“No, little one, there is no fear of that. This is England, and the English King rules all the people. We have neither Guelf nor Ghibelline. A red rose here—is just a rose,” he added as he saw Giovanni’s questioning look at the crimson rose in his cap. Red roses were the flower of the Guelf party in North-Italian cities, as the white rose was the badge of the Ghibellines who favored the Imperial party; and the cities were divided between the two and fiercely partisan.
“The Lombards in London,” Ranulph went on, “are often money-lenders, and this the people hate. That is why thy black hair and eyes and thy Lombard tongue made them suspect thee, little comrade.”
Giovanni gave a long sigh of relief and fell silent, and when he was lifted off the horse at the door of Dame Lavender he had to be shaken awake to eat his supper. Then he was put to bed in a corner of the attic under the thatched roof, and the fragrance of well-known herbs and flowers came stealing into his dreams on the silent wind of the night.
Language is not needed when a boy finds himself in the home of a born mother. All the same, Giovanni felt still more as if he must have waked up in heaven when he found sitting by the hearth a kind, grave old man who was himself an Italian, and to whom the tragedy of the downfall of Milan was known. Tomaso the physician told Dame Lavender all about it while Giovanni was helping Mary sort herbs in the still-room. Mary had learned a little of the physician’s language and knew what he liked, and partly by signs, partly in hobbling Italian, they arrived at a plan for making a vegetable soup and cooking a chicken for dinner in a way that Giovanni knew. As the fragrance of the simmering broth came in at the door Tomaso sniffed it, smiled and went to see what the little waif was about. Standing in the doorway he watched Giovanni slicing garlic and nodded to himself. Men had died of a swift dagger-thrust in a bye-street of Lombardy because they cut an onion or ate an orange in the enemy’s fashion. By such small signs were Guelf and Ghibelline known.
“My boy,” said the old physician, when dinner was over and Giovanni, pleased beyond measure at the compliments paid his cooking, was awaiting further orders, “do you know that Milan is going to be rebuilt?”
The Milanese boy’s pinched white face lighted with incredulous rapture. “Rebuilt?” he stammered.
“Some day,” said Tomaso. “The people of four Lombard cities met in secret and made that vow not three years after the Emperor gained his victory. They have built a city at the joining of two rivers, and called it Alexandria after the Pope whom he drove out of Rome. He still has his own governors in the cities that he conquered, but the League is gaining every month. Milan will be once more the Queen of the Midland—perhaps before very long. But it is a secret.”
“They may kill me,” Giovanni stammered, “but I will not tell. I will never tell.”
Tomaso smiled. “I knew that, my son,” he said. “That is why I spoke of this to you. You may talk freely to me or to Ranulph the troubadour, but to no one else unless we give you leave. You must be patient, wise and industrious, and fit yourself to be a true citizen of the Commune. For the present, you must be a good subject of the English King, and learn the language.”
Giovanni hid the precious secret in his heart during the months that followed, and learned both English and French with a rapidity that astonished Dame Lavender. He had a wisdom in herbs and flowers, too, that was almost uncanny. In the kitchen-gardens of the great houses where he had been a scullion, there were many plants used for perfumes, flavorings or coloring fluids, which were quite unknown to the English cook. He was useful to Dame Lavender both in the garden and the still-room. He knew how to make various delicious cakes as well, and how to combine spices and honey and syrups most cunningly, for he had seen pastry-cooks and confectioners preparing state banquets, and he never forgot anything he had seen.