England, 1628. The bloody war of religion in Europe continues, and after a botched and bloody defeat by the French, King Charles I's most trusted confidant and military commander, George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham, is murdered in Portsmouth in broad daylight. The assailant is a grieving and vengeful soldier, Jack Felton. The King is convinced that the murder of his closest ally is a conspiracy by Parliament, but his advisor, William Laud, Bishop of London, who has his own political ambitions, convinces King Charles I that dark forces greater than Parliament are at play. Laud points the finger at Scotland, where witchcraft is rife.
As King Charles I comes to terms with the loss of the Duke of Buckingham, William Douglas, the Earl of Morton, a staunch Royalist, is desperate to gain favour with the King by raising money to fund the King's hitherto failed wars. But to do so, he must secure the inheritance of his half-sister, Lady Margaret Douglas, the cousin of John Lyon, Lord Glamis, who has given her refuge at Glamis Castle. Margaret soon finds herself battling her half-brother to keep her rightful inheritance, but amid murder and treachery at Glamis, and the desperation to conceal her illegitimate daughter, she is wrongly accused of witchcraft, and of conspiring with Jack Felton to murder the Duke of Buckingham. As Margaret's fate is determined, the rift between those Scots loyal to Scotland and its religion, and those swearing fealty to the English King and the new faith, deepens. But all is not what it seems....
Thirteen years later, in 1641, in the Lands of the Ottomans, a former soldier is sent on a mission to a monastery in the Sinai desert to recover an ancient deed that could determine the outcome of the war in Europe. When a murder is committed, and the deed is stolen, the race is on to recover it. Should it fall into the wrong hands, the fate of Europe- and lands far beyond- hangs in the balance. It soon becomes apparent that Margaret's fate thirteen years earlier, this deed, and the soldier tasked to recover it, are closely connected, and that the survival or fall of kingdoms rests with those who, above all, wish to right terrible wrongs.
