Luca straightened up. ‘I’d like to speak with this Johann,’ he said.
The girl rose to her feet, wincing with the pain. ‘There he is,’ she said simply, and pointed to a circle of young boys who had come through the town gate all together and were leaning their sticks against the harbour wall and dropping their knapsacks down on the cobbles.
‘Get Brother Peter,’ Luca said shortly to Freize. ‘I’m going to need him to take notes of what this lad says. We should understand what is happening here. It may be a true calling.’
Freize nodded, and put a gentle hand on the little girl’s shoulder. ‘You stay here,’ he said. ‘I’ll wash your feet when I get back and find you some shoes. What’s your name?’
‘Rosa,’ she said. ‘But my feet are all right. God will heal them.’
‘I’ll help Him,’ Freize said firmly. ‘He likes a bit of help.’
She laughed, a childish giggle at his impertinence. ‘He is all powerful,’ she corrected him gravely.
‘Then He must get extra help all the time,’ Freize said with a warm smile to her.
Luca stood watching the child-pilgrims as Freize jogged up the narrow street from the quayside to the market square, where the church stood, raised above the square by a flight of broad steps. As Freize went upwards, two at a time, the door of the church above him opened, and Brother Peter came out.
‘Luca needs you,’ Freize said shortly. ‘He wants you to take notes as he speaks to the youth who leads the pilgrims. They call him, Johann the Good.’
‘An inquiry?’ Brother Peter asked eagerly.
‘For sure, something strange is going on.’
Brother Peter followed Freize back to the quayside to find it even more crowded. Every moment brought new arrivals through the main gate of the town and through the little gate from the north. Some of them were children of nine or ten, some of them were young men, apprentices who had run from their masters, or farm boys who had left the plough. A group of little girls trailed in last, holding hands in pairs as if they were on their way to school. Luca guessed that at every halt the smaller, weaker children caught up with the others; and sometimes some of them never caught up at all.
Brother Peter spoke to Luca. ‘The priest is a good man and has money to buy food for them, and the monastery is baking bread and the brothers will bring it down to the market to give to them.’
‘It seems to be a pilgrimage of children led by a young man,’ Luca said. ‘I thought we should question him.’
Brother Peter nodded. ‘He might have a calling,’ he said cautiously. ‘Or he might have been tempted by Satan himself to steal these children from their parents. Either way, the Lord of our Order would want to know. This is something we should understand. We should inquire into it.’
‘He says that the dead will rise,’ Luca told Peter.
The rising of the dead was a key sign of the end of days: when the graves would give up their dead and everyone would be judged.
Brother Peter looked startled. ‘He is preaching of the end of days?’
‘Exactly,’ Luca said grimly.
‘Which one is he?’
‘That one, called Johann,’ Luca said, and started to make his way through the weary crowd to the boy who stood alone, his head bowed in prayer. ‘The little girl called him Johann the Good.’
There were so many children coming through the gate and down to the quayside now, that Luca could only wait and watch as they passed. He thought there were seven hundred of them in all, most of them exhausted and hungry, but all of them looking hopeful, some of them even inspired, as though driven by a holy determination to press on. Luca saw Freize take the little girl called Rosa to the inn kitchen to bathe her feet, and thought that there must be many little girls like her on the march, barely able to keep up, with no-one looking after them, driven by an unchildlike conviction that they were called by God.
‘It could be a miracle,’ Brother Peter said uncertainly, struggling through the sea of young people to get to Luca’s side. ‘I have seen such a thing only once before. When God calls for a pilgrimage and His people answer, it is a miracle. But we have to know how many there are, where they are going, and what they hope to achieve. They may be healers, they may have the Sight, they may have the gift of tongues. Or they might be terribly misguided. Milord will want to know about their leader, and what he preaches.’
‘Johann the Good,’ Luca repeated. ‘From Switzerland, she said. That’s him there.’
As if he felt their gaze upon him, the young boy waiting at the gate as his followers went past raised his head and gave them a brilliant smile. He was about fifteen years old, with long blond hair that fell in untidy ringlets down to his shoulders. He had piercing blue eyes and was dressed like a Swiss goatherd, with a short robe over thick leggings laced criss-cross, and strong sandals on his feet. In his hand he had a stick, like a shepherd’s crook, carved with a series of crucifixes. As they watched, he kissed a cross, whispered a prayer, and then turned to them.
‘God bless and keep you, Masters,’ he said.
Brother Peter, who was more accustomed to dispensing blessings than receiving them, said stiffly, ‘And God bless you too. What brings you here?’
‘God brings me here,’ the youth answered. ‘And you?’
Luca choked on a little laugh at Brother Peter’s surprise at being questioned by a boy. ‘We too are engaged on the work of God,’ he said. ‘Brother Peter and I are inquiring into the well-being of Christendom. We are commissioned by the Holy Father himself to inquire and report to him.’
‘The end of days is upon us,’ the boy said simply. ‘Christendom is over, the end of the world has begun. I have seen the signs. Does the Holy Father know that?’
‘What signs have you seen?’ Luca asked.
‘Enough to be sure,’ the lad replied. ‘That’s why we are on our journey.’
‘What have you seen?’ Luca repeated. ‘Exactly what?’
Johann sighed, as if he were weary of miracles. ‘Many, many things. But now I must eat and rest and then pray with my family. These are all my brothers and sisters in the sight of God. We have come far, and we have further still to go.’
‘We would like to talk with you,’ Brother Peter said. ‘It is our mission to know what things you have seen. The Holy Father himself will want to know what you have seen. We have to judge if your visions are true.’
The boy nodded his head as if he were indifferent to their opinion. ‘Perhaps later. You must forgive me. But many people want to know what I have seen and what I know. And I have no interest in the judgments of this world. I will preach later. I will stand on the steps of the church and preach to the village people. You can come and listen if you want.’
‘Have you taken Holy Orders? Are you a servant of the church?’ Brother Peter asked.
The boy smiled and gestured to his poor clothes, his shepherd’s crook. ‘I am called by God, I have not been taught by His Church. I am a simple goatherd, I don’t claim to be more than that. He honoured me with His call as He honoured the fishermen and other poor men. He speaks to me Himself,’ the boy said simply. ‘I need no other teacher.’
He turned and made the sign of the cross over some children who came through the gate singing a psalm and gathered around him to sit on the stone cobbles of the quay as comfortably as if they were in their own fields.
‘Wouldn’t you like to come into the inn and break your fast with us?’ Luca tempted him. ‘Then you can eat, and rest, and tell us of your journey.’
The boy considered them both for a moment. ‘I will do that,’ he said. He turned and spoke a quick word with one of the children nearest to him and at once they settled down on the quayside and unpacked their knapsacks and started to eat what little they were carrying – a small bread roll and some cheese. The other children, who had nothing, sat dully where they were, as if they were too tired for hunger.
‘And your followers?’ Luca asked him.
‘God wi
ll provide for them,’ the youth said confidently.
Luca glanced towards Brother Peter. ‘Actually, the priest is bringing food for them, the abbey is baking bread,’ Brother Peter told him, rather stiffly. ‘I see you are not fasting with them.’
‘Because I knew that God would provide,’ Johann confirmed. ‘And now you tell me He has done so. You invite me to breakfast and so God provides for me. Why should I not trust him and praise His holy name?’
‘Why not indeed?’ Brother Peter said glacially, and led the way to the dining room of the inn.
Ishraq and Isolde did not join the men for breakfast. They peeped through the open door to see the boy Johann, and then carried their plates upstairs to their bedroom and ate, sitting at the window, watching the scene on the quayside as children continued to pour into the town, the smallest and the frailest coming last as if they could hardly keep up. Their ragged clothes showed that they were from many different areas. There were children from fishing villages further north up the coast who wore the rough smocks of the region, and there were children who had come from farms and wore the capes and leggings of shepherds and goatherds. There were many girls, some of them dressed as if they had been in service, in worsted gowns with goatskin aprons. Isolde nudged Ishraq as three girls in the robes of novices of a convent came through the gate of the town, their rosaries in their hands, their little veiled heads bowed, and passed under the overhanging window.
‘They must have run away from a nunnery,’ she said.
‘Like us,’ Ishraq agreed. ‘But where do they think they’re going?’
In the dining room the youth prayed in silence over the food, blessed the bread, and then ate a substantial breakfast that Freize brought up from the kitchen. After the boy had finished, he gave thanks in a lengthy prayer to God and a short word of appreciation to Luca. Brother Peter took out his papers from his travelling writing-box desk and dipped his pen in ink.
‘I have to report to my lord who in turn reports to the Holy Father,’ he explained as the boy looked at his preparations. ‘If your journey is blessed by God then the Holy Father will want to know the proofs. If he thinks you have a calling he will support you. If not, he will want to know about you.’
‘It is blessed,’ the boy said. ‘D’you think we could have come all this way if God had not guided us?’
‘Why, how far have you come?’ Luca asked cautiously.
‘I was a goat herder in the canton of Zurich when I heard God’s voice,’ the boy said simply. ‘He told me that a terrible thing had happened in the east. A worse thing than the great flood itself. A greater wrong than the flood that drowned everyone but Noah. He said that the Ottomans had come against Christendom in a mighty wave of men, and had taken Constantinople, our holy city, the heart of the Church in the east, and destroyed it. Did I hear right or no?’
‘You did,’ Luca said. ‘But any passing pedlar could have told you so. It happened in May this year.’
‘But it was not a passing pedlar who told me so, for I was up in the hills with my goats. Every dawn I left the village and took the goats up the paths to the higher fields where the grass grows fresh and sweet. Every day I sat in the fields with them, and watched over them. Sometimes I played my pipe, sometimes I lay on my back and watched the clouds. When the sun sat in the top branches of the silver birch tree I ate the bread and cheeses that my mother had tied into a cloth for me. Every evening as the sun started to go down, I brought my flock safe home again and saw them into my neighbours’ fields and stables. I saw no-one, I talked to no-one. I had no companion but an angel. Then one day, God spoke to me and He told me that the infidels had taken the holy church of Constantinople. He said that the sea had risen so high that they had rowed their galleys right over the land, over the harbour wall, and into the harbour. He said that the greatest church in the whole world was once called Hagia Sophia and that now it is in the hands of the infidels and they will make it into a mosque, take down the altar and defile its sacred aisles, and that this is a true sign of the end of days. Did I hear right or no?’
‘They took the cathedral,’ Luca confirmed uneasily. ‘They took the city.’
‘Did the priests pray at the altar as the infidels came in the door and cut them down?’ Johann asked.
Luca glanced to Brother Peter. ‘They served the Mass until the last moment,’ Brother Peter confirmed.
‘Did they row their galleys over the land?’
‘It can’t be true,’ Luca interrupted.
‘It wasn’t exactly true,’ Brother Peter explained. ‘It was a trick of war. They mounted the galleys on great rollers and pushed them across the land into the inner harbour. The devil himself guided them to put the rowers to the oars and the drummers to the beat so they looked as if they were rowing through the air. Everyone said it looked like a fleet of galleys sailing along the road.’
Luca shook his head in amazement. He had not heard the story before but the boy nodded, as if he had seen the terrifying sight and then the sacrilege himself. ‘God told me that the infidels would come and bring terror to every village in the world, and that just as they have come through Greece they will come on and on, and nothing can stop them. He said they would come into my own canton, they will come to every village in Switzerland. He said that they are led by a young man only a little older than me. Is that right?’
Luca looked at Brother Peter. ‘Sultan Mehmet is nineteen years old,’ he confirmed.
‘God told me that this is a war for young people and for children. The infidels are led by a young man; I heard my calling. I knew that I must leave my home.’
The two men waited.
‘I took my crook and my knapsack and I said farewell to my father and mother. The whole village came out to see me leave. They knew that I was inspired by God himself.’
‘Did anyone leave with you?’
He shook his head and stared at the window as if he could see on the dim pieces of the horn panes the poverty of the dirty village street, the dreary lives of the people who scratched a living from the thin mountain soil, who were hungry and cold every winter and knew, even in the warmth of summer, that the cold and hunger of winter would come again. People who confidently expected that nothing would ever change, that life would go on in the same cycle of hard winters and bright summers in a remorseless unchanging round – until the day that they heard that the Turks were coming and understood that everything had suddenly got worse and would get worse still.
‘Children joined me as I walked,’ Johann said. ‘They heard my voice, they understood. We all know that the end of days is coming. We all want to be in Jerusalem for judgement day.’
‘You think you’re going to Jerusalem?’ Freize demanded incredulously from the doorway. ‘You’re leading these children to Jerusalem?’
The boy smiled at him. ‘God is leading them to Jerusalem,’ he said patiently. ‘I am only walking with them. I am walking beside them.’
‘Then God has chosen an odd route,’ Freize said rudely. ‘Why would He send you to the east of Italy? Why not go to Rome and get help? Why not take a ship from there? Why walk these children such a long way?’
The boy looked a little shaken at Freize’s loud scepticism. ‘I don’t lead them, I don’t choose the route, I go where God tells me,’ he said quietly. He looked at Brother Peter. ‘The way is revealed to me, as I walk. Who is this man questioning me?’
‘This is Brother Luca’s servant,’ Brother Peter said irritably. ‘You need not answer his questions. He has no part in our inquiry.’
‘Oh, beg pardon for interrupting, I’m sure,’ Freize said, not sounding at all sorry. ‘But am I to give your leavings out at the door? Your followers seem to be hungry. And there are broken meats from your breakfast, and the untouched bread. You dined quite well.’
The boy passed his plate and the bread in the basket without giving it another glance. ‘God provides for us,’ he said. ‘Give it all to them with my blessing.’
‘
And see that the food is shared fairly when it comes from the monastery,’ Brother Peter ordered Freize, who nodded and went out. They could hear him stamping to the kitchen and the back door. Brother Peter turned his attention back to the boy. ‘And your name is?’
‘Johann Johannson.’
‘And your age?’
‘I think I am almost sixteen years old. I don’t know for sure.’
‘Had you seen any miracles or heard anything before this year?’
He smiled. ‘I used to hear a singing in the church bells of my village,’ he confided. ‘When they rang for Mass I used to hear them calling my name, as if God himself wanted me to come to His table. Then sometimes, when I was with the goats in the high pasture in summer, I would hear voices, beautiful voices, calling my name. It was an angel who used to meet me in the highest meadows. I knew that there would be a task for me. But I did not know it would be this.
‘God told me of the end of days when I was on my own in the high pasture and I puzzled as to what I should do with this knowledge. I spoke to my priest and he said perhaps it was a revelation; we would have to wait till we could know more. We could not believe that what I had heard in the pasture about the Church of the East could be true. Nobody could believe that a great city like Constantinople could fall. But then a pedlar did, at last, come to the market, and he stood in the village square and there were tears in his eyes as he told us all that the Rome of the East had fallen – that the city had held out as long as it could, a light in the darkness, as the darkness grew darker; but that the Ottoman Turks were too much for it. I knew then, that my vision was true, that the voice I had heard was the voice of God, that the end of days was upon us, and that I must go to Jerusalem.’
‘You knew of the fall of Constantinople before the pedlar came and told everyone?’ Brother Peter made a note. ‘You had reported your vision to your priest?’
‘I did,’ the boy said with certainty.