The first of a trilogy set in 17th-century England and France, during the time of the Thirty Years War and, later, the English Civil War. Returning to his home on Guernsey--from which he had been sent away as a child after his mother was burned as a witch--Helier L'Eree abducts Marguerite, daughter of the man responsible for his mother's death, and flees to France where he enters the service of Cardinal Richelieu.