To Leon he admitted only to being agreeably impressed: after all, he had won his place in the castle on merit. The main part of the building is early Gothic, explained the Baron's son, as if Wladek were sure to know what Gothic meant. Wladek nodded. Next Leon took his new friend down into the immense cellars, with line upon line of wine bottles covered in dust and cobwebs. Wladek's favourite room was the vast dining hall, with its massive pillared vaulting and stoneflagged floor. There were animals'

heads all around the walls. Leon told him they were bison, bear, elk, boar and wolverine. At the end of the room, resplendent, was the Baron's coat of arms below stag's antlers. The Rosnovski family motto read 'Fortune favours the brave'. After a lunch, which Wladek ate so little of because he couldn't master a knife and fork, he met his two tutors who did not give him the same warm welcome, and in the evening he climbed up on to the longest bed he had ever seen and told Florentyna about his adventures. Her excited eyes never once left his face, nor did she even close her mouth, agape with wonder, especially when she heard about the knife and fork, which Wladek described with the fingers of his right hand held out tight together, those of his left splayed wide apart.

The tutoring started at seven sharp, before breakfast, and continued throughout the day with only short breaks for meals. Initially, Leon was clearly ahead of Wladek, but Wladek wrestled determinedly with his books so that as the weeks passed the gap began to narrow, while friendship and rivalry between the two boys developed simultaneously. The German and Polish tutors found it hard to treat their two pupils, the son of a baron, and the son of a trapper, as equals, although they reluctantly conceded to the Baron when he enquired that Mr. Kotowski had made the right academic choice. The tutors'attitude towards Wladek never worried him because by Leon he was always treated as an equal.

The Baron let it be known that he was pleased with the progress the two boys were making and from time to time he would reward Wladek with clothes and toys. Wladek's initial distant and detached admiration for the Baron developed into respect and, when the time came for the boy to return to the little cottage in the forest to rejoin his father and mother for Christmas, he became distressed at the thought of leaving Leon.

His distress was well - founded. Despite the initial happiness he felt at seeing his mother, the short space of three months that he had spent in the Baron's castle had revealed to him deficiencies in his own home of which he had previously been quite unaware. The holiday dragged on. Wla - dek felt himself stifled by the little cottage with its one room and loft~ and dissatisfied by the food dished out in such meagre amounts and then eaten by hand: no one had divided by nine at the castle. After two weeks Wladek longed to return to Leon and the Baron. Every afternoon he would walk the six wior - sta to the castle and sit and stare at the great walls that surrounded the estate. Florentyna, who had lived only among the kitchen servants, took to returning more easily and could not understand that the cottage would never be home again for Wladek. The trapper was not sure how to treat the boy, who was now well - dressed, wellspoken, and talked of things at six that the man did not begin to understand, nor did he want to. The boy seemed to do nothing but waste the entire day reading. Whatever would become of him, the trapper wondered. If he could not swing an axe or trap a hare, how could he ever hope to earn an honest living? He too prayed that the holiday would pass qw*ckly.

Helena was proud of Wladek, and at first avoided admitting to herself that a wedge had been driven between him and the rest of the children.

But in the end it could not be avoided. Playing at soldiers one evening, both Stefan and Franck, generals on opposing sides, refused to have Wla - dek in their arn lies.

'Why must I always be left out?' cried Wladek. 'I want to learn to fight too.'

'Because you are not one of us,' declared Stefan. 'You are not really our brother!

There was a long silence before Franck continued. 'Ojciec never wanted you in the first place; only Matka was on your side.'

Wladek stood motionless and cast his eye around the circle of children, searching for Florentyna.

'What does Franck mean, I am not your brother?' he demanded.

Thus Wladek came to hear of the manner of his birth and to understand why he bad been always set apart from his brothers and sisters. Though his mother's distress at his now total self - containment became oppressive, Wladek was secretly pleased to discover that he came from unknown stock, untouched by the meanness of the trapper's blood, containing with it the germ of spirit that would now make all things seem possible.