The doctor Masson maintained a practice and medical school in his house in the village of Versailles, in a large clinic filled with instruments and smelling of blood and iron, a place where those ailing came for aid and bright young men interested in medicine came to learn. This cloudy afternoon it was Masson’s daughter, Claudine, in the clinic, examining the body of a woman who had recently died. The woman had not been old, but her corpse showed ravages of some undetermined malady. Claudine looked up when her father entered.

“Did you meet the Queen?” Claudine asked breathlessly. “Is she like you thought she would be?”

Masson nodded with a smile.

“And the King?”

“Yes, though taller than he looks in the paintings.”

Masson moved to the table and pinched the corpse’s sallow skin. “The cause of this should show itself under my knife.” He noticed Claudine gazing at the lacerations on the dead woman’s ankles. “And the letting of blood through vivisection purges the body of illness, of course.” Claudine frowned. “Speak, if you must, Claudine. God knows I can’t stop you.”

Claudine was a small thing, but her fortitude and intelligence were sizeable. She leaned on the table and spoke directly. “It seems to me that doctors stand before corpses pronouncing reasons of death. Yet I wonder if they omit the most obvious cause of all. Their own incompetence.”

Masson shook his head. “Strong as a mule, like your mother, and twice as obstinate.”

“And like her I will keep asking. Why it is a peasant woman can birth six children and four of them grow on nothing but roots and straw, yet in that house on the hill children of noble birth suckle wet nurses and fatten on pheasants yet die and die again?”

“Peasants are hardy stock.”

“Do you not think perhaps our medicine could be to blame? If the Lord himself ministered to these children would he drain them of blood?” She pulled dried sprigs from her pocket. “These herbs I carry, they relieve as much pain as letting –”

“Potions and poisons. A midwife’s physic garden.”

“Yes, I’m a midwife. And these are as strong a remedy as any.”

Masson shook his head. “My dear girl. You are smart and kind. But few would see you that way. They see a woman of knowledge who speaks her mind, and the word they use is…”

“Witch. Say it.”

“I will not see you burned!”

Claudine sighed, touched his hand gently, and left the room.