| Synopsis: |
>A MEDIEVAL MYSTERY< MARIANA IN PARIS - Lady Marian MacElpin is now an unofficial student at the university in Paris: to be admitted to lectures, she has to pretend to be a man. But it is to her that the other students turn when one is charged with the murder of his rich uncle, a miser and reputed alchemist. She quickly discovers that the murder (and a second related murder) had their roots far away on the island of Ibiza eighteen years before, and involve not only alchemy and the tarot and (of course, with Mariana there) witchcraft (one of the witches, known as La Fille d'Or, turns out to have been for years the secret mistress of Charles VI, King of France), but also a one-armed Albanian "king" of the Paris underworld, and such well-known historical figures as Christine de Pisan (then a girl of thirteen), and Nicolas Flamel, the alchemist (later Grand Master of the outlawed Prieure de Sion). |