Kane and Abel/Sons of Fortune Read online

  Florentyna obeyed, and as her brothers arrived from the loft where they all slept, they kissed their mother’s hands in greeting and stared at the newcomer in awe. All they knew was that this one had not come from Matka’s stomach. Florentyna was too excited to eat her breakfast this morning, so the boys divided her portion among them without a second thought and left their mother’s share on the table. No one noticed, as they went about their daily tasks, that the mother hadn’t eaten anything since the baby’s arrival.

  Helena Koskiewicz was pleased that her children had learned so early in life to fend for themselves. They could feed the animals, milk the goats and cows and tend the vegetable garden without her help or prodding. When Jasio returned home in the evening she suddenly realized that she had not prepared supper for him, but that Florentyna had taken the rabbits from Franck, her brother the hunter, and had already started to cook them. Florentyna was proud to be in charge of the evening meal, a responsibility she was entrusted with only when her mother was unwell, and Helena Koskiewicz rarely allowed herself that luxury. The young hunter had brought home four rabbits, and the father six mushrooms and three potatoes: tonight would be a veritable feast.

  After dinner, Jasio Koskiewicz sat in his chair by the fire and studied the child properly for the first time. Holding the little baby under the armpits, with his splayed fingers supporting the helpless head, he cast a trapper’s eye over the infant. Wrinkled and toothless, the face was redeemed only by the fine, blue unfocusing eyes. As the man directed his gaze toward the thin body, something immediately attracted his attention. He scowled and rubbed the delicate chest with his thumbs.

  “Have you noticed this, Helena?” said the trapper, prodding the baby’s ribs. “The ugly little bastard has only one nipple?”

  His wife frowned as she in turn rubbed the skin with her thumb, as though the action would supply the missing organ. Her husband was right: the minute and colorless left nipple was there, but where its mirror image should have appeared on the right-hand side, the shallow breast was completely smooth and uniformly pink.

  The woman’s superstitious tendencies were immediately aroused. “He has been given to me by God,” she exclaimed. “See His mark upon him.”

  The man thrust the child angrily at her. “You’re a fool, Helena. The child was given to its mother by a man with bad blood.” He spat into the fire, the more precisely to express his opinion of the child’s parentage. “Anyway, I wouldn’t bet a potato on the little bastard’s survival.”

  Jasio Koskiewicz cared even less than a potato whether or not the child survived. He was not by nature a callous man, but the boy was not his, and one more mouth to feed could only compound his problems. But if it was so to be, it was not for him to question the Almighty, and with no more thought of the boy, he fell into a deep sleep by the fire.

  As the days passed by, even Jasio Koskiewicz began to believe that the child might survive and, had he been a betting man, he would have lost a potato. The eldest son, the hunter, with the help of his younger brothers, made the child a cot out of wood that they had collected from the Baron’s forest. Florentyna made his clothes by cutting little pieces off her own dresses and then sewing them together. They would have called him Harlequin if they had known what it meant. In truth, naming him caused more disagreement in the household than any other single problem had for months; only the father had no opinion to offer. Finally, they agreed on Wladek; the following Sunday, in the chapel on the Baron’s great estate, the child was christened Wladek Koskiewicz, the mother thanking God for sparing his life, the father resigning himself to whatever must be.

  That evening there was a small feast to celebrate the christening, augmented by the gift of a goose from the Baron’s estate. They all ate heartily.

  From that day on, Florentyna learned to divide by nine.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Anne Kane had slept peacefully through the night. When after her breakfast her son William returned in the arms of one of the hospital’s nurses, she could not wait to hold him again.

  “Now then, Mrs. Kane,” the white-uniformed nurse said briskly, “shall we give baby his breakfast too?”

  She sat Anne, who was abruptly aware of her swollen breasts, up in bed and guided the two novices through the procedure. Anne, conscious that to appear embarrassed would be considered unmaternal, gazed fixedly into William’s blue eyes, bluer even than his father’s, and assimilated her new position, with which it would have been illogical to be other than pleased. At twenty-one, she was not conscious that she lacked anything. Born a Cabot, married into a branch of the Lowell family, and now a firstborn son to carry on the tradition summarized so succinctly in the card sent to her by an old school friend:

  And this is good old Boston,

  The home of the bean and the cod,

  Where the Lowells talk to the Cabots,

  And the Cabots talk only to God.

  Anne spent half an hour talking to William but obtained little response. He was then retired for a sleep in the same efficient manner by which he had arrived. Anne nobly resisted the fruit and candy piled by her bedside. She was determined to get back into all her dresses by the summer season and reassume her rightful place in the fashionable magazines. Had not the Prince de Garonne said that she was the only beautiful object in Boston? Her long golden hair, fine delicate features and slim figure had excited admiration in cities she had never even visited. She checked in the mirror: no telltale lines on her face; people would hardly believe that she was the mother of a bouncing boy. Thank God it is a bouncing boy, thought Anne.

  She enjoyed a light lunch and prepared herself for the visitors who would appear during the afternoon, already screened by her private secretary. Those who would be allowed to see her on the first days had to be family or from the very best families; others would be told she was not yet ready to receive them. But as Boston was the last city remaining in America where each knew his place to the finest degree of social prominence, there was unlikely to be any unexpected intruder.

  The room that she alone occupied could easily have taken another five beds had it not already been cluttered with flowers. A casual passerby could have been forgiven for mistaking it for a minor horticultural show, had it not been for the presence of the young mother sitting upright in bed. Anne switched on the electric light, still a novelty for her; Richard and she had waited for the Cabots to have them fitted, which all of Boston had interpreted as an oracular sign that electromagnetic induction was from then on socially acceptable.

  The first visitor was Anne’s mother-in-law, Mrs. Thomas Lowell Kane, the head of the family since her husband had died. In elegant late middle-age, she had perfected the technique of sweeping into a room to her own total satisfaction and to its occupants’ undoubted discomfiture. She wore a long chemise dress, which made it impossible to view her ankles; the only man who had ever seen her ankles was now dead. She had always been lean. In her opinion, fat women meant bad food and even worse breeding. She was now the oldest Lowell alive, the oldest Kane, come to that. She therefore expected and was expected to be the first to arrive. After all, had it not been she who had arranged the meeting between Anne and Richard? Love had seemed of little consequence to Mrs. Kane. Wealth, position and prestige she could always come to terms with. Love was all very well, but it rarely proved to be a lasting commodity; the other three were. She kissed her daughter-in-law approvingly on the forehead. Anne touched a button on the wall, and a quiet buzz could be heard. The noise took Mrs. Kane by surprise; she had not believed that electricity would ever catch on. The nurse reappeared with the heir. Mrs. Kane inspected him, sniffed her satisfaction and waved him away.

  “Well done, Anne,” the old lady said, as if her daughter-in-law had won a minor equestrian prize. “All of us are very proud of you.”

  Anne’s own mother, Mrs. Edward Cabot, arrived a few minutes later. She, like Mrs. Kane, had been widowed at an early age and differed so little from her in appearance that those who