Kane and Abel/Sons of Fortune Read online

  Wladek thought the great man looked tired and older, another unaccountable circumstance, and during the following week the Baron often conducted with the chief servants a rapid and anxious dialogue, broken off whenever Leon or Wladek entered the room, an uncharacteristic surreptitiousness that made the two boys uneasy and fearful that they were the unwitting cause of it. Wladek despaired that the Baron might send him back to the trapper’s cottage—always aware he was a stranger in a stranger’s home.

  One evening a few days after the Baron had returned he called for the two boys to join him in the great hall. They crept in, fearful of him. Without explanation he told them that they were about to make a long journey. The little conversation, insubstantial as it seemed to Wladek at the time, remained with him for the rest of his life.

  “My dear children,” began the Baron in a low, faltering tone, “the warmongers of Germany and the Austro-Hungarian empire are at the throat of Warsaw and will soon be upon us.”

  Wladek recalled an inexplicable phrase flung out by the Polish tutor at the German tutor during their last tense days together. “Does that mean that the hour of the submerged peoples of Europe is at last upon us?” he asked.

  The Baron regarded Wladek’s innocent face tenderly. “Our national spirit has not perished in one hundred. and fifty years of attrition and repression,” he replied. “It may be that that fate of Poland is as much at stake as that of Serbia, but we are powerless to influence history. We are at the mercy of the three mighty empires that surround us.”

  “We are strong, we can fight,” said Leon. “We have wooden swords and shields. We are not afraid of Germans or Russians.”

  “My son, you have only played at war. This battle will not be between children. We must now find a small, quiet place to live until history has decided our fate, and we must leave as soon as possible. I can only pray that this is not the end of your childhood.”

  Leon and Wladek were both mystified and irritated by the Baron’s words. War sounded like an exciting adventure, which they would be sure to miss if they left the castle. The servants took several days to pack the Baron’s possessions, and Wladek and Leon were informed that they would be departing for their small summer home to the north of Grodno on the following Monday. The two boys continued, often unsupervised, with their work and play, but they found no one in the castle with the inclination or time to answer their myriad questions.

  On Saturdays, lessons were held only in the morning. They were translating Adam Mickiewicz’s Pan Tadeusz into Latin when they heard the guns. At first, Wladek thought the familiar sound meant only that another trapper was out shooting on the estate; the boys returned to the Bard of Czarnotas. A second volley of shots, much closer, made them look up, and then they heard the screams coming from downstairs. They stared at each other in bewilderment; they feared nothing, because they had never experienced anything in their short lives that should have made them fearful. The tutor fled, leaving them alone, and then came another shot, this time in the corridor outside their room. The two boys sat motionless, terrified and unbreathing.

  Suddenly the door crashed open and a man no older than their tutor, in a gray soldier’s uniform and steel helmet, stood towering over them. Leon clung to Wladek, while Wladek stared at the intruder. The soldier shouted at them in German, demanding to know who they were, but neither boy replied even though both had mastered the language as well as their mother tongue. Another soldier appeared behind his compatriot as the first advanced on the two boys, grabbed them by the necks, not unlike chickens, and pulled them out into the corridor, down the hall to the front of the castle and then into the gardens, where they found Florentyna screaming hysterically as she stared at the ground in front of her. Leon could not bear to look and buried his head in Wladek’s shoulder. Wladek gazed as much in surprise as in horror at a row of dead bodies, mostly servants, being placed face downward. He was mesmerized by the sight of a mustache in profile against a pool of blood. It was the trapper. Wladek felt nothing as Florentyna continued screaming.

  “Is Papa there?” asked Leon. “Is Papa there?”

  Wladek scanned the line of bodies once again. He thanked God that there was no sign of the Baron Rosnovski. He was about to tell Leon the good news when a soldier came up to them.

  “Wer hat gesprochen?” he demanded fiercely.

  “Ich,” said Wladek defiantly.

  The soldier raised his rifle and brought the butt crashing down on Wladek’s head. He sank to the ground, blood spurting over his face. Where was the Baron, what was happening, why were they being treated like this in their own home? Leon quickly jumped on top of Wladek, trying to protect him from the second blow that the soldier had intended for Wladek’s stomach, but as the rifle came crashing down the full force caught the back of Leon’s head.

  Both boys lay motionless, Wladek because he was still dazed by the blow and the sudden weight of Leon’s body on top of him, and Leon because he was dead.

  Wladek could hear another soldier berating their tormentor for the action he had taken. They picked up Leon, but Wladek clung to him. It took two soldiers to prise his friend’s body away and dump it unceremoniously with the others, facedown on the grass. Wladek’s eyes never left the motionless body of his dearest friend until he was finally marched back inside the castle and, with a handful of dazed survivors, led to the dungeons. Nobody spoke for fear of joining the line of bodies on the grass, until the dungeon doors were bolted and the last murmur of the soldiers had vanished in the distance. Then Wladek said, “Holy God.” For there in a corner, slumped against the wall, sat the Baron, uninjured but stunned, staring into space, alive only because the conquerors needed him to be responsible for the prisoners. Wladek went over to him, while the others sat as far away from their master as possible. The two gazed at each other as they had on the first day they had met. Wladek put his hand out and, as on the first day, the Baron took it. Wladek watched the tears course down the Baron’s proud face. Neither spoke. They had both lost the person they had loved most in the world.

  CHAPTER SIX

  William Kane grew quickly and was considered an adorable child by all who came in contact with him; in the early years of his life these were generally besotted relatives and doting servants.

  The top floor of the Kanes’ eighteenth-century house in Louisburg Square on Beacon Hill had been converted into nursery quarters, crammed with toys. A further bedroom and a sitting room were made available for the newly acquired nurse. The floor was far enough away from Richard Kane for him to be unaware of problems such as teething, wet diapers and the irregular and undisciplined cries for more food. First sound, first tooth, first step and first word were all recorded in a family book by William’s mother along with the progress in his height and weight. Anne was surprised to find that these statistics differed very little from those of any other child with whom she came into contact on Beacon Hill.

  The nurse, an import from England, brought the boy up on a regimen that would have gladdened the heart of a Prussian cavalry officer. William’s father would visit him each evening at six o’clock. As he refused to address the child in baby language, he ended up not speaking to him at all; the two merely stared at each other. William would grip his father’s index finger, the one with which balance sheets were checked, and hold on to it tightly. Richard would allow himself a smile. At the end of the first year the routine was slightly modified and the boy was allowed to come downstairs to see his father. Richard would sit in his high-backed, maroon leather chair, watching his firstborn weave his way on all fours in and out of the legs of the furniture, reappearing when least expected, which led Richard to observe that the child would undoubtedly become a senator. William took his first steps at thirteen months while clinging on to the tails of his father’s topcoat. His first word was Dada, which pleased everyone, including Grandmother Kane and Grandmother Cabot, who were regular visitors. They did not actually push the vehicle in which William was perambulated around Boston, b