The Rose Code

by Kate Quinn

German military communications were relayed using hand ciphers, teleprinter codes, and above all Enigma machines—portable cipher devices that scrambled orders into nonsense so they could be relayed via Morse code over radio transmitters, then unscrambled in the field. Even if the scrambled orders were intercepted by the Allies, no one could break the encryption. Germany thought Enigma was unbreakable.

When I began drafting The Rose Code, I realized just how much of a departure this book was going to be for me. My two previous books were about women spies (The Alice Network) and female bomber pilots (The Huntress)--both professions with a hefty dose of built-in danger and drama. My Bletchley Park heroines, by contrast, are in very little physical danger; they spend the majoritiy of their war safe in little green huts in the countryside, scratching away at cryptograms with pencil stubs. Their war, unlike that of the Alice network operatives and the Night Witches, is fought in the intellectual arena rather than the physical . . . but for all that, it's no less grueling or heroic. The women of Bletchley Park may not have spilled blood in their fight, but they made enormous personal sacrifices in their battle to break Germany's supposedly-unbreakable Enigma ciphers.

Until D-Day, the fatal day, when they had splintered apart and become two girls who couldn’t stand the sight of each other, and one who had disappeared into a madhouse.

I knew from the beginning that The Rose Code would be the story not just of codebreakers at Bletchley Park, but of a broken friendship. Writing a dual timeline carries an inherent conundrum: if you are showing the same characters in a later time, it removes some of the mystery from the story because it's obvious that these women survived their war. So I introduced a different kind of mystery in the later timeline, and that question pulls tension throughout the book: what happened to these three friends during the war to make them turn against each other?

She lived in a house of the mad, where truth became madness and madness, truth.

Beth's asylum scenes were hard to write. Mental institutions of the past could be hellish places for women, many of whom were confined because they were inconvenient rather than because they were mentally afflicted. At least one Bletchley Park woman really was sent to an institution after an emotional breakdown, because it was feared she might reveal classified information in her broken state—her experience was the inspiration for Beth's incarceration, which is the purest form of hell to a woman whose brilliant mind is her greatest asset. But it's Beth's mind that will keep her body and soul together as she plans her escape.

Except—maybe—the two women she had betrayed, who had betrayed her, who had once been her friends.

One of the very first images I had of this book—back when I had no idea who my heroines would be, or what their names were, or what had happened between them—I knew exactly what my opening image was: a ciphered letter arriving in the mail for two women hundreds of miles apart, sent from behind the gates of an asylum by an enemy they haven't spoken to in years, containing a desperate cry for help. That opening image never changed, throughout all the many edits and plot shifts and research tweaks!

She’d grown up fifth of six children all crammed together in this cramped flat that smelled of fried onions and regret, a toilet that had to be shared with two other families—she’d be damned if she’d ever be ashamed of it, but she’d be doubly damned if it was enough.

A Kate Quinn heroine always wants something fiercely—my women characters always have big, unapolgetic goals. Mab's goal is a better life than the one she was born into, and she refuses to be badgered into accepting less. Osla, born with the kind of life and privilege Mab envies, has the goal of being taken seriously for her brains and skills, not just her looks and family. Beth, suppressed and emotionally abused almost from birth, isn't allowed to have any goals outside serving her family—but one little taste of Bletchley Park and its work, and the goal blooms in her: to use her brain, unabashedly and proudly, for the work it was born to do. These three women may be very different, but they WANT with all their hearts.

Better to live an old maid with a shiny desk and a salary in the bank, proudly achieved through the sweat of her own efforts, than end up disappointed and old before her time thanks to long factory hours and too much childbirth.

Mab may want a better life for herself and her little sister Lucy, and the fastest way to achieve that is a gentlemanly husband—but I included this line to show that Mab's plans aren't solely aimed at marriage, and she's not going to throw herself at just anyone for a wedding ring. If she can't find a well-to-do husband, she's still going to get the life she wants, and on her terms. A Kate Quinn heroine always has goals, but those goals are never just “Find a man!”

Are not there little chapters in everybody’s life, Beth had read in Vanity Fair only that morning, that seem to be nothing, and yet affect all the rest of history?

I was delighted to find this quote, which illustrated a crucial truth about this book and these characters: Mab, Osla, and Beth would never in the ordinary course of life have even crossed paths, much less become friends. It's mere chance that flings them together at Bletchley Park, and that seemingly innocuous beginning changes all their lives...and possibly the world, considering how crucial their work ends up being!

“‘The greatest tyrants over women are women,’” Mab quoted. “Have you read that far in Vanity Fair?”

Another quote that nicely encapsulated one of the book's villains—Beth's mother. I knew I wanted Beth to come from an abusive family, one that kept her battened down and her true potential strangled, because that would give her the greatest amount of growth as a character when she blossoms from wallflower to codebreaker-belle-of-the-ball. But I didn't want to go the stereotypical route with a drunken father who beats his children. Women can certainly be abusers too, so I made Beth's mother the abusive parent—she keeps Beth ground down primarily with religious fervor, emotional manipulation, and well-placed guilt trips.

Women”—Dilly leveled a finger at Beth—“are more flexible, less competitive, and more inclined to get on with the job in hand. They pay more attention to detail, probably because they’ve been squinting at their knitting and measuring things in kitchens all their lives. They listen. That’s why I like fillies instead of colts, m’dear, not because I’m building a harem. Now, drink your gin.”

Dilly Knox was an amazing historical figure: so absent-minded he forgot to invite his brothers to his own wedding, so brilliant he was recruited for codebreaking work back in the First World War. At first, when I researched the team that really was known as “Dilly's Fillies,” I side-eyed his penchant for recruiting solely young women—but his ladies were adamant that he was no lothario, and they clearly doted on him like an eccentric genius uncle. His belief that female codebreakers brought less ego to their work than male meant that some brilliant women at Bletchley Park got a spectacular chance to prove themselves, and I loved writing him in as Beth's mentor.

Mab seemed to love being married, and clearly Osla wanted to be, but Beth didn’t feel that tug.

I get annoyed by novels that assume all female characters must end up married and settled down with children. Real women find their happiness in all kinds of different domestic arrangements, and I like my heroines to reflect that: Eve in The Alice Network stays single and childless; Nina from The Huntress is married but doesn't ever want to be a mother; Beth in The Rose Code is happy to live alone and have regular liaisons with a lover who himself is in a settled and stable open marriage!

“Val Middleton now. You’re lucky I was in town for the royal wedding.”

I couldn't resist giving the former Kate Middleton's grandmother a cameo. The Princess of Wales's grandmother really was a Bletchley Park codebreaker, though she never shared information about her work with her granddaughter . . . who is now a royal patron of the Bletchley Park historic site.

“Duty, honor, oaths—they are not just for soldiers. Not just for men.”

Mab says it all right here: women fight too, often heroically and often in the shadows, and I live for finding such women in the cracks of the history books. They lived, and they are legion. If I live to be a hundred, I will never run out of amazing historical women who fought tooth and nail for their countries, their families, and their lives—it is my pleasure and my privilege to help shine a little more light on their achievements, so they can receive the credit they deserve.

KATE QUINN

Thanks so much, readers—I hope you enjoyed this peek behind the curtain into the world of “The Rose Code.” As a Marvel fan I love Easter egg cameos, so you may see some of the characters here pop up in my other books: Ian Graham, the journalist who interviews Mab for a newspaper story, is the hero of The Huntress and subscribers to my newsletter automatically receive a free short story I wrote (titled “Call Me Alice”) which shows not only Ian, but Eve from “The Alice Network.” I hope you'll consider checking out both! The Huntress: https://bit.ly/31oigwN Kate's newsletter: https://bit.ly/2DfrgIz