‘What?’ Luca asked baffled at the sudden rise of hostility in her voice, at the meaning of her accusation.

She raised a pointing finger. The crowd was silent, watching as she slowly turned around until she was facing Ishraq and Isolde, the little girl Ree between them. At once there was a ripple of approval.

‘Name them!’ someone said.

‘Go on!’

‘Name the storm-bringers!’

‘The upper room,’ she said. ‘The safe room. Safe for them, up there, calling up a storm; calling up a terrible wave and then sailing up to perch on the roof like seagulls while the flood drowned us mere mortals beneath them.’

‘They didn’t fly up to the roof!?’

‘Didn’t they wait out the storm safe and high above the town?’

‘I can vouch for these two ladies,’ Luca interrupted. ‘I was on the roof myself.’

‘You said yourself that the Arabs knew how the waves were caused . . .’

‘I said they had the books, they are books from the ancients . . .’

‘She’s an Arab! Isn’t she? Does she know Arab learning? Does she know how to call up a wave?’

Ishraq stepped forward to defend herself, her dark eyes blazing, as Luca put up his hand to command silence. ‘This young woman is well-known to me,’ he said. ‘She is in the household of the Lord of Lucretili, a Crusader Lord, a Christian Lord. There is no question that she could have done anything wrong. I can promise you . . .’

There was a sudden swirl of seagulls, disturbed from feeding on the flooded rubbish of the town, and they spiraled upwards into the sky, screaming their wild calls, right above the heads of the crowd.

‘The souls of the drowned!’ someone exclaimed.

Several women crossed themselves.

‘Calling for justice!’

‘I can promise . . .’ Luca went on.

‘You can’t,’ one of the wise women cut disdainfully through his speech. ‘For you don’t know the half of it. You were talking to Johann the Pilgrim, blind as a fool, when the two young women were outside the walls of the town calling up a storm in the green lake.’

There was a murmur of real consternation. A woman drew back from Ishraq and spat on the ground before her. Half the women of the crowd crossed their fingers, putting their thumb between the second and third finger to make the old sign against witchcraft, making their hands into fists.

‘The green lake?’ someone demanded. ‘What were they doing there?’

‘What is this?’ Brother Peter asked stepping forward.

The old woman did not retreat, but her friend joined her and they both stood beside Mrs Ricci, their faces contorted with hate. ‘We saw them,’ she said so loudly that the newcomers at the very back of the crowd could hear every word of her damning accusation. ‘We saw the two young women, dressed so dainty and looking so innocent. Slipping out of town as night fell and coming back all wet in darkness. They went to the green lake and summoned a storm at twilight. And the next day the wave came. The young women called the wave up that night, and next day the bad children led our children into its path.’