Kane and Abel Read online

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

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

  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 would only add to his problems. But it was not for him to question the Almighty, and with no more thought of the child, he fell into a deep sleep.

  As the days came and went, even Jasio Koskiewicz began to believe that the child might survive, and had he been a betting man, would have lost a potato. His eldest son Franck, the hunter, made the child a cot out of some wood he had collected from the Baron’s forest. Florentyna cut little pieces off her old dresses and sewed them together into multi-coloured baby clothes. They would have called him Harlequin if they had known what the word meant. In truth, naming him caused more disagreement in the household than anything 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 thanked God for sparing his life, and the father resigned himself to having another mouth to feed.

  That evening there followed 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.

  4

  ANNE KANE had slept peacefully through the night. After a light breakfast, her son William was brought to her private room in the arms of a nurse. She couldn’t wait to hold him again.

  ‘Good morning, Mrs Kane,’ the white-uniformed nurse said briskly, ‘it’s time to give baby his breakfast.’

  Anne sat up, painfully aware of her swollen breasts. The nurse guided the two novices through the procedure. Anne, aware that to appear embarrassed would be considered unmaternal, gazed fixedly into William’s blue eyes, bluer even than his father’s. She smiled contentedly. At twenty-one, she was not aware of needing anything. Born a Cabot, she had married into a branch of the Lowell family, and had now delivered a son to carry on the tradition summarized so succinctly in the card sent to her by Millie Preston, her old school friend:

  And this is good old Boston,

  The home of the bean and the cod,

  Where the Lowells talk only to the Cabots,

  And the Cabots talk only to God.

  Anne spent half an hour talking to William, but obtained little response. Matron then whisked him off in the same efficient manner by which he had arrived. Anne nobly resisted the fruit and candy that had come from friends and well-wishers, as she was determined to get back into all her dresses in time for the summer season, and resume her rightful place in the pages of the fashionable magazines. Had not the Prince de Garonne declared her to be 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. Anne checked in the mirror, and was pleased with what she saw: people would hardly believe that she was the mother of a bouncing boy. Thank God it’s a boy, she thought, understanding for the first time how Anne Boleyn must have felt.

  She enjoyed a light lunch before preparing herself for the visitors who would appear at regular intervals throughout the afternoon. Those who visited her during the first few days would either be family, or from the very best families in Boston; others would be told she was not yet ready to receive them. But as Boston was the one city in America where everyone knew their place to the finest degree, there were unlikely to be any unexpected intruders.

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

  Anne’s first visitor was her mother-in-law, Mrs Thomas Lowell Kane, the head of the family following the premature death of her husband. In elegant late middle-age, Mrs Kane had perfected the technique of sweeping into a room to her own total satisfaction, and to its occupants’ undoubted discomfiture. She wore a long silk dress which made it impossible to view her ankles; the only man who had seen them was now dead. She had always been slim. In her opinion - often stated - an overweight woman meant bad food and inferior breeding. She was now the oldest Lowell alive; the oldest Kane, too, come to that. She therefore expected, and was expected, to be the first to arrive on any significant occasion. After all, had it not been she who had arranged the first meeting between Anne and Richard?

  Love was of little consequence to Mrs Kane. Wealth, position and prestige she understood. Love was all very well, but it rarely proved to be a lasting commodity; the other three undoubtedly 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 as she was yet to be convinced that electricity would ever catch on. The nurse reappeared carrying the son and heir. Mrs Kane inspected him, sniffed her approval and then waved the nurse away.

  ‘Well done, Anne,’ she said, as if her daughter-in-law had won a minor rosette at a regatta. ‘All of us are so very proud of you.’

  Anne’s own mother, Mrs Edward Cabot, arrived a few minutes later. She differed from Mrs Kane so little in her appearance that those who observed them from afar tended to get the two ladies muddled up. But to do Mrs Cabot justice, she took considerably more interest in her grandson and her daughter than Mrs Kane had. The inspection moved on to the flowers.

  ‘How kind of the Jacksons to remember,’ murmured Mrs Cabot, who would have been shocked if they hadn’t.

  Mrs Kane made a more cursory inspection. Her eyes skimmed over the delicate blooms before settling on the donors’ cards. She whispered the soothing names to herself: Adamses, Lawrences, Lodges, Higginsons. Neither grandmother commented on the names they didn’t recognize; they were both past the age of wanting to learn of anything or anyone new. They left together, well pleased: an heir had been born, and appeared on first sight to be quite satisfactory. They both considered that their final family obligation had been carried out, albeit vicariously, and that they themselves might now progress to the role of chorus.

  They were both wrong.

  Anne and Richard’s close friends and relations appeared throughout the afternoon bearing gifts and good wishes, the former of gold or silver, the latter in clipped Brahmin accents.

  By the time her husband arrived following the close of business, Anne was exhausted. Richard seemed a little less stiff than usual. He had drunk a glass of champagne at lunch for the first time in his life - old Amos Kerbes had insisted, and with the whole Somerset Club looking on, he could hardly have objected. In his long black frock coat and pinstripe trousers he stood fully six feet one, and his dark hair, parted in the centre, gleamed in the light of the large electric bulb. Few would have guessed his age correctly. Youth had never been that important to him; some wags even suggested that he had been born middle-aged. It didn’t worry him: substance and reputation were the only things that mattered. Once again William Lowell Kane was called for and inspected, as if his father was checking a balance sheet at the end of a banking day. All seemed to be in order. The boy had two legs, two arms, ten fingers, ten toes. Richard could see nothing that might later embarrass him, so William was sent away.

  ‘I wired the headma