Pimpernel and Rosemary

Prologue

I

This was in July 1916.

The woman sat alone in the room downstairs, stitching, stitching, by the flickering light of a small oil-lamp that stood on a rickety deal table close beside her. By the side of the lamp there were some half-dozen khaki tunics, and the woman took up these tunics one by one, looked them over and patted them and turned them about and about: then she took up the scissors and undid a portion of the lining. After which she stitched that portion of the lining up again, but not before she had inserted something—something that was small and white and crisp and that she took out from a fold in the bosom of her dress—between the lining and the cloth.

And this she did to each of the half dozen tunics in turn.

The room was small and bare, the paper hung down from the walls in strips, but it happened to have a ceiling that had only partially fallen in during the last bombardment, and so it might be termed a luxurious room, seeing that there were very few ceilings left in Guillaumet now. There was no roof to the house, and not a pane of glass anywhere, but as it was very hot this July, this was really an advantage. Quite a pleasant draught stirred the tattered curtain that masked the broken window and fanned the woman’s dark, unruly hair about her damp forehead.