The Rose Code

by Kate Quinn

  “Maybe.” Beth was rodding for the right-hand wheel position, fast and automatic.

  “You aren’t even the tiniest bit inquisitive?”

  “No.”

  “I can’t decide if you’re monumentally incurious or the purest bloody brain I’ve ever met.” Giles linked his hands behind his head, studying her as if she were a rare scientific specimen. “Hitler’s private telegrams or the Sunday crossword—it’s all the same to you.”

  “I crack messages. I don’t interpret them.” Beth swept her hair out of her face. “It doesn’t matter to me what I’m breaking. Why complicate things when there aren’t hardly enough hours in the day as is?”

  “Especially at my pace.” Giles made a face. He wasn’t a bad cryptanalyst, but he’d got used to three-wheel work in his old hut, and wading through four-wheel stuff like Abwehr took him ages.

  “You’re getting faster,” Beth said charitably.

  “Won’t ever be up to your speed.” He said it without resentment, which Beth appreciated. Some of the Hut 6 men were disconcerted by the unconventional working methods of Dilly’s team. That’s not the way this is done, one of the new mathematicians had said his first week, and Giles had bounced a wad of paper off his forehead and said, You crack the Spy key all by yourself, Gerald, and I’ll do it your way. Until then I’m going to do it Beth’s way.

  Beth cracked through her whole stack of messages before looking up and stretching her neck. “What else have we got?” Giving Jumbo’s ears a rub.

  Peggy brought fresh chicory coffee over. “Night shift’s done, Beth. Go home.”

  “This is what calms me down.” Osla and Mab were leaving this morning for Coventry—it would be dull in Aspley Guise without them, and Beth would far rather work the day shift. “Give me the Hut 6 duds if there’s nothing else.”

  Peggy pushed a stack over. “More possible bombing sites—Giles has the list of city codes.”

  “Loge for London, Paula for Paris . . .” Giles reeled them off. Beth pulled her crib sheets and rods over and began working. Not nearly so many air raids now as earlier in the war, but you never knew when a wave of German bombers would pop up like a nasty surprise out of a jack-in-the-box.

  “Giles,” Beth called over absently, some hours later. “What city is Korn code for?”

  “Korn . . . Korn . . .” He dropped his pencil, massaging his fingers. “Coventry. Don’t tell me poor little Coventry is due for another raid?”

  “Did they get hit before?”

  “Do you live in a box? They were nearly flattened two years back.”

  Beth stared at the jumble of German words coming out of the message before her. She still didn’t speak German, but there were words she saw often enough to recognize. She looked at this one and she saw Korn and numbers that might be coordinates . . . and then her eyes caught on the raid’s attack date. 8 November.

  “Giles,” Beth said slowly, “what day is it today?”

  Chapter 44

  Mab was used to the sight of air-raid damage, but gazing at Coventry, she realized how much London’s sprawl lessened the impact of the destruction. There, if you saw a house missing at least there were houses still standing on either side; if you saw bomb craters in a street, you saw automobiles swerving busily around them. Coventry, so much smaller and more compact, had been far more comprehensively wrecked. Mab barely counted one building in three that wasn’t either reduced to rubble or sporting boarded windows. The ancient cathedral stood open to the elements, stone floor dusted with snow, medieval windows with their fire-scarred stone tracery stark against the gray sky. “‘Bare ruined choirs,’” Mab echoed. The Mad Hatters were reading Shakespeare’s sonnets this month.

  “The big raid was in November of ’40,” Francis said, also gazing at the cathedral. “More than five hundred killed. I wasn’t in town, but I knew so many who died. There’ve been two more raids since, but nothing like that one.” He ruffled a hand through his chestnut hair. “It’s all in dismal condition, but I hope you can see Coventry for what it will be again, after the war.”

  He said it low voiced so Lucy, running ahead through a puddle, wouldn’t hear. “Come back, Luce!” Osla called, sauntering after in her blush-pink coat. She and Mab had said goodbye to Beth at the BP canteen this morning, then collected Lucy, who had been put on the train to Bletchley in care of the conductor, and they’d all headed for Coventry. Francis had greeted them at the station, a flat box under one arm that he hadn’t yet explained. Lucy had hung back behind Mab, regarding him warily through the fringe of her bangs. “Hello, Lucy,” he’d said easily. “What would you say to a walk around the city?”

  “No,” Lucy said. “I’d rather look at ponies than take a walk. Are there ponies?”

  “We’ll see if we can find you ponies.” Off they went, the four of them bundled in coats and scarves, and Mab was glad for Osla’s easy chatter, which acted like bright paint over Francis’s habitual silence and Lucy’s careful glances. Wait till we see our home-to-be, Mab promised her family silently. When the three of them all lived here together, Lucy would relax and Francis would laugh more and Coventry Cathedral would have a roof again. All it took was peacetime.

  “I think it’s a beautiful city,” Mab said as they turned away from the cathedral.

  Francis gave a half smile. He was even quieter than usual, his face paler after months under Scotland’s gray skies. Mab wondered what he’d been doing there. Maybe when they were married forty years or so and none of these secrets mattered anymore, they could tell each other.

  “So . . .” Francis offered his arm. “Do you want to see the house?”

  It was tall, tawny stoned, surrounded by a tangled garden dusted with snow. Mab envisioned roses, no more victory garden vegetables, because when the war was over she would just buy cabbages at the greengrocer’s. The front door creaked invitingly when he unlocked it.

  Mab almost tiptoed inside. A flagstone entryway, a grandfather clock ticking at the end . . . Lucy, instantly fascinated, tried to climb in. Mab looked into a parlor with a towering stone hearth—she could see cozy fires dancing in the evening—a dining room for Sunday lunches in a future where roasts and butter were no longer rationed . . .

  Francis began throwing blackout curtains open and Mab saw how big the windows were, how the house would look flooded in summer sunshine. “A housekeeper comes weekly to keep things aired and dusted,” he said. “She’s left us a cold lunch. I’ll put things out, you ladies look round.”

  “Good for sliding,” Lucy said, running her hand over the polished oak bannister.

  “Very good for sliding,” Mab agreed, following her upstairs. A bedroom upstairs with an enormous four-poster; three more bedrooms. She saw Lucy hesitate in the one with a cushioned window seat. “This could be yours,” Mab said, and held her breath.

  Lucy frowned. “Mum wouldn’t mind?”

  “No.” Mab’s mother hadn’t been able to hide her relief at the idea that she wouldn’t have to shepherd another child all the way through to majority. No, I don’t mind if you take her on, are you mad? Mab had no doubt her mother loved Lucy in her brusque way, but she was past fifty and tired. She didn’t really want to keep trimming bangs and scrimping for shoes. “Mum won’t mind,” Mab assured Lucy now. “We’ll go see her every week, but you’ll be living here with me.”

  “Now?”

  “After the war.”

  “Would he live here too?” A glance through the door, toward where Francis clattered in the kitchen downstairs.

  “Yes, he would.”

  Lucy frowned. She was wary of all strange men, and Mab wondered in a surge of bleakness if that was something she’d unconsciously passed to her daughter. “He’s a very nice man, Luce. You’ll like living here with us.”

  “It’s not London . . .” In Lucy’s short life she’d been uprooted from London and sent to Sheffield, then shuttled between the two depending on the ebb and flow of German air raids—Mab could tell the idea of yet anoth
er upheaval was making her daughter balk. But Lucy kept looking at that window seat, exactly the right size for a little girl to curl up in while drawing.

  “Let’s call this your room,” Mab said, and led Lucy downstairs.

  Francis and Osla had set the table in the kitchen for lunch—a pot of tea, cold sandwiches, an eggless sponge pudding with raspberry jam. Osla, bless her, was chattering pleasantries while Francis quietly poured tea. He gave Lucy a proper cup, not just nursery tea with hot water and milk, and on her chair Mab saw the flat box he’d been carrying earlier. “That’s for you, Lucy,” Francis said, sipping.

  Lucy pushed back the lid, looked into the nest of tissue paper . . . and her face flushed pink. Mab had never in her entire life seen a child look so happy. “Oh,” Lucy breathed, and lifted out a pair of tiny, glossy, knee-high riding boots.

  “For when you start riding lessons,” Francis said. What he must have spent in clothing coupons and favors for such a gift! “There’s a riding school not far away.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  Mab looked at her daughter, hugging her new boots and glowing like a small sun as she whispered a shy, ecstatic thank you, and felt her heart shatter. I love you, she thought, looking across the table at her husband. How I love you, Francis Gray.

  Chapter 45

  The air-raid siren went off long after midnight.

  Osla jerked awake. It took her a moment to remember she was sharing one of the ground-floor bedrooms of Francis’s Coventry house with Lucy. They’d all played backgammon and charades, then turned on the radio and listened breathlessly to reports of joint Allied landings in North Africa. Once Lucy was drooping, and Mab and Francis on the point of going up in smoke if they didn’t get some time alone, Osla suggested heading to bed.

  Now the air-raid sirens wailed outside.

  “Lucy, wake up—” The little girl was still sound asleep on the other side of the bed. How many air-raid sirens had a child of the East End heard by 1942? Lucy probably didn’t bother waking up for anything less than five hundred Junkers overhead. But Osla hadn’t faced an air raid since the Café de Paris had been blown to pieces all around her, and fear rose thick and foul in her throat as she fumbled for her shoes and flung her coat over her nightdress. Don’t panic, she told herself, scooping up the sleeping Lucy and stumbling out into the pitch-dark corridor.

  “Mab?” Osla called. A bone-humming drone sounded above—were bombers here already? Osla groped to the front door and flung it open. Outside the darkness was thick enough to choke on, pierced by finger-beams of searchlights stabbing at a roiling, reddened sky. Osla saw something metallic flash through one of the searchlights—a plane. A German bomber, piloted by some fresh-faced Luftwaffe pilot who was right now doing his best to blow Osla and Lucy and the rest of Coventry to cinders. She felt a stab of hatred so silver-bright it nearly staggered her, and then she heard footsteps down the stairs, Francis in trousers and shirtsleeves, Mab wrapped in his coat.

  “There’s an air-raid shelter a quarter mile down the road,” Francis said, sounding so blessedly calm Osla’s pulse steadied. “Safer than the cellar . . .” And they were all piling out through the tangled garden. Francis struggled into his spare coat as Mab tried to take Lucy, but the girl clung to Osla like a limpet, still mostly asleep.

  “Leave her,” Osla gasped. “At least she’s quiet.” Mab put her arm around Osla, squeezing in fierce, wordless love, and they joined the flood of people thronging the icy street: a child dragging a panicked dog, a woman with a kerchief over rag curls, a man with pajama bottoms stuffed into wellies. It was not really loud yet; it was all labored breaths and shuffling feet, muffled cursing and droning engines. Osla’s stockingless toes scraped inside her shoes; her arms ached supporting Lucy’s warm, solid weight. She could see flares drifting down like fireflies from the planes, lighting the ground for strikes from the air, and she thought of Philip at Cape Matapan, lighting the enemy cruisers for strikes from the sea. As near murder as anything could be in wartime . . .

  Lucy stirred muzzily, but Osla tugged the blanket back over her head. “We’re playing a game, darling. You’ve got to keep quiet as a mouse, that’s the game—”

  “Almost there,” Francis said as the crush grew thicker. He had one arm around Mab and his other hand grasped Osla’s shoulder, calm and reliable, and Osla had her panic firmly gripped between her teeth. The imagined air-raid shelter gleamed like a beacon: a cozy underground place where everyone would share blankets, someone would have a flask of whiskey, and maybe they’d sing “Could You Please Oblige Us with a Bren Gun?” until the all-clear sounded. It would be nothing like the Café de Paris.

  Then Francis’s hand tore away from Osla’s arm as a crowd of young men pushed through the throng, shoving ahead at a flat run. Jostled, Osla’s foot missed the curb and slewed sideways. Pain shot clear up to her knee. She fell, managing to twist to one side so she didn’t crush Lucy as the two of them hit the street with a jolt. Osla’s entire body vibrated as though she’d been slammed through the windscreen of a car. Lucy yelped, fighting free of the blanket.

  “Lucy!” Mab’s voice, high and panicked. Osla couldn’t see her friend. The night was black and red, people streaming in all directions.

  “Lucy, here—” The world tilted and spun, but Osla levered herself up, lunging to grab hold of the little girl. Her fingers locked round that tiny wrist. “Stay with me, sweetheart—”

  A vast percussive whump sounded, and Osla heard the shatter of exploding windows. For an instant she saw the blue flash of the explosion that had torn the Café de Paris apart, torn her dancing partner’s lungs from his chest—and she flinched, fingers springing open.

  In that moment, Lucy wrenched away and fled into the night.

  Chapter 46

  Lucy!” Mab’s throat was raw with calling. She nearly fell over a chunk of masonry in the street, staggered upright, and rebounded off a woman dragging a human chain of children toward the air-raid shelter. The din was deafening; bombs fell, smoke billowed, screams rose, but Mab could hear nothing, see nothing, that wasn’t Lucy. How could a child surrounded by three adults disappear in an instant? Her daughter had slipped into this rushing torrent of panic and bombs and disappeared like a minnow into white water. “Lucy!”

  “Mab—” Francis’s hand like a steel band over her arm. “Get to the shelter, let me look for her.”

  She didn’t even answer, just tore away and shoved further up the street, panic rising red and clawing in her chest. Osla reached out with one shaking hand, the other clapped to her face, which had been scraped raw against the street. “Mab—” Blood ran through her fingers. “We’ll find her, I promise, we’ll find her—”

  “Why didn’t you keep hold of her?” Mab snarled. She would have struck Osla if Francis hadn’t seized her again.

  “You two look here, I’ll see if she’s making for the house.”

  Mab dimly saw the sense of that and began to fumble down her side of the street as Osla staggered across to the other side and Francis took off the way they’d come. Mab saw the flash of his hair in a jagged spear of red light, and he was gone. She flung herself against the nearest door, a house with blackout shutters blown to splinters. “Did you see a child—”

  No use. The din was deafening, explosions and toppling timber and the dry growing rush of fire rising every second. Everyone was sprinting openly for the cover of a shelter or a cellar. The night choked black on terror, and Lucy was nowhere to be seen. Mab sobbed, stumbling from house to house, banging on doors, fumbling behind pots and lampposts—anywhere a child could have curled up, small and cowering as a beetle. Dimly she saw Osla searching across the street. A deafening crash sounded as a house collapsed, and Mab felt a sickle-sharp splinter carve a path across her hand.

  “Lucy!”

  No answer. Overhead the roar of engines as planes throbbed through the sky. Searchlights stabbed the air, hunting them out so the antiaircraft defenses could line up
a shot. Shoot them down, Mab wanted to scream, shoot them all down so I can find my child—but the bombers droned on untouched, disappearing into billows of smoke. Another house collapsed, and arms locked around Mab, dragging her down. “Get down,” Osla was shouting, “get down—”

  No, Mab wanted to scream, but Osla half threw her to the ground in the shadow of a big brick depot, wrapping her arms around Mab’s head. The explosions were all around them now, cobbles and bricks cracking and leaping like drops of fat in a hot pan. She tried to stand and a wave of smoke forced her down again, choking. Mab didn’t know where the sky was; this was her very first air raid, and the world had turned to black smoke and shrieking metal. She felt Osla trembling, taut with terror, and held on to her for dear life.

  As soon as the deafening wave overhead passed, Mab was back on her feet and stumbling down the street, calling her daughter’s name. Calling until her throat scraped.

  “Mab!” Osla was screaming right into her face. Mab’s ears rang so badly, she could barely hear. “Mab, it’s stopping!”

  Mab swayed, gulping in a breath that tasted like ash. She looked overhead—no waves of bombers showed in silver splinters against the searchlights. There was still the hungry crackle of fire, but she thought she heard the shouts of fire wardens, the hiss of water being trained through hoses. “It’s stopping,” Osla repeated. Mab had never seen her stylish, beautiful billet-mate look such a wreck, curls clinging ash-matted to her neck, face darkened with smoke.

  “It’s stopping,” Mab repeated shakily. She could feel blood trickling from her blasted ears. “Lucy will come out from where she’s hiding now.” She was only hiding; it was all right.