The Falcon Queen - Book 3

Evil cares naught about love,
….except that it be lost

The incidents of armed skirmishing between French Canadians and Colonial Americans in the wilderness increase. Fort Niagara is augmented by three new forts, Fort Le Beouf, Fort Machault, and the massive Fort Duquesne built the headwaters of the Ohio River—modern day Pittsburgh. The French extend their land possessions to include western Pennsylvania, and the watersheds of the Ohio and Allegheny rivers. The lucrative fur trade is now dominated by the French. More threatening to the American colonies, the French enhanced their stature and influence with the tribal peoples, encouraging them to destroy the English colonial settlements. The American colonial governors are outraged by the massacres and the loss of the new settlements. They demand England to retaliate. Parliament sends an army of professional “redcoat” troops to America, with orders to build a road into the wilderness, and destroy Fort Duquesne. At sea, the British navy captures two French warships and dozens of French merchant ships, expanding this conflict into the Atlantic Ocean seaways. And yet war remained undeclared!

             As 1754 ends, Philippe Gerrard and Corrinne de Chanaye are married aboard the Falcon Queen by the Jesuit Intendant of New France, Archbishop Andre Nicolet. Corrinne is forced to sell the Falcon Queen, her cherished ship, to Lord Charles VanderMeer of the Dutch House of Brunswick to prevent its seizure by Intendant Francois Bigôt. The corrupt Intendant-General of New France reacts violently to this sale. He boards the ship, now Dutch territory and renamed William’s Queen. He fires a pistol at Corrinne. At the last second his aim is fouled by Major Michel Péan. The ball strikes Philippe Gerrard instead. The ship still sails. Philippe and Corrinne flee the corruption of New France to start a new life and a new Dutch trading business in the American city of Boston.

            But Corrinne and Philippe do not escape the ancient curse that pursues them. In the center hold of William's Queen, is the hex-sealed coffin containing the bone relics of the demonic vulnax-wraith. The wraith was sealed in this châsse using an arcane ritual of hexes. The wraith can be set free only if the seals on this châsse are broken. Philippe and Corrinne must now keep it hidden from the wraith’s servants who will search for it relentlessly to break these seals. Unbeknownst to Philippe and Corrinne, the wraith possessed someone new, a Hessian Colonel Wilhelm von Kleinfels. This German officer comes to Boston as the mercenary liaison to the British military. But possessed by the vulnax, he secretly plots to kill Philippe, Corrinne, and Lord VanderMeer, then find the châsse and break the seals. Colonel von Kleinfels is not alone. He brings other servants of the scarring wraith with him. The city of Boston soon has assassins on the prowl. But Corrinne and Philippe have help. Chittaqua’s spirit inhabits a white eagle. The tribal peoples call it a ghost eagle. The ghost eagle will forever clash with the vulnax wraith and attack any of its servants. But the outcome is uncertain.