Read Chapter 5: The Fabric of Lies

The summons came before the bells had finished sounding prime. A liveried footman—scarlet coat, powdered wig, eyes that looked through Élodie as though she were furniture—delivered the message on a silver tray. Madame de La Motte required the new seamstress in the east wardrobe room. Immediately.

Élodie had not slept. The pallet in her tiny garret room was lumpy with straw, and Constance's words had circled her mind like moths around a candle flame. *Your grandmother Adèle was a famous court seamstress. She vanished forty years ago.* No one dared speak of it. And now the dressmaker who had hired her had gone pale at the sight of her mother's silver thimble.

She dressed quickly, ran her fingers through her hair until it lay flat against her skull, and checked her reflection in the small, clouded mirror. The girl who stared back was pale and sharp-chinned, with shadows beneath her eyes that no amount of pinching could hide. But her hands were steady. They were the only part of her that had never betrayed her.

The east wardrobe room was nothing like the cramped workshop where she had sewn in Lyon. It was vast, two stories high, with windows that faced the rising sun and threw long slabs of golden light across tables piled with silk and velvet. Mannequins in various states of undress stood like pale ghosts along the walls. There were already three women at work, their heads bent over a bolt of emerald brocade, and they did not look up when Élodie entered.

Madame de La Motte stood at the far end, pinning a sleeve onto a dress form with brutal precision. She was a tall woman, thin-lipped, with the severe elegance of a hawk. When she saw Élodie, her expression did not change, but something in her posture stiffened.

"Marchand. Good. You arrive on time. That is your first success." She gestured to a stool beside her. "Sit. Watch. Learn. You will not touch a needle until I tell you that you understand how this court works."

Élodie sat. Her hands folded in her lap. Her mother's thimble—silver, worn smooth at the rim, engraved with a pattern of tiny fleurs-de-lis—was tucked against her palm.

"Versailles is a machine," Madame de La Motte said, not looking at her. "Every person here is a gear, turning in concert with every other gear. When one seizes, when one grinds against its neighbour, the machine fails. And the machine does not forgive failure." She removed the last pin and set it aside. "You will learn to move within the machine. To know whose toes you may step on and whose you must never touch. You will learn the etiquette of the court as you learn the knotted seams of a royal gown—because they are the same thing. Every fold is a signal. Every stitch is a statement."

The other women—assistants, Élodie assumed—exchanged glances but said nothing. One of them, a sharp-faced girl with red hair, had a bandaged finger and a haunted look. The redhead from the trial, Élodie realized. The one whose stitching had been so badly botched. She had survived the trial, then. Survived and been reassigned, though her face suggested she wished she had been dismissed instead.

"I was trained in Paris," Élodie said.

The words came out before she could stop them. She felt her face heat, felt the lie sit heavy on her tongue like a stone swallowed whole. But she had learned, in the long days of the journey from Lyon, that a seamstress in the provinces was nothing. A seamstress with Paris training was something else entirely. And if she was to repay her debt, to discover what had happened to her grandmother, to survive in this machine of silk and teeth—she needed to be something.

Madame de La Motte's eyebrow rose a fraction of an inch. "Paris. Indeed. Under whom?"

Élodie's mind raced, scavenging names she had heard whispered in her mother's workshop, spoken with envy and longing. The great masters were legend. She reached for the most impressive, the most unreachable, the one least likely to be questioned because everyone knew he took no apprentices.

"Maître Auguste Roussel."

Silence. In the corner, the redhead dropped a pin. It struck the floor with a sound like a tiny accusation. The other assistants very carefully did not look at her.

"Roussel," Madame de La Motte repeated, tasting the name. "He retired before you were born, girl. Before your mother was born, perhaps. He took three apprentices in his life, and all of them are dead or retired from the trade. And yet you claim to have sat at his feet?"

Élodie's throat tightened. She had gambled and lost. The lie was too big, too obvious, and now it would follow her—word travelled fast in the palace, and faster still in the servants' wing. But before she could retract, before she could stammer out some confession, a woman's voice cut through the room from the doorway.

"The girl speaks the truth."

Everyone turned. A woman stood in the frame, framed by the morning light so that her features were briefly obscured. She was tall, as tall as Madame de La Motte, and dressed in deep violet silk with a fichu of white lace at her throat. Her face was narrow, aristocratic, with high cheekbones and eyes of a piercing grey that swept the room and settled on Élodie like a hawk sighting prey.

"Comtesse de Vaudreuil," Madame de La Motte said, and her voice was carefully, exquisitely neutral. "You honor us with your presence. I was not aware you had an interest in the queen's wardrobe."

"I have an interest in everything that occurs beneath the queen's roof," the Comtesse said. She stepped into the room, her heels clicking on the marble. Her gaze did not leave Élodie. "And I have an interest in Mademoiselle Marchand, who claims training under Maître Roussel."

Élodie's mouth went dry. She had prayed the lie would go no further than this room. She had prayed for deliverance, and what she had received instead was a Comtesse with grey eyes that saw through cloth and bone.

"Roussel was my godfather," the Comtesse said smoothly. "He died when I was twelve. But I remember his hands—the way they moved, the patience he had with a difficult seam." She smiled, and the smile did not reach her eyes. "Tell me, Mademoiselle Marchand: what stitch did he favor above all others for a silk-satin underlayer?"

Élodie's mind went blank. Then, from somewhere deep and sure, her mother's voice spoke in her memory. *"When you work with silk-satin, you never use a running stitch. The fabric will shift and pucker. You use a backstitch, small and even, so the seam lies flat and invisible—like a secret between the cloth and the wearer."* She did not know if this was true of Roussel, but she knew it was true of silk.

"A backstitch," she said. "Small and even. Never a running stitch. It disturbs the weave."

The Comtesse's smile widened, and this time it reached her eyes. "Correct. Roussel taught you well. It seems my godfather's legacy lives on."

Madame de La Motte made a small, almost imperceptible sound—not quite a cough, not quite a sigh. She looked at Élodie with new eyes, and Élodie could not tell if the dressmaker was impressed or furious or both.

The Comtesse turned gracefully, addressing Madame de La Motte as though they were old friends and old enemies in equal measure. "I am grateful for your care of the queen's wardrobe, as always. And I am glad to see fresh talent arriving. The court needs new blood." She looked back at Élodie, and her voice dropped to a murmur only the seamstress could hear. "I will be watching your career with great interest, Mademoiselle Marchand. Be careful what you stitch. The fabric of Versailles is easily torn—and even more easily stained."

She left as smoothly as she had arrived, a rustle of violet silk and a scent of orange blossom. The assistants returned to their work. The redhead did not look up. Madame de La Motte turned back to her dress form, her face unreadable.

"The Comtesse de Vaudreuil," she said at last, her voice flat, "is a woman who collects secrets the way other women collect jewels. She has just collected yours."

Élodie sat very still, her mother's thimble pressing into her palm, and understood that she had made her first enemy—or her first patron—and she could not yet tell which.