swastikas were four-petal flowers exactly like those she had embroidered on the cushion border. They were even divided into squares by ridges of alabaster. Miss Pesel had copied exactly that pattern on the border. Violet wanted to laugh aloud, and that was what Arthur did: not a full-bellied laugh, but more than a chuckle. It was a sound of surprise, of bemusement, of concession. “Those are fylfots,” Louisa Pesel declared. “Fourteenth-century swastikas, if you like. And you’ll notice they are turning clockwise, long before any Nazi designer chose to make them so.”
