Stormbringers Read online

  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