Kane and Abel (Kane & Abel 1)

On his ninth birthday William presented the ledger to his grandmother for the second annual inspection. The green leather book showed a saving during the two years of more than fifty dollars. He was particularly proud to point out an entry marked to the grandmothers, showing that he had taken his money out of J. P. Morgan's Bank finmediately on hearing of the death of the great financier, because he had noted that his own father's bank shares had fallen in value after his death had been announced. He had reinves,ted the same amount three months later before the public realised the company was bigger than any one man.

The grandmothers were suitably impressed and allowed William to trade in his old bicycle and purchase a new one, ~fter which he still had a capital suxn of over one hundred dollars, which his grandmother had invested for him with the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey. Oil, said William knowingly, can only get more expensive. He kept the ledger meticulously up - to - date until his twenty - first birthday. Had the grandmothers still been alive then, they would have been proud of the final entry in the right hand column marked 'assets'.

7

Wladek was the only one of those left alive who knew the dungeons well.

In his days of hide and seek with Leon he had spent MZLny happy hours in the freedom of the small stone rooms, carefree in the knowledge that he could return to the castle whenever it suited him.

There were in all four dungeons, on two levels. Two of the rooms, a larger and a smaller one, were at ground level. The smaller one was adjacent to the castle wall, which afforded a thin filter of light through a grille set high in the stones. Down five steps there were two more stone roorns in perpetual darkness and with little air. Wladek led the Baron into the small upper dungeon where he remained sitting in a comer, silent and motionless, staring fixedly into space; he then appointed Florentyna to be his personal servant.

As Wladek was the only person who dared to remain in the same room as the Baron, the servants never questioned his authority. Thus, at the age of nine, he took charge of the day - to - day responsibility of his fellow prisoners. And in the dungeon he became their master. He split the remaining twenty - four servants into three groups of eight, trying to keep families together wherever possible. He moved them regularly in a shift system, the first eight hours in the upper dungeons for right, air, food and exercise; the second and most popular shift of eight hours working in the castle for their captors; and the final eight hours given 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 moving on. Food was distributed every tvielve hours. The guards would hand over a skin of goats' milk, black bread, millet and cccasionally some nuts which Wladek would divide by twenty - eight, always giving two portions to the Baron without ever letting him, know. The new occupants of the dungeons, their placidity rendered into miserable stupefaction by incarceration, found nothing strange in a situation that had put a nine - year - old in control of their lives.

Once Wladek had each shift organised, he would return to the Baron in the sinaller dungeon. Initially he expected guidance from him, but the fixed gaze of his master was as implacable and comfortless in its own way as were the eyes of the const.int succession of German guards. The Baron had never once spoken from the moment he had been subjected to captivity in his own castle. His beard had grown long and matted on his chest and his strong frame was beginning to dwindle into frailty. The once proud look had been replaced with one of resignation. Wladek could scarcely remember the well - loved voice of his patron, and accustomed himself to the thought that he would never hear it again. After a while, he complied with the Baron's unspoken wishes by remaining silent in his presence.

When he had lived in the safety of the castle, Wladek had never thought of the previous day with so much occupying him from hour to hour. Now he was unable to remember even the previous hour, because nothing ever changed, Hopeless minutes turned into hours, hours into days, and then months that he soon lost track of. Only the arrival of food, darkness or light indicated that another twelve hours had passed, while the intensity of that light, and its eventual giving way to storms, and then ice forming on the dungeon walls, melting only when a new sun appeared, heralded each season in a manner that Wladek could never have learned from a nature study lesson. During the long nights Wladek became even more aware of the stench of death that permeated even the farthest comers of the four dungeons, alleviated occasionally by the morning sunshine, a cool breeze, or the most blessed relief of all, the return of rain.

At the end of one day of unremitting storms, Wladek and Florentyna took advantage of the rain by washing themselves in a puddle of water which formed on the stone floor of the upper dungeon. Neither of them noticed that the Baron's eyes were following Wladek with interest as he removed his tattered shirt and rolled over like a dog in the relatively clean water, continuing to rub himself until white streaks appeared on his body. Suddenly, the Baron spoke.