Staked (The Iron Druid Chronicles, #8)(35)
“Wis?awa Szymborksa was a Polish poet, and a Nobel Prize winner,” Klaudia explains. “She wrote about small things, details in life that carry great significance. The English translation I saw in America was a good one. Maybe you should try that, and then, if you like her work, learn to read it in Polish.”
“That’s an excellent idea,” Malina says. “Szymborska isn’t a dire nihilist.”
“Thanks for the tip. I’ll definitely look into it.” I rise to my feet, eager to get on with it. “I’ll meet you back here when I have something. I’m sure I won’t have to tell you when—you’ll probably know that before I do, haha.”
They laugh politely, but Malina stops me after a couple of steps. “Before you go, Granuaile, might you have any idea about when Mr. O’Sullivan plans to make good on his promise to rid Poland of vampires?”
“Oh, he’s working on it,” I say. “That’s for sure.”
“We know he’s been eliminating vampires elsewhere,” she replies. “But he’s not doing it here, where he said he would.”
“I haven’t seen or spoken to him for a while, but I’m sure he hasn’t forgotten and I’m sure he has a plan.”
“Do remind him for us the next time you speak, won’t you?”
“I will,” I promise. “See you later, Sisters. Enjoy your picnic.”
<Where are we going now?> Orlaith asks as we return to the tree.
Germany. You know they have sausages in vending machines there?
<They do? Germany sounds like a very smart country.>
CHAPTER 10
I didn’t tell Oberon how worried I was about him as I ran the bathwater. I just reminded him not to lick his chops until I said it was safe and to let me know if he felt any pain. I’d had to trigger my healing charm already to combat ichor poisoning; a couple of Diana’s bone splinters had cut my skin, and the insidious stuff had entered my bloodstream. Trace amounts like that I could take care of, but if Oberon ingested a mouthful I’d be hard pressed to deal with that.
Sam and Ty had one of those detachable showerheads with a ringed metal hose that visually suggested a steel caterpillar. Turning the water on full blast to get the most pressure I could, I told Oberon to close his eyes so I could focus on his snout first.
<Hey! Suffering cats, Atticus, what are you doing?> he protested, and squirmed as the water assaulted his snout and began to sluice the ichor away.
“Keep still, buddy. We have to get this off you quickly.”
<You’re acting like it’s nuclear waste.>
“It’s worse than that.”
<It is? Then get it off me!>
“I’m working on it, Oberon.”
<Tell me that story so I can think about something else.>
“All right, we’re heading back in time to seventeenth-century France, at the court of Louis the Fourteenth.”
<Did he ever get mad about his name?>
“What?”
<Did he ever say, “Geez, all the names in the world out there and my family picked Louis fourteen times?”>
“I don’t think he was embarrassed about it. He was the king.”
<Oh. Yeah, I guess that would take the sting out of it.>
The court of a king is littered with pages waiting to do small errands for the nobility. You’re tripping over them quite often, and someone has to train them how to get out of the way and conduct themselves properly. That task fell to the father of our heroine, who trained his daughter with all the pages of the court to fence and take insult and give it right back. Her name was Julie d’Aubigny, and she was married very young to a man named Maupin, who was sent to the south of France for work while she remained in Paris. She was known as Mademoiselle Maupin after that, a famous opera singer, lover, and duelist.
She often dressed as a man but did not disguise her face or do anything else to pretend she was actually male; she sang for her supper in local taverns and participated in fencing exhibitions with a man she traveled with for a while. But when she tired of him, she began a torrid affair with a young woman, and eventually her lover’s family found out and decided to solve what they saw as a problem by sending the young woman to a convent. Mademoiselle Maupin did not give up, however—she was in love. She applied to this convent in Avignon herself, taking her vows and reuniting with the young woman. She immediately began plotting their escape and came up with a simple plan: Set something on fire. What she set on fire was the body of another nun—already dead—in the bed of her young lover, thereby covering their escape. They had another three months of passion together before their own flame flickered out and the girl returned to her family. Mademoiselle Maupin, in the meantime, was charged with arson and body snatching, the penalty for which was to be burned alive. She never faced those charges, though—she got pardoned by Louis XIV later, thanks to her connections at court.
Mademoiselle Maupin hit the road again, singing, taking a series of male lovers, and occasionally kicking someone’s ass in a duel, until she arrived in Paris and joined the opera there. Her life was only mildly tempestuous for a while—she had to beat the hell out of a misogynistic actor once and her landlord on another occasion—but then she landed in serious trouble again when she attended a fancy ball dressed as a man and kissed a young woman there in front of nobility. This was quite offensive according to the social customs of the time, and she was promptly challenged to a duel by three different men. She went outside and beat them all, one after the other; while they bled in the street, she went back inside and kissed the girl again.