They spoke little, and her silence, which usually soothed him, began to tug at him the longer it continued. She would not speak about her time with Lorenzo, and only occasionally would their conversation venture farther than incidental information about the valley or its residents.
Worse than her silence were the weeping dreams she had every night when she finally fell asleep. He sat, silently crouched outside her bedroom door for hours, as she cried and murmured in her sleep and the memories tormented her. Her heart raced, and he could scent her panic throughout the house. As much as he tried to respect her privacy, eventually Giovanni tried to enter her room and wake her, only to find the door locked tight.
By the seventh night, he could no longer take the escalating nightmares.
“Dad…no,” she sobbed. “Gio, don’t…don’t let them-” She broke off and he could hear her cries come through the thick wooden door.
He rose from his knees and pushed his way inside, breaking the lock in one swift shove before he walked to her bed and knelt beside her, anxiously stroking her hair.
“Beatrice,” he said through gritted teeth, “please, wake up. Please-”
Her eyes flickered open and he cupped her face in his hands, brushing the tears away with his thumbs as she stared at him with swollen eyes.
“Tell me what to do,” he whispered desperately. “I cannot…what would you have me do? I will do anything-”
“Don’t let them take me,” she said in a hollow voice.
Giovanni gave a hoarse groan and pulled her into his arms, clutching her to his chest as he rocked her in his arms. She tensed for a moment, but finally heaved a great sigh and let her head rest on his shoulder. He sat on the bed, stroking her hair and rocking her back and forth.
He cradled her as the waning moon streamed through her window. Finally, he reached over to the bedside table and lit a candle. He was wearing only a pair of loose pants, and he felt her tears hot on his chest.
“Do you want to forget?” he asked. “I can make you forget. Maybe everything. Is it better that way?” He ignored the ache in his chest, and waited for her to respond.
“Will you remember?”
He tilted her face toward his, memorizing the silver tracks on her cheeks and her swollen eyes. He locked away the sound of her nightmares in his mind, and took a deep breath, inhaling the scent of her panic as it stained the air.
“Yes. I will remember everything.”
She nodded, and he finally saw a familiar hint of steel return to her eyes.
“If you can remember, I can remember.”
He bent his head and kissed her softly on the forehead, then on each cheek, and finally laid a soft kiss on her mouth, as if sealing a promise. She made no move to leave his embrace, so he tucked her head under his chin and leaned against the headboard.
“Giovanni?”
“Yes?”
“Tell me your story.”
He closed his eyes and hugged her, letting out a sigh before he began in a low voice.
“My name is Jacopo, and I was seven when my Uncle Giovanni found me…”
Chapter Twenty-four
Cochamó Valley, Chile
August 2004
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 remember her as beautiful, but that could be a child’s perspective. I remember the way my uncle smiled at her. She was very kind to me; she liked to play games. I don’t think she could have any children of her own. She never did in all the time they wrote to each other.”