Kane and Abel (Kane & Abel 1)

'Hurry up, Florcia,' chided her mother, 'the rest of the family must cat as well.'

Florentyria obeyed, and as her brothers arrived from the loft where they all slept, they kissed their mother's hands in greeting and stared at the newcomer in awe. All they knew was that this one had not come from Mother's stomach. Florentyna was too excited to cat her breakfast that morning, so the boys divided her portion among them without a second thought and left their mother's share on the table. No one noticed, as they went about their daily tasks, that their mother hadn't eaten anything since the baby's arrival.

Helena Koskiewicz was pleased that her children had learned so early in life to fend for themselves. They could feed the animals, milk the goats and cows, tend the vegetable garden, and go about their daily tasks without her help or prodding. When jasio returned home in the evening she suddenly reabsed that she had not prepared supper for him, but that Florentyna had taken the rabbits from Franck, her brother the hunter, and had already started to cook them. Florentyna was proud to be in charge of the evening meal, a responsibility she was entrusted with only when her mother was unwell, and Helena Koskitwicz rarely allowed herself that luxury. The young hunter had brought home four rabbits and the father six mushrooms and three potatoes: tonight would be a veritable feast.

After dinner, jasio Koskiewicz sat in his chair by the fire and studied the child properly for the first time. Holding the little baby under the Armpits, with his two thumbs supporting the helpless neck, he cast a trapper's eye over the infant. Wrinkled and toothless, the face was redeemed only by the fine, blue, unfocusing eym Directing his gaze towards the thin body, something immediately attracted his attention. He scowled and rubbed the delicate chest with his thumbs.

'Have you noticed this, Helena?' said the trapper prodding the baby's ribs. 'The ugly little bastard has only one nipple.'

His wife frowned as she in turn rubbed the skin with her thumb, as though the action would supply the missing organ. Her husband was right: the minute and colourless left nipple was there, but where its mirror image should have appeared on the right - hand side the shallow breast was completely smooth and uniformly pink.

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

The man thrust the child angrily at her. 'You're a fool, Helena. The child was given to its mother by a man with bad blood.' He spat into the fire, the more precisely to express his opinion of the child's parentage.

'Anyway, I wouldn't bet a potato on the little bastard's survival.'

jasio Koskiewicz cared even less than a potato that the child should survive. He was not by nature a callous man but the boy wa ' s not his, and one more mouth to feed could only compound his problems. But if it was so to be, it was not for him to question the - Almighty, and with no more thought of the boy, he fell into a deep sleep by the fire.

As the days passed by, even jasio Koskiewicz began to believe the child might survive and, had he been a betting man, he would have lost a potato.

The eldest son, the hunter, with the help of his younger brothers~ made the child a cot out of wood which they had collected from the Baron's forest. Florentyna made his clothes by cutting little pieces off her own dresses and then sewing them together. They would have called him Harlequin if they had known what it meant. In truth, naming him caused more disagreement in the household than any other single problem had done 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 thanking God for sparing his life, the father resigning himself to whatever must be.

That evening there was a small feast to celebrate the christening, augmented by the gift of a goose from the Baron's estate. They all ate heartily.

4

From that day on, Florentyna learned to divide by nine, Anne Kane had slept peacefully through the night. When her son William returned after breakfast in the arms of one of the hospital's nurses, she could not wait to hold him again.

'Now then, Mrs. Kane,' said the white - uniformed nurse briskly, 'shall we give baby his breakfast too?'

She sat Anne, who was abruptly aware of her swollen breasts, up in bed and guided the two novices through the procedure. Anne, conscious that to appear embarrassed would be considered unmaternal, gazed fixedly into Williarres blue eyes, more blue even than his father's, and assimilated her new position, with which it would have been illogical to be other than pleased. At twenty - one, she was not conscious that she lacked anything. Born a Cabot, married into a branch of the Lowell family, and now a first born son to carry on the tradition summarised so succinctly in the card sent to her by an old school friend: Here's to the city of Boston, Land of the bean and the cod, Where Cabots, talk only to Lowells, And Lowells talk only to God.