A noise in the bracken startled us. We looked around, but there was nothing there. It could have been a fox, but the trees were so dense it was hard to see.

“Should we go?” I whispered.

The rustling became louder—it was definitely a person—and we crept quietly behind a broad tree. When I turned, I saw a fat, angry-looking bald man stalk into the clearing, his whiskers gray and scraggy, a greenish stain on his shirt. With him was Mr. Slater, of all people. I always suspected he was up to no good. I wonder if Venetia knows about this.

“It’s Old George. Let’s get out of here,” Tom said urgently, pulling me away.

As we turned, I saw Mr. Slater’s face look round to us. Did he see us?

We fled, our legs pounding the ground like a whirl, the bracken and dead leaves crackling under our feet, darting deeper into the wood, nipping around heavy trunks and tucking between dense bushes until all we could hear was the sound of our own rhythmic footsteps in the silent surroundings.

Suddenly, as if a heavy curtain had been swept open, we tumbled out of the wood, and the vast expanse of English countryside lay before us, a colossal spread of multicolored hues bathed magnificently in the brilliant golden sunshine.

We fell down, gasping for breath, laughing, checking behind us for the shadow of Old George on our trail, but there was nothing, only the light whisper of the leaves as a breeze lifted them to and fro, and the songs of the birds flitting busily around the edge of the greeny-gold field of wheat before us.

“We’d better go home,” I said.

“You know where to find me,” Tom said, helping us up. “At the hop pickers’ huts.” And with that he turned and began a wide-strided walk down the hill to the river.

“Bye,” Silvie said quietly, which meant that she liked him, and I had to admit, as we picked up our picnic basket and headed home, that it was rather fun having an adventure of our own.

As we trotted around the edge of the wood, I asked Silvie if she’d ever seen anyone sneaking around the wood.

“Proggett,” she replied.

“Proggett? Where?”

“In Peasepotter, behind trees, in the Pixie Ring, down by Bullsend Brook,” she said quietly in her taut Czech voice. I know she disappears off by herself quite a lot, but I never knew she’d been wandering all over the countryside. “He meets men,” she added.

“What kind of men?”

“Just men.” She glanced away. “Boring men.”

“Were you scared?”

She shook herself up, running ahead of me with bravado. “No.”

As I sped up behind her, I remembered where I had heard the name Allicot Farm. It’s a place on the other side of Litchfield. Mrs. Gibbs started selling their honey in the shop last month. I wonder how Old George came across his assortment of goodies—how Mrs. Gibbs got her hands on it. And how exactly Mr. Slater was involved. I have decided not to inform Venetia quite yet. Let her come crawling to me. Or, better still, keep it tucked away for a time when it might be put to good use.

Wednesday, 29th May, 1940

Who’d have thought such a disaster could happen! And that I would be caught up in the midst of it! Tonight I am in Dover, working fast to patch up the soldiers coming off the boats from Dunkirk. Hundreds of thousands of troops surrounded and trapped on a beach in France, the Luftwaffe strafing them with bullets, and all we can do is get everyone who has a boat to go off and rescue them, from fishing boats to ferries and yachts even. It’s as if we’ve gone back to medieval times!

Dover is a mass of activity. Teams of men pouring off boats of all shapes and sizes and tramping through the town to the railway station. Most of them, thank goodness, seem to be in good humor, overjoyed to be home. But many others look like they’ve been through a nightmare. Then there are those on stretchers, bleeding and delirious, or silently dying.

The thick mess of fresh blood, fresh casualties, is relentless in our surgery, an old workhouse converted into a hospital, reeking of human death lightly confused by the acidic stench of sterilization. The medics are too few for so many brutally wounded men. But we are trying our best, working from one patient to the next with gruesome practicality.

They picked me up at dawn in a bus packed with available doctors and nurses from the area, and we’re here for a few days at least. It’s now well past midnight, and I’m sitting in a dusty back room with an hour off to catch whatever rest I can. They’ve set up a few beds, but every time I close my eyes all I see is blood and gore, and I can still hear the screams of men as the pain gets too much, or worse, the sudden disconcerting quiet of death.

I’m trying not to think about David, but it’s like a throbbing beacon at the back of my brain. I know he was in France—almost all our troops were—so he must be somewhere in this chaos. I hope.

We have some desperate cases here. Earlier today I was called to help a bloody mess of a young officer by the name of Berkeley who had a vast gash of shrapnel in his side. I quickly realized that it was too late for surgery, too late for anything. His bleeding was relentless, spurts pulsating into the drenched poultice that I pushed desperately into his rib cage.

“You’re going to be all right. You’ll be just fine,” I said softly.

“I’m going to die, aren’t I?” he murmured, his refined tones sounding very young indeed. He must have been just out of school, the same as David.