Tuscany -- where the summers are dry and hot and taste of herbs and olives and the heavy sweetness of dark wine; where the most famous artists of Europe have left their traces in old palaces and in churches striped like zebras. In the midst of the Val d'Arno, amidst rich green fields and hills clothed with the silver olive and vine, lies Florence, the City of Lilies, where once the powerful Medicis ruled. Lavish palaces stud the city and the surrounding countryside, almost as if the soil itself had produced them, and above the sea of red roofs, the dome of Santa Maria del Fiore rides like a giant bubble. The sunlight gleams on its golden cross, bathes the giant Neptune, who dominates one corner the Piazza della Signoria, in radiance. Green sparkles dance over the bronze nymphs at his feet, yet untempted and unperturbed Neptune gazes into the distance. Nothing can disturb his majestic equanimity. Least of all the fates of mere mortals.

Thus he watched on with stoic calm as, by chance, two young boys met on the piazza on a golden day in early summer. Both had come to admire the splendid sculptures lining the square –- Michelangelo's David, Bandinelli's Hercules, Cellini's Perseus and many more --, but now they stood stupefied while around them the teaming life of the city went on.

Two young boys with wavy dark hair and blue-grey eyes, their nostrils flared like those of nervous stallions. Two young boys on the verge of manhood, all lanky limbs and filled with a sharp hunger for life.

Two young boys who had never met before and yet ...

... and yet ...

... they were as alike as two round olives ready to fall to earth.

Eventually they went to find a tavern where they shared a carafe of wine and a loaf of garlic bread. Warily, curiously, they eyed each other over the rims of their glasses. "Finnian Crawley." It was the first time one of them had spoken.

The other blanched. His glass slipped from his fingers, fell clinking on the table, and the dark Chianti spread on the wood like spilled blood. He swallowed hard. And after a little eternity: "Gareth Crawley, Viscount St. Asaph."

On a golden day in early summer two young boys met by chance in the crowded streets of Florence --

-- and changed the lives of a man and a woman forevermore.

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