Jean Rombaud was the real-life executioner who beheaded Anne Boleyn - kindly brought over from France by Henry VIII to spare his wife unnecessary pain. In this irresistible historical adventure he is given the fictional treatment as he swears a vow to the ill-fated queen to bury her six-fingered hand - symbol of her rumoured witchery - at a sacred crossroads in France. But Europe is ravaged by religious war, and the hand of this feared, fabled, Protestant queen is so powerful a relic that another man will kill for it ...