William was also looking forward to getting back to Boston so that he could tell Mr Munro all the amazing experiences he’d had in England, as well as being reunited with his two grandmothers. He felt sure that they could never have done anything as exciting as visiting a real live theatre with members of the general public. Anne was also happy to be returning home, although she had enjoyed the trip almost as much as William, for her clothes and beauty had been much admired by the normally undemonstrative English.
As a final treat the day before they were due to sail, Lavinia Seymour invited William and Anne to a tea party at her home in Eaton Square. While Anne and Lavinia discussed the latest London fashions, William learned about cricket from Stuart, and tried to explain baseball to his new best friend. The party, however, broke up early when Stuart began to feel sick. William, in sympathy, announced that he too was feeling ill so he and Anne returned to the Savoy earlier than they had planned. Anne was not greatly put out, as this gave her a little more time to supervise the packing of the large steamer trunks filled with all her new acquisitions, although she was convinced William was only putting on an act to please Stuart. But when she put him to bed that night, Anne found that he was running a slight temperature. She remarked on it to Richard over dinner.
‘Probably just the excitement at the thought of returning home,’ he offered, sounding unconcerned.
‘I hope so,’ replied Anne. ‘I don’t want him to be sick on the voyage.’
‘He’ll be fine by tomorrow,’ Richard tried to reassure her.
But when Anne went to wake William the next morning, she found him covered in little red spots and running a temperature of 103. The hotel doctor diagnosed measles, and was politely insistent that the boy was on no account to undertake a sea voyage, not only for his own sake, but for that of the other passengers.
Richard was unable to countenance any further delay, and decided to sail as planned. Reluctantly, Anne agreed that she and William would remain in London until the ship returned in three weeks’ time. William begged his father to let him accompany him, but Richard was adamant, and hired a nurse to look after William until he was fully recovered. Anne travelled down to Southampton with Richard in the new Rolls-Royce to see him off.
‘I shall be lonely in London without you, Richard,’ she ventured diffidently when they parted, risking his disapproval of any suggestion of sentimentality.
‘Well, my dear, I dare say I shall be somewhat lonely in Boston without you,’ he said, his mind on 2,500 striking mill-workers.
Anne returned to London on the train, wondering how she would occupy herself for the next three weeks.
William had a better night, and in the morning the spots looked a little less ferocious. However, the doctor and nurse were unanimous in their insistence that he should remain in bed. Anne passed much of the next four days writing long letters to the family. On the fifth day, William rose early and crept into his mother’s room. He climbed into bed next to her, and his cold hands immediately woke her. She was relieved to see that he appeared to be fully recovered, and rang to order breakfast in bed for both of them, an indulgence William’s father would never have countenanced.
A few minutes later, there was a quiet knock on the door, and a man in gold-and-red livery entered with a large silver tray: eggs, bacon, tomato, toast and marmalade - a veritable feast. While William looked at the food ravenously, as if he could not remember when he had last eaten, Anne glanced casually at the morning paper. Richard always read The Times when he was in London, and the hotel management continued to deliver it.
‘Oh, look,’ said William, staring at the photograph on an inside page, ‘a picture of Daddy’s ship. What’s a ca-la-mity, Mommy?’
7
WHEN WLADEK and Leon had finished their work in the classroom, they would spend their spare time before supper playing games. Their favourite was chow anego, a sort of hide-and-seek, and because the castle had seventy-two rooms, any chance of repetition was very slight. Wladek’s favourite hiding place was in the dungeons, where the only light came through a small grille set high in the wall and one needed a candle to find one’s way around. Wladek was not sure what purpose the dungeons served, and none of the servants ever made mention of them, since they had never been occupied for as long as anybody could remember.
The River Shchara, which bordered the estate, became an extension to their playground. In spring they fished, in summer they swam, and in winter they would pull on their wooden skates and chase each other across the ice, while Florentyna sat on the bank anxiously warning them where the surface was thin. Wladek never heeded her advice, and was always the first to fall in.
Leon grew tall and strong; he could run fast, swim well and didn’t seem to tire and was never ill. Wladek knew he couldn’t hope to match his friend at any sport, even if they were equals in the classroom. Worse, what Leon called his belly button was almost unnoticeable, while Wladek’s was stumpy and ugly, and protruded from the middle of his plump little body. Wladek spent long hours in the privacy of his room studying himself in a mirror, wondering why he had only one nipple when all the boys he had ever come across had the two that symmetry seemed to require. Sometimes as he lay awake at night he would finger his naked chest and tears of self-pity would flood onto the pillow. He prayed that when he woke in the morning, a second nipple would have grown. His prayers were not answered.
Wladek put time aside each night to do physical exercises. He did not allow anyone to witness these exertions, even Florentyna. Through sheer determination he learned to hold himself so he appeared taller. He built up his arms with press-ups, and hung by the tips of his fingers from a beam in the bedroom in the hope that it would stretch him. But Leon continued to grow ever taller, and Wladek was forced to accept that he would always be a foot shorter than the Baron’s son, and that nothing, nothing was ever going to produce the missing nipple. Leon, who adored Wladek uncritically, never commented on any difference between them.
Baron Rosnovski had also become increasingly fond of the fierce, dark-haired trapper’s child who had replaced the younger brother Leon had lost when the Baroness died in childbirth.
Once Leon had celebrated his eighth birthday, the two boys began to dine with the Baron in the great stone-walled hall each evening. Flickering candles cast ominous shadows from the stuffed animal heads on the walls. Servants came and went noiselessly with great silver trays and golden plates bearing geese, hams, crayfish, fruit and sometimes the mazureks that had become Wladek’s particular favourite. Once the table had been cleared, the Baron would dismiss the servants and regale the boys with stories from Polish history, allowing them a sip of Danzig vodka, in which tiny gold leaves sparkled in the candlelight. Wladek begged as often as he dared to be told once again the story of Tadeusz Kosciuszko.
‘A great patriot and hero,’ the Baron would respond. ‘The very symbol of our struggle for independence, trained in France …’
‘… whose people we admire and love just as we have learned to hate the Russians and Austrians,’ volunteered Wladek, whose pleasure in the tale was enhanced by his word-perfect memory of it.
‘Who is telling this story, Wladek?’ The Baron laughed. ‘… and then after Kosciuszko fought alongside George Washington in America for liberty and democracy, in 1792 he returned to his native land to lead the Poles in battle at Dubienka. When our wretched king, Stanislaw Augustus, deserted his people to join the Russians, Kosciuszko came back to the homeland he loved, to throw off the yoke of Tsardom. He won the battle of where, Leon?’
‘Raclawice, Papa,’ replied Leon. And then he marched on to liberate Warsaw.’
‘Good, my child. But alas, the Russians mustered a great force at Maciejowice where he was finally defeated and taken prisoner. My great-great-great-grandfather fought with Kosciuszko on that day, and later alongside Dabrowski’s legions for the mighty Napoleon Bonaparte.’
‘For his service to Poland he was created the Baron Rosnovski, a title your family will ever bear in remembrance of those glorious days,’ said Wladek.
‘Yes. And in God’s chosen time,’ said the Baron, ‘that title will pass to my son, when he will become Baron Leon Rosnovski.’
At Christmas the peasants on the estate would bring their families to the castle for the celebration of the Blessed Vigil. On Christmas Eve they fasted, the children staring out of the windows for the first star, which was the sign the feast might begin.
Once everybody had taken their seats, the Baron would say grace in his deep baritone: ‘Benedicte nobis, Domine Deus, et hie donis quae ex liberalitate tua sumpturi sumus.‘ Wladek felt embarrassed by the huge presence of Jasio Koskiewicz, who tucked in to every one of the thirteen courses, from the barszcz soup through to the cakes and plums, and would surely, as in previous years, be sick in the forest on the way home.
After the feast Wladek enjoyed distributing gifts from a Christmas tree, laden with candles and fruit, to the awestruck peasant children - a doll for Sophia, a forest knife for Josef, a new dress for Florentyna - the first gift Wladek had ever requested of the Baron.
‘Is it true,’ asked Josef of his mother when he received a gift from Wladek, ‘that he is not our brother, Matka?’
‘No,’ she replied, ‘but he will always be my son.’
As the years passed, Leon grew even taller, Wladek grew stronger, and both boys became wiser. But then, in July 1914, without warning or explanation, the German tutor left the castle without even bidding them farewell. They never thought to connect his departure with the recent assassination in Sarajevo of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand by a student anarchist, an event described to them by their other tutor in solemn tones. The Baron became withdrawn, but no explanation was forthcoming. The younger servants, the children’s favourites, began to disappear one by one; and still neither boy could work out why.
One morning in August 1915, a time of warm, hazy days, the Baron set off on the long journey to Warsaw to put, as he described it, his affairs in order. He was absent for three and a half weeks, twenty-five days that Wladek marked off on a calendar in his bedroom each evening. On the day he was due to return, the two boys travelled to the Slonim railway station to await the weekly train with its three carriages, so they could greet him on his arrival. Wladek was surprised and alarmed to see that the Baron looked weary and broken, and although he wanted to ask him many questions, the three of them returned to the castle in silence.
During the following week the Baron was to be found conducting long, intense conversations with the head servant that were broken off whenever Leon or Wladek entered the room, making them uneasy, in case they were somehow the unwitting cause of his distress. Wladek even feared that the Baron might send him back to the trapper’s cottage - always aware he was a guest in the Baron’s home.
One evening the Baron called for the two boys to join him in the great hall. They crept in, fearful of this break in his usual routine. The brief conversation would remain in Wladek’s memory 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 once again, and will soon be at our gates.’
Wladek recalled a phrase spat out by the Polish tutor after his German colleague had left without explanation. ‘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 been broken in one hundred and fifty years of oppression,’ he replied. ‘It may be that the fate of Poland is in the balance, but we are powerless to influence history. We are at the mercy of the three mighty empires that surround us, and therefore must await our fate.’
‘We are both strong, so we will fight,’ said Leon.
‘We have swords and shields,’ added Wladek. ‘We are not afraid of Germans or Russians.’
‘My boys, your weapons are made of wood, and you have only played at war. This battle will not be between children. We must find a more quiet place to live until history has decided our fate. We must leave as soon as possible. I only pray that this is not the end of your childhood.’
Leon and Wladek were mystified by the Baron’s words. War sounded to them like another 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 the family’s small summer house to the north of Grodno the following Monday. The two boys continued, often unsupervised, with their work and play, because no one in the castle seemed willing to answer their myriad questions.
On Saturdays, lessons only took place in the morning. They were translating Adam Mickiewicz’s Pan Tadeusz into Latin when they heard the guns. At first they thought the familiar sound was no more than a trapper out shooting on the estate, so they returned to the Bard of Czarnotas. A second volley of shots, much closer, made them look up, and then they heard screams coming from downstairs. The two boys stared at each other in bewilderment, but still they were not afraid, because they had never experienced anything in their short lives to make them fearful. The tutor fled, leaving them alone, and as he closed the door, there followed another shot, this time in the corridor outside their classroom. Now terrified, the two boys hid under their desks, not knowing what to do.
Suddenly the door crashed open, and a man no older than their tutor, in a grey uniform and steel helmet, holding a rifle, 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, grabbed the two boys by the necks like chickens and pulled them out into the corridor. They were dragged past the dead body of their tutor, down the stone steps at the front of the castle and into the garden, where they found Florentyna screaming hysterically. Row upon row of dead bodies, mostly servants, were being laid on the grass. Leon could not bear to look, and buried his head in Wladek’s shoulder. Wladek was mesmerized by the sight of one of the bodies, a large man with a luxuriant moustache. It was the trapper. Wladek felt nothing. Florentyna continued to scream.
‘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, and was about to tell Leon the good news when a soldier appeared by their side.
