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’I wired the headht Willia Richard had so obviously started planning William’s career

’Well, my dear, are you fully recovered today?’ he went on to inquire, never’having spent a day in hospital during his thirty - thru - years

’Yes - no - I think so,’ responded his wife ti tearfulness that she kneould only displease her husband The ansas not of the sort that Richard could hope to understand He kissed his wife on the cheek and returned in the hanso Square, their family home With staff, servants, the new baby and his nurse, there would now be nine ive the probleht

Willia and the names his father had apportioned him before birth at the Protestant Episcopal Church of St Paul’s, in the presence of everybody in Boston who mattered and a feho didn’t Ancient Bishop Lawrence officiated, J P Morgan

and Alan Lloyd, bankers of i with Milly Preston, Anne’s closest friend, were the chosen godparents His Grace sprinkled the Holy Water on Wil~ liam’s head; the boy didn’tthe Brahmin approach to life Anne thanked God for the safe birth of her son and Richard thanked God, whoarded as an external bookkeeper whose function was to record the deeds of the Kane faeneration, that he had a son to whoht, perhaps he had better be certain and have a second boy Frolanced sideways at his wife, well pleased with her

Book Two

5

Wladek Koskiewicz grely It became apparent to his foster mother that the boy’s health would always be a proble children normally catch and many that they don’t, and he passed them on indiscriminately to the rest of the Koskiewicz family Helena treated hiorously defended hian tD blame the devil rather than God for Wladek’s presence in their tiny cottage Florentyna, on the other hand, took care of Wladek as if he were her own child She loved him from the first rew from a fear that no one would ever want to hter of a trapper She must, therefore, be childless Wladek was her child

The eldest brother, the hunter, who had found Wladek, treated hi but was too afraid of his father to ad into a sturdy toddler In any case, next January the hunter was to leave school and start work on the Baron’s estate, and children were a woman’s probleer brothers, Stefan, Josef and Jan, showed little interest in Wladek and the reh just to cuddle him

What neither parent had been prepared for was a charac, ter and mind so different from those of their own children, No one could dismiss the physical or intellectual difference The Koskiewiczes were all tall, large - boned with fair hair and grey eyes Wladek was short and round, with dark hair and intensely blue eyes The Koskiewiczes bad minimal I I pretensions to scholarship and were ree or discretion allowed Wladek, on the other hand, though he was late in walking, spoke at eighteen months Read at three, but was still unable to dress himself Wrote at five, but continued to wet his bed He became the despair of his father and the pride of his mother His first foux years on this earth were h illness to try to depart from it, and for the sustained efforts of Helena and Florentyna to insure that he did not succeed He ran around the little wooden cottage barefoot, dressed in his harlequin outfit, a yard or so behind his mother When Florentyna returned fro her side until she put him to bed In her division of the food by nine, Florentyna often sacrificed half of her own share to Wladek or, if he were ill, the entire portion Wladek wore the clothes she ht hiiven

Because Florr - ntyna ay at school o with her As soon as he was allowed to (holding fire school), he walked the eighteen wiorsta, soh the woods of moss - covered birches and cypresses and the orchards of Ifine and cherry to Sloniin his education