She listened for hours, wrapped in his warm arms as he told her the tale of a small boy, plucked out of poverty by the friends of a beloved uncle. He had been an indulged child after his early years, fed a steady diet of art, philosophy, religion, and learning in a time of flowering human achievement.
Count Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, after adopting his older brother’s illegitimate son, treated Jacopo more like a cherished younger brother than a bastard. His three friends; Angelo Poliziano, the scholar, Girolamo Benivieni, the poet, and Girolamo Savaranola, the monk; followed suit.
The four surrounded the boy with knowledge and love, each contributing a part to the young man he became, and each unaware of the hovering danger that lurked in the beautiful form of Signore Niccolo Andros, a water vampire of unspeakably ancient power.
“When did you first meet him? Your sire?” she asked as he carried her to his bedroom to escape the first stirrings of dawn. He settled her on top of his large bed, then walked back to her bedroom for blankets, since he slept with none.
“Andros?” he called. “My uncle first met him in Lorenzo’s court in 1484. It was the same visit to Florence when he first met me.”
Giovanni walked back in the bedroom, which was finished in plaster and wood on three walls. The far wall, at the head of the Giovanni’s bed, was hewn granite and the candlelight in the room caused the black flecks in the stone to dance.
“I first met Andros when my uncle visited his villa in Perugia. He had collected an extraordinary library and gave my uncle many rare books and manuscripts to study, though I later learned he had always intended to take them back. Andros’s books are the real treasure, tesoro. My uncle’s books are valuable to me, but Andros’s library was legendary.”
He arranged the blankets over her before crawling in the bed, and settling a warm arm around her waist. “It had no equal I have ever seen. Greek, Roman, Egyptian, Hebrew, Persian. Even some Sumerian clay tablets. He’d amassed it over twenty-five hundred years, and inherited other manuscripts from his own sire, who I never met. It was an astonishing collection.”
Since he’d woken her from the nightmare that had plagued her for weeks, Giovanni couldn’t seem to stop touching her. As tumultuous as her feelings toward him were, she found his presence comforting, and his touch seemed to warm the persistent chill that had tormented her since the night she’d fallen into Lorenzo’s hands.
“And Lorenzo still has it?”
He shrugged. “He must. It was all housed together after my uncle died. So if he has my uncle’s books-”
“At least you got those back, right?”
She felt his arm tighten around her waist.
“I did.”
There was a long silence as the memory of that night nudged at her. Finally, she heard him whisper, “I haven’t even looked at them.”
Her breath caught. “None?”
“Caspar had them shipped here for safekeeping, but…”
She nodded and put her hand over his arm, weaving her fingers with his.
“We should look at them.”
“Not tonight.”
“No, tell me more about when you met your uncle.”
He paused before he continued. “It was all in 1484. It was a very eventful year.”
“What else happened?”
She felt him sigh and she curled into his chest. “He met Lorenzo de Medici that trip, and then me, and then Andros, of course. Andros had been lingering in the Medici court.”
“Why?”
“Why was my sire in Florence? He told me later he was ready to create a child-he never had before-and he wanted to pick from the brightest of the city.” Giovanni propped his head up on his hand and looked at her. “He was looking for a ‘Renaissance man,’ I suppose. Initially, he set his sights on my uncle, but then my uncle disappointed him.”
“How did he disappoint him? Not smart enough?”
“Oh no, my uncle was brilliant,” he said wistfully. “No, Giovanni fell in love.”
She swallowed the lump in her throat and remembered the slim book of sonnets he’d held in his hand the night she was taken. “With Giuliana?”
He nodded, and lay his head on the pillow next to hers, lifting a hand to play with a strand of her hair. “He met her in Arezzo, visiting an acquaintance. She was married…not her choice, of course, but it never was then. Her husband was cruel and dull. Even Lorenzo hated him, though he was a Medici cousin. But Giuliana and Giovanni… they were so beautiful.”
“She was beautiful?”
He paused, and she rolled onto her back so she could see his expression. His eyes were narrowed in concentration while he thought. “It’s difficult to say. My human memories are not always clear. I
“What happened?”
“She was married, and my uncle was thrown in prison when their affair was discovered. Though Lorenzo de Medici found my uncle entertaining, so he intervened.”
“But they stayed in contact?”
He nodded and let his hand stroke along her arm. Everywhere he touched gave her goose bumps, but not from the chill. His energy, which he normally kept on a tight lease, seemed to hum along his skin as he reminisced. She could see him taking longer and longer blinks, and could only assume the sun was rising in the sky.
“They wrote beautiful letters to each other,” he said quietly. “He locked them away; I never discovered where he put them.”
“But why did that matter to Andros? They couldn’t marry anyway, why-”
“My uncle fell into a depression toward the end of his life. After his imprisonment in Paris, he lost his spirit. He stopped writing Giuliana. He no longer had the same joy he’d always carried before. He destroyed his poetry. He burned many of his more progressive philosophical works and corresponded more with Savaranola, who had become so radical by then it taxed even Poliziano and Benevieni’s friendship.”
“When were the bonfires?”
“The ‘bonfire of the vanities?’” he murmured, and she was reminded of the book she had been reading so many months ago when they had first met. His amusement at hearing the title finally made sense and she smirked.
“Yeah, those bonfires.”
“It was after I had been taken, but before I was turned. My uncle left me everything; though he wasn’t exorbitantly wealthy, his library was substantial and Andros wanted it, so he took it. When Lorenzo told me years later that everything had burned in the fires, it wasn’t a stretch to imagine. Many of his books would have been considered heretical, and so many things were lost.”
“What did your uncle write about?”
Giovanni smiled wistfully and placed a small kiss on her forehead. “He thought that all human religion and philosophy could be reconciled. That the quest for knowledge was the highest good; and that somewhere, between all the wars and debate, there was some universal truth he could discover which would bring humanity together.”
Beatrice paused and watched his green eyes swirl with memories. “He sounds like a wonderful man.”
“He was…an idealist.”
She reached up to place a small kiss on his cheek, which had grown a dusting of stubble since she had kissed him so many weeks ago at the Night Hawk.
“The world needs idealists.”
