There was adventure on the trip to Florence. I was eighteen when I traveled there with Mr. Lupin in the train of a merchant whom my father trusted. Our company was threatened twice by bandits, but its master was wise and experienced and we completed the journey without disaster. I thought that trip was great adventure, until I got to Florence and started roaming its streets. Now that turned out to be adventure!
Ah, Florence! So many people. So many kinds of people! Rich and poor, smart and stupid, lordly and humble—from Florence, of course, but also many from the rest of Tuscany, who did not consider themselves Florentines, and from faraway places, like Sicily and Tunisia, Sardinia and Corsica, Lombardy, France … so many places!
I had started noticing that girls were pretty a couple of years before I left home. But … what I saw in Florence just took my breath away! Here I could see hundreds of women who were working hard … very hard! … to look good to men like me! I was impressed! Oh … and the men were good looking, too, I should add. I learned as much about male fashion as female fashion while I was in Florence. But the men were more clever than good looking, although I was surprised to meet some who really did care as much about how they looked as the women did. There were just so many kinds of people in Florence! For weeks, I enjoyed every day that we walked out on the streets, just because of all the people we saw.
Mr. Lupin was in charge of my studies. The core of that program was enrolling me at the prestigious University of Florence. But there was time between studies for other things, for meeting people, and seeing things. I met many interesting people, and saw many things that were like nothing I’d ever seen before.
Mr. Lupin also arranged for us to travel to Paris and London during my second summer. There we met more people, and toured some of the new factories Mr. Lupin had talked so much about. There I could see in flesh and blood—flesh and iron, actually—what Mr. Lupin meant by the power of industry. I toured a mine and a fine porcelain factory, both using the new industrial techniques. I saw iron railways over which wagons were drawn with greater speed and ease than they could be over roads. The sights were all most impressive, massive marshalings of men and machines to produce prodigious quantities of high quality goods.
But I saw much poverty in these areas, too. Around all these fine factories I saw filth, sickness, and black soot covering buildings and people. In the coffee houses where we rested between the tours, I talked with some people who were very discontented with what Mr. Lupin was calling progress. It was unsettling to see so much good and so much bad so closely mixed together. I gave this a great deal of thought when I returned to Florence and continued my studies.
My third year in Florence, I met a girl who stole my heart.
Ah, Florina! If she had been a peasant girl in my valley, we would have learned of love together in the loft of some hay-filled barn. She was soft; she was tender; she loved listening to me, and I loved listening to her. Her brown eyes were so deep that I lost myself in them. Her touch was so sweet that I longed for it always.
But she was no peasant girl. Her family was connected to the Strozzi clan, and her father was a doctor who served them.
We met first at an opera. When I first saw her, she was dressed quite plainly compared to her flamboyant companions. In truth, I found her plainness most attractive: I could see her! Her friends were so surrounded with pins, swirls, sashes, and heavy makeup that I couldn’t see them. Likewise, her friends’ talk was so thick with in-jokes and in-stories that it seemed vacuous to me; I couldn’t see what they were talking about. But Florina was a plain talker, and she talked of things I found interesting. That night she talked of her travels.
A few days after the opera, we met again, and then again. By our third meeting, when her hand touched mine she paused and took a slight breath, and when I pointed things out to her, she always leaned close to me and looked carefully. I enjoyed talking to her, and listening when she talked of her adventures.
Her chaperone, an aged aunt, seemed to like me, and her friends tolerated me. Florina and I met again and again. As my father had so worried about, she made me think seriously of not returning. As our passion for each other grew, she talked a little of coming to my quiet, remote Kalzov Valley, but mostly of what we could do together in Florence. Even with my then very limited insight into other peoples’ thoughts, I could see it was her love of me that was making her talk about my valley, not any strong desire to leave Florence and her family. If I wanted her to be my bride, I would have to take up residence in Florence.
Fate was kind to me, though I didn’t think so at the time. Her parents could see what was happening, and they betrothed her to another Strozzi before we could decide to do something rash. At this time in Florence, as in much of Europe, a popular story theme in books and plays was two young lovers from quarreling families who did something rash, and I’m sure her parents didn’t want to see that popular story line become part of their real life! I was heartbroken when I heard the news, and I spent many days trying to figure out what action I should take. In my heart, this clearly called for some action! Good fortune in disguise came to me a second time when, as I was planning revenge, I got word that I must return to my valley and my father. He was ill. I set out immediately.
By the time I got there, the worst had passed, and my father was recovering slowly. I was very relieved. But my father’s illness was mysterious, which made him, and me, suspect Kalnichov involvement. He was recovering but too weak to research any connection with them, and I was too inexperienced. The illness scared him and he had summoned me to share his final secrets. One was that the oldest and most secretive leaders of the Kalnichov family were Vampires!
The secrets of his own sources of power were strong and deep indeed. Within weeks, I was looking at my hands and saying, “Yes! Now I have the power!”
The most potent of those secrets was his alliance with Az’sroc.
“The Pope’s Blessing is not the family’s only source of power,” he confided one day as he took me to his private library. “What I will show you next will be a transition, a rite of passage. I will be giving a large part of my power to you, my son.”
That was spooky to hear. My father had always been the family magician.
At midnight the rite of introduction began. Soon I stood facing it, wearing a certain amulet, and this … whatever it was … spoke to me. As it proceeded, I became as scared as I have ever been! Az’sroc, this creature that my father had been allied with for years, which he called a demon, was so powerful and yet so alien! It was impossible to know its motives. Az’sroc said as much.
Did it seek to help mankind but disdained to say so?
Did it seek to destroy mankind and we Rostovs were unwitting pawns?
Az’sroc was so alien there was no way of knowing. It spoke to us in our language, even using the accents of the Kalzov Valley. Its words were explicit but hard to comprehend.
“I suspect, and deeply hope, that it is only dimly aware of mankind, and does not care if we live or die,” said my father after the introduction was finished and Az’sroc had gone back to its domain.
“… I hope,” he added. Shuddering, he continued, “I have tapped power from Az’sroc for most of my life, and the demon has not moved to stop me, or take revenge, or—despite its words—to demand payment for services rendered. Now he knows about you, too, and you will soon tap his power more than I do. I am old now; soon it will become your time.
“Soon, but not yet. In the meantime, you should finish your studies with Mr. Lupin in Florence. I have more wisdom now, and I am seeing that this fusion of knowledge in you, this mixing of science and magic, is going to bring about surprises … good surprises.”
In another year I completed my studies at Florence.
That last year, I began a new field of study. I studied the Kalnichovs. I could see they would loom large in my life. With my new worries about my father and the Kalnichovs pressing on me, any idea of revenge for my separation from Florina was pushed aside.
But the event that loomed largest in that last year was the destiny of Mr. Lupin. It was not the son but the tutor who succumbed to the temptations of city life. He turned his talk of revolution into action. Oh, and he found a woman, too. By the time we said good-bye and I returned to Kalzov Valley he was betrothed and working on a project to connect Florence and its port city, Livorno, with a railway.
When I returned home, I found my father even more recovered, and my mother, bless her, was pregnant!
“While you were gone, your mother and I have both continued working very hard for this result,” my father told me with a gleam in his eye. I am sure I blushed at that. “Perhaps you will have a companion to share your heritage?” he continued in a hopeful tone.