It is La Maupin. La Maupin's life is a flame. And then expires too quickly. She dies at only the age of thirty three. This French beauty has a panoply of talents far ranging and effective. The span is from an operatic contralto on the Paris stage to the rarest of them all, a female fencing master; from taking a nun's vows to eschewing decency in a lifetime rife with sexual experimentation; from crimes against the Crown and King to convincing that Sun King to spare her the indignity of being executed; from the heights of a near royal birthright to an unknown pauper's grave of no concern to anyone and the absolute obscurity for her that prevails after. Until now Now she is accidentally sprung from that invisibility and is released to the world once again. La Maupin, otherwise known as Julie d'Aubigny, reached for it all. This 17th century human comet is somehow connected to the fate of Sarah's mother and her dear friend. The connection, its discovery, is critical. A life, maybe lives, depends upon it Parallel to La Maupin's drama, the story of the attempted revival of a business is told as well. Sarah's clan is in pursuit of relics again. And it is the Languedoc of southern France and Castle Montsegur which may reveal the only key to that business surviving. Is a relic found? Does La Maupin's influence that leaps four hundred years into the present batter all? Even salvation lurks in the shadows.