Read Chapter 20: The Midwife's Secret

The morning light through the high windows of the queen's private sewing room felt almost accusatory. Camille had spent the night staring at the ceiling of her narrow attic chamber, the needle warm against her skin, turning over the baronne's warning and the memory of Bertin's venomous smile. Sleep had been a stranger, and now her fingers were doing the work of habit while her mind drifted elsewhere.

The dress was an old thing—a riding habit from the queen's early years at court, before the weight of expectation had pressed the joy from her face. Marie Antoinette had ordered it brought out for alteration, a rare gesture of economy that had surprised even her own ladies. Camille suspected the queen sought comfort in the fabric of her youth, a time when Versailles had seemed less a gilded cage.

She worked the seam ripper along the inner lining of the skirt, letting the stitches part with soft pops. The silk was sturdy, well-made, but time had yellowed the underskirt. Her fingers paused at a slight irregularity—a place where the seam had been resewn with different thread, slightly thicker, slightly darker. A repair, perhaps. But the stitches were too neat, too deliberate, and they ran along a pocket that had been sewn shut so carefully that only a trained eye would notice.

Camille glanced around the room. Two other seamstresses worked at the far table, their heads bowed over embroidery frames. The queen's personal maid had stepped out for tea. She was alone.

She worked the seam ripper along the hidden pocket's edge, feeling the rush of discovery she always experienced when unearthing something concealed. The pocket opened to reveal a folded square of paper so old it had gone nearly translucent at the creases. She eased it out, her breath shallow. The ink had faded to brown but remained legible—a hurried hand, a woman's script.

*To whoever finds this—I have done what was asked of me. The child was born healthy, though the mother vanished before the week was out. She left this locket with me, saying it must return to the place where time bends. I am old and frightened. They watch the palace too closely now. I have hidden the locket where only the sea's voice can reach it, in the hollow of the old oak near the grotto at Trianon. If you are reading this, you are the one she spoke of. The one who arrives when the needle is found.*

The needle. Camille's hand went instinctively to her bodice, where the iron box's discovery rested against her heart. The metal seemed warmer now, almost pulsing, as if responding to the words on the page.

She read the note again, then a third time. *The one who arrives when the needle is found.* The previous tailor—the one whose grave they had plundered, the one whose diary Drouet had read—had been more than a tailor. He had been like her. And he had left instructions for the next traveler.

The child. What child? The note did not say. The mother vanished. She left the locket. And the midwife had hidden it near Trianon, in the grotto where Marie Antoinette played at being a shepherdess.

Camille folded the note and slipped it into her own pocket, then smoothed the seam of the dress as best she could. The resewn pocket now gaped slightly, an imperfection a sharp eye might catch. But the damage was done. She could not put the secret back.

"Is the alteration going poorly, Mademoiselle Dubois?"

Camille startled. The queen's maid—Madame de Campan—stood in the doorway, her sharp gaze taking in the dress, the seam ripper, Camille's flushed face.

"No, madame. Merely a stubborn seam. It shall be ready by this afternoon."

De Campan's eyes lingered a moment too long, but she nodded and withdrew. Camille exhaled slowly. The court was a place where secrets grew like weeds, and she had just made herself a garden for them.

She completed her work in mechanical fashion, her mind racing. The note mentioned a grotto at Trianon—she knew the place, the artificial cave built for the queen's private entertainments, sculpted to look like something from a pastoral fantasy. The old oak nearby, on the shore of the lake. She would need to search it, but the council's warning hung over her like a blade. Any night movement required written authorization signed by three senior officers. And Drouet watched for any excuse to expose her.

Daylight, then. A walk to Trianon was a natural thing—the queen herself encouraged her ladies to enjoy the grounds. She could slip away during the afternoon hours when the court slept. But the risk of being seen digging beneath an oak tree was considerable.

She needed a story. And she needed someone to watch her back.

Étienne. The thought of him brought both comfort and a dangerous flutter. Their midnight adventure had deepened something between them, had drawn them into a conspiracy whose shape she still did not fully understand. But his career hung by a thread already, held together by the fiction of a corruption audit that could collapse at any moment. Asking him to risk more on a tale from a dead midwife's hidden note might push him past the edge of what he could survive.

Yet she had no one else. The court was a nest of vipers; Bertin's friends were everywhere and the Austrian ambassador's shadow loomed. Drouet had vowed to entangle her. The baronne's warning suggested worse was coming.

The needle warmed again on her skin, insistent, as if it could hear her deliberation. She had risked everything for a needle with no power she could discern. Now a note had come that promised a locket hidden near Trianon, a locket left by another time traveler—possibly the mother of a child born years ago, possibly a woman like her who had found her way into this century and could not find her way back.

Could the locket be a key? A compass? The midwife's words suggested it needed to "return to the place where time bends." She had hidden it rather than let it fall into the hands of those who "watched the palace too closely." Those watchers had been present even then, years before Camille's arrival. Whoever hunted time travelers in this century, they were patient and they remained.

Camille finished the dress and presented it to de Campan with proper courtesy, but her thoughts were already walking the path to Trianon. The afternoon would be quiet. The queen planned to sleep, as was her custom. The court would dissolve into whispered intrigues and card games.

She would say she needed to gather fresh herbs for her headache. A peasant girl's remedy, she would claim, nothing more. Let them think her foolish with country superstitions. Sometimes the mask of simplicity was the best disguise.

But as she turned to leave, de Campan spoke again, her voice low and strange. "Mademoiselle Dubois. A word."

Camille froze. "Madame?"

De Campan stepped closer, her face unreadable. "There are old stories in this palace," she said. "Stories the court prefers to forget. Of a tailor who came from nowhere and vanished the same way. Of a child born in secret, whose mother gave her to the convent at Saint-Cyr before the court could learn her name. They say the tailor was seen following the midwife who delivered that child, asking questions no one would answer."

Camille's throat tightened. "I am sorry, madame. I do not know such stories."

De Campan studied her for a long moment. "No," she said softly. "Of course not. But if you ever did hear such a story, you would be wise to remember that de Campan keeps her ears open and her mouth closed. For a price."

She turned and left Camille standing alone in the doorway, the note burning in her pocket, the needle warm against her skin—and the sudden, chilling knowledge that she was not the only one in Versailles who knew how to read a hidden seam.