The boy hesitated, but at last loneliness conquered timidity and distrust, and he came. The troubadour swung him up to the front of the saddle and they rode on through the gathering dusk. Forgetting his terror as he heard the familiar sound of his native tongue, the boy told his story readily enough. His name was Giovanni Bergamotto, but he had been born in Milan, in the year that Barbarossa crossed the Alps. The first thing that he could really remember was his mother crying over her father and two brothers, who had been killed in the siege. He remembered many days when there was nothing to eat in the house. When Milan was taken he was old enough to walk at his mother's side as the people were driven out and the city destroyed so that no one should ever live there again. His father had been killed when the Emperor hung a siege-tower all over with hostages and captives to be shot at by their own people within the walls. He remembered his grandfather lifting him up to see when the Carocchio was brought out, and the great crucifix above the globe was lowered to do homage to the Emperor. He remembered seeing the Imperial banner unfurled from the top of the Cathedral. These things, his grandfather told him, no Milanese should ever forget. He and his mother had wandered about from one city to another until his mother died, two or three years later. He had worked for a pastry cook who beat him and starved him. At last he had run away and stolen his passage on a ship bound for England. They had beaten him when they found him, but kept him to help the cook. When he landed at a southern port on the English coast, he had found himself in a land of cold mist, where no sun shone, no fruit grew, and no one knew his language. He had turned at first naturally to the towns, for he was a city boy and craved the companionship of the crowd. But when he said that he was a Lombard they seemed to be angry. Perhaps there was some dreadful mistake, and he was in a land where the Ghibellines, the friends of the Emperor, were the rulers. When at last he faltered out this question his new friend gave a compassionate little laugh and patted his shoulder reassuringly. "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."