishraq borrowed a cape from the priest’s housekeeper and then the five of them – Isolde and Ishraq, Luca, Brother Peter and the innkeeper – went back to the inn, looking out to sea as if Freize might be swimming home. ‘I can’t believe it,’ Luca said. ‘I can’t believe he didn’t come with us.’

‘He went out in the harbour to try to get the children to come back to land,’ Ishraq said. ‘It was the bravest thing I’ll ever see in my life. He pushed us towards the inn and then he went out towards the sea.’