Kane and Abel Read online

  Five days before the new school term was due to begin, William had made back all his original losses and chalked up a further $9 profit. Then he hit a problem. The taxi drivers were starting to get annoyed with him. He assured them that he would retire, aged ten, if each one of them gave him 50 cents to cover the cost of his homemade dolly. They agreed, and he made a further $8.50. On the way home to Beacon Hill he sold the dolly to a school friend for $2, promising him he would not return to his old beat at the station. The friend quickly discovered that the taxi drivers were lying in wait for him; moreover, it didn’t help that it rained for the rest of the week. On the day he returned to school, William put his money back on deposit in the bank, at 2.5 per cent.

  Over the following year he watched his savings rise steadily. President Wilson’s declaration of war with Germany in April 1917 didn’t concern William. Nothing and no one could ever defeat America, he assured his mother. He even invested $10 in Liberty Bonds to back his judgement.

  By William’s eleventh birthday the credit column of his ledger was showing a profit of $412. He had given his mother a fountain pen for her birthday, and brooches from a local jewellery shop to his two grandmothers. The fountain pen was a Parker, and the jewellery arrived at his grandmothers’ homes in Shreve, Crump and Low boxes, which he had found by searching the dustbins behind the famous store. He hadn’t wanted to mislead his grandmothers, but he had already learned from his matchbox-label experience that good packaging enhances a product.

  The grandmothers noted the missing Shreve, Crump and Low hallmark, but still wore their brooches with considerable pride. They had long ago decided that William was more than ready to proceed to St Paul’s School in Concord, New Hampshire, the following September. For good measure he rewarded them with the top mathematics scholarship, unnecessarily saving the family some $300 a year. He accepted the scholarship but the grandmothers returned the grant for the benefit of ‘a less fortunate child’.

  Anne hated the thought of William going away to boarding school, but the grandmothers insisted and, more important, she knew it was what Richard had wanted. She sewed on William’s name tapes, marked his boots, checked his clothes and finally packed his trunk, refusing any help from the servants. When the time came for him to leave, she asked him how much pocket money he would need for the term ahead.

  ‘None, thank you, Mama,’ he replied without further comment.

  William kissed his mother on the cheek and marched off down the path wearing his first pair of long trousers, his hair cut short, and carrying a small suitcase. He climbed into the car and Roberts drove him off. He didn’t look back. His mother waved and waved, and later cried. William wanted to cry, but he knew his father would not have approved.

  The first thing that struck William Kane as strange about his new prep school was that the other boys didn’t seem to know who he was. The looks of admiration, the silent acknowledgement of his position, were not apparent. One boy even asked his name and, worse, showed no reaction when told. Some even called him ‘Bill’, which he corrected with the explanation that no one had ever referred to his father as ‘Dick’.

  William’s new castle was a small room with wooden bookshelves, two tables, two chairs, two beds and a comfortably shabby leather settee. One chair, table and bed were occupied by a boy from New York called Matthew Lester, whose father was chairman of Lester and Company, another old family bank.

  William quickly became used to the school routine: up at seven-thirty, wash, and breakfast in the main dining room with the rest of the school - 220 boys munching their way through porridge, eggs and bacon. After breakfast, chapel, three 45-minute classes before lunch and two after, followed by a music lesson, which William detested because he couldn’t sing a note in tune, and he had no desire to learn to play any musical instrument. He ended up at the back on the triangle. Football in the fall, hockey and racquetball in the winter, rowing and tennis in the spring left him with little free time. As a mathematics scholar, he had tutorials in the subject three times a week with his housemaster, Mr G. Raglan, Esq., known to the boys as Rags, because of his scruffy appearance.

  During his first year William proved to be well worthy of his scholarship, always among the top few boys in almost every subject, and in a class of his own at mathematics. Only his new friend Matthew Lester was any real competition, and that was almost certainly because they shared a room. William also acquired a reputation as a bit of a financial expert. Although his first investment in the stock market had proved unsuccessful, he did not abandon his belief that to make a significant amount of money, sizeable capital gains on the market were essential. He kept a wary eye on The Wall Street Journal and company reports, and started to experiment with a ghost portfolio of investments. He recorded every one of his imaginary purchases and sales, the good and the not-so-good, in a newly acquired, different-coloured ledger. He compared his performance at the end of each month against the rest of the market. He did not bother with the leading stocks, concentrating instead on more obscure companies, some of which only traded over the counter, so that it was impossible to buy more than a few shares at any one time. William looked for four things from his investments: a low multiple of earnings, a high growth rate, strong asset backing and a favourable trading forecast. He found few shares that fulfilled all these rigorous criteria, but when he did, they almost invariably showed him a profit.

  The moment he had proved that he was regularly beating the Dow Jones Index with his ghost investment programme, William decided to invest real money: his own money. He started with $100, and during the following year never stopped refining his system. He would always back his profits and cut his losses. Once a stock had doubled in price he would sell half of his holding, trading the stock he still held as a bonus. Some of his early finds, such as Eastman Kodak and Standard Oil, went on to become national leaders. He also backed Sears, a mail-order company, convinced it was a trend that was going to catch on.

  By the end of his first year he was advising several of the masters, and even some of the parents.

  William Kane was happy at school.

  9

  WLADEK WAS the only person still alive who knew his way around the dungeons. During those carefree days of hide-and-seek with Leon he had spent many happy hours hidden in the small stone rooms, safe in the knowledge that he could return to the castle whenever it suited him.

  There were four dungeons in all. Two of them were at ground level. The smaller of these two was dimly lit by a thin glimmer of sunlight through a grille set high in the stone wall. Down five steps were two more stone rooms that were in perpetual darkness with little air. Wladek led the Baron to the small upper dungeon, where he immediately slumped in a corner, staring silently and fixedly into space; the boy appointed Florentyna to look after him.

  As Wladek was the only person who dared to stay in the same room as the Baron, the remaining twenty-four servants never questioned his authority. Thus, at the age of nine, he took on the day-to-day responsibility for his fellow prisoners. The new occupants of the dungeons, reduced to miserable stupefaction by incarceration, appeared to find nothing strange in a situation that had put a young boy in control of their lives. In the dungeons Wladek became their master. He split the servants into three groups of eight, trying to keep families together wherever possible. He moved them regularly in a shift system: eight hours in the upper dungeon for light, air, food and exercise, eight hours working in the castle for their captors, and eight hours given over to sleep in one of the lower dungeons.

  No one except the Baron and Florentyna could be quite sure when Wladek slept, as he was always there at the end of every shift to supervise the servants as they moved on. Food was distributed every twelve hours. The guards would hand over a skin of goat’s milk, black bread, millet and occasionally some nuts, all of which Wladek would divide into twenty-eight portions, giving two portions to the Baron without ever letting him know.

  Once Wladek had the new shift organized,
he would return to the Baron in the smaller dungeon. To begin with he expected guidance from him, but the fixed gaze of his master was as implacable and comfortless as were the cold eyes of the constant succession of German guards. The Baron had not spoken from the moment he had been made captive in his own castle. His beard had grown long and matted, and his burly frame was beginning to decline into frailty. The once proud look had been replaced with one of resignation. Wladek could scarcely remember his soft-baritone voice, and accustomed himself to the thought that he would never hear it again. After a while he fell in with what appeared to be the Baron’s unspoken wishes, and always remained silent in his presence.

  While he had lived in the castle before the arrival of the German soldiers, Wladek had so much to occupy him that he never had time to think about the previous day. Now he was unable to recall even the previous hour, because nothing ever changed. Hopeless minutes turned into hours, hours into days, days into months. Only the changing of the servants’ shifts, and the arrival of food, darkness or light, indicated the passing of the time, while the shortening of the days, and the appearance of ice on the dungeon walls, heralded the changing season. During the long nights Wladek became aware of the stench of death that permeated even the farthest corners of the dungeons, only slightly alleviated by the morning sunshine, a cool breeze or the most blessed relief of all, the sound of falling rain.

  At the end of a day of unremitting storms, Wladek and Florentyna took advantage of the rain and washed themselves in a puddle of water that had formed in the cracks on the stone floor. Neither of them noticed that the Baron’s eyes flickered when Wladek removed his tattered shirt and splashed the cold water onto his body. Without warning, the Baron spoke.

  ‘Wladek,’ - the word was barely audible - ‘I cannot see you clearly.’ His voice was cracking. ‘Come to me, child.’

  After so long a silence, Wladek was taken by surprise by the Baron’s voice and feared it preceded the madness that already held two of the older servants in its grip.

  ‘Come to me, child,’ the Baron repeated.

  Wladek obeyed fearfully, and stood before the Baron, who narrowed his enfeebled eyes in a gesture of intense concentration. He groped towards the boy and ran a finger over Wladek’s chest, before peering up at him.

  ‘Wladek, can you explain this deformity?’

  ‘No, sir,’ replied Wladek, embarrassed. ‘It has been with me since birth. My father told me that it was the mark of the devil upon me.’

  ‘Stupid man. But then, he was not your father,’ the Baron said softly, and relapsed into silence. Wladek remained standing in front of him, not moving a muscle. When the Baron finally spoke again, his voice was firmer. ‘Sit down, boy.’

  As he did so, Wladek noticed once again the heavy band of silver, now hanging loosely around the Baron’s wrist. A shaft of light made the magnificent engraving of the Rosnovski coat of arms glitter in the darkness of the dungeon.

  ‘I do not know how long the Germans intend to keep us locked up here,’ continued the Baron. ‘I thought at first this war would be over in a matter of weeks. I was wrong, and we must now consider the possibility that it will continue for a very long time. With that thought in mind, we must use our time more constructively, as I know my life is nearing an end.’

  ‘No, no,’ Wladek began to protest, but the Baron continued as if he had not heard him.

  ‘Yours, my child, has yet to begin. I will therefore undertake the continuation of your education.’

  The Baron did not speak again that day. It was as if he was considering the full implications of his pronouncement. But during the following weeks Wladek found that he had gained a new tutor. As they had neither reading nor writing materials, his lessons consisted of repeating everything the Baron said. He learned great tracts from the poems of Adam Mickiewicz and Jan Kochanowski, as well as long passages from The Aeneid. In that austere classroom Wladek learned geography and mathematics, and added to his command of languages - Russian, German, French and English. But as before, his happiest moments were the history lessons. The story of his nation through a hundred years of partition, the disappointed hopes for a united Poland, the anguish of his countrymen at Napoleon’s crushing defeat by the Russians in 1812. He learned the brave tales of happier times, when King Jan Casimir had dedicated Poland to the Blessed Virgin after repulsing the Swedes at Czestochowa, and how the mighty Prince Radziwill, scholar, landowner and lover of hunting, had held court in his castle near Warsaw.

  Wladek’s final lesson each day was on the family history of the Rosnovskis. Again and again he was told - never tiring of the tale - how the Baron’s illustrious ancestor who had served in 1794 under General Dabrowski and then in 1809 under Napoleon himself had been rewarded by the Emperor with vast tracts of land and a baronetcy. He learned that the Baron’s grandfather had sat on the Council of Warsaw, and his father had played his own part in the building of a new Poland. Once again time passed quickly, despite the horrendous surroundings of his new classroom.

  The Baron continued to tutor him despite his progressively failing sight and hearing. Each day Wladek had to sit closer to him.

  The guards at the entrance to the dungeon were changed every four hours, and conversation between them and the prisoners was strengstenst verboten. Nevertheless, in snatches and fragments Wladek learned of the progress of the war, of the actions of Hindenburg and Ludendorff, of the November revolution in Russia and her withdrawal from hostilities after the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.

  Wladek began to believe that the only way to escape from the dungeons was death. He wondered if he was equipping himself with knowledge that would be useless as he would never again know freedom.

  Florentyna - Wladek’s sister, mother and closest friend - engaged herself in an unending struggle to keep the Baron’s cell clean. Occasionally the guards would provide her with a bucket of sand or straw with which to cover the soiled floor, and the stench would be a little less oppressive for a few days. Vermin scuttled around in the darkness for any dropped scraps of bread or potato, bringing with them disease and a reason not to sleep. The sour smell of stale human and animal urine and excrement assaulted their nostrils, regularly causing Wladek to be sick. He longed to be clean again, and would spend hours gazing out of the little slit in the wall, recalling the steaming tubs of hot water and the rough, perfumed soap with which the niania had, so short a distance away but so long ago, removed the dirt of a day’s fun, with many a tut-tut for his and Leon’s muddy knees or dirty fingernails.

  By the spring of 1918, only fifteen of the twenty-seven captives were still alive. The Baron was still treated by everyone as the master, while Wladek was acknowledged as his steward. Wladek felt saddest for his beloved Florentyna, now twenty. She had long since despaired of life. Wladek never admitted in her presence to giving up hope, but although he was only twelve, he too was beginning to wonder if there was any future outside the dungeons.

  One evening, in early autumn, Florentyna came to Wladek’s side in the larger upper dungeon.

  ‘The Baron is calling for you.’

  Wladek rose quickly, leaving the allocation of the food to a trusted servant, and went to join the old man. The Baron was in severe pain, and Wladek saw with terrible clarity how illness had eroded whole areas of his flesh, leaving the green-mottled skin covering a now skeletal face. The Baron requested water, and Florentyna rescued some from the half-full mug of rain water that hung from a stick outside the grille in the wall. When the Baron had finished drinking, he spoke slowly and with considerable difficulty.

  ‘You have seen so many people die, Wladek, that one more should make little difference to you. I confess that I no longer fear escaping this world.’

  ‘No, no, it can’t be!’ cried Wladek, clinging to the old man for the first time in his life. ‘Don’t give up, Baron. I overheard the guards saying that the war is coming to an end. We will soon be released.’

  ‘They have been saying that for months, Wladek. In any cas
e, I have no desire to live in the new world they are creating.’ He paused as the boy began sobbing for the first time in their three years of imprisonment, then said, ‘Call for my steward and first footman.’

  Wladek obeyed immediately, not knowing why they were required.

  The two servants, awakened from sleep, came and stood silently in front of the Baron, waiting for him to speak. They still wore their embroidered uniforms, but there was no longer any sign that they had once boasted the proud Rosnovski colours of green and gold.

  ‘Are they there, Wladek?’ asked the Baron.

  ‘Yes, sir. Can you not see them?’ Wladek realized for the first time that the Baron was blind.

  ‘Bring them forward so that I might touch them.’

  Wladek brought the two men to him, and the Baron touched their faces.

  ‘Sit down, both of you. Can you hear me, Ludwik, Alfons?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ they replied.

  ‘My name is Baron Rosnovski.’

  ‘We know, sir,’ the steward responded innocently.

  ‘Do not interrupt me,’ said the Baron. ‘I am about to die.’

  Death had become so commonplace in the dungeon that the two men made no protest.

  ‘I am unable to make a new will, as I have no paper, quill or ink. Therefore I make my testament in your presence, and you can act as my two witnesses, as recognized by the ancient law of Poland. Do you understand what I am telling you?’