“It stands upon an Edgecomb hill,

Clothed with an air of old romance.

The house that once, long years ago,

Was decked to greet a Queen of France.”

—The first stanza in a poem by Boothbay's Charlotte Beath Brown

Perched on a hill overlooking the Sheepscot River stands a square white house, its sturdy chimney poking its nose out of the center of the roof. It looks old, and it is.

Inside, you will find low ceilinged rooms with floors crafted from wide (16 to 18 inch) pine boards. One room has a shallow brick fireplace with its original crane. Climbing the steep and narrow staircase, you come to a series of smallish rooms featuring magnificent river views and a peek at Fort Edgecomb, a blockhouse dating from 1809.

The center section of the home was built in 1774 on Jeremy Squam Island (now Westport Island) by a sea captain named Joseph Decker. After his death, it was purchased by another ship's master, Decker's son-in-law, Capt. Stephen Clough.

In 1833, according to the legend, the house was loaded on a scow, towed up the river and hauled to the top of the steep hill by a team of 40 oxen.

Over the years, it grew, acquiring an “L” and a barn.

Today, it is home to one of Maine's best writers, Lea Wait, who weaves her love of antique art prints, needlework and history into captivating novels of mystery and mayhem. Did I mention a cat is usually part of her stories?

But, she is more than a respected and successful mystery writer with more than 15 books to her credit. Number 16, “Threads of Evidence,” is due out on Aug. 16.

For part of her life, the smallish woman with the sparkling smile has also been the mistress of a house linked to a tall tale, that, like all tall tales, is part history, part legend and part bunk.

For more than a hundred years, the Edgecomb house on the hill has been associated with Maria Antonia Josepha Joanna, the 15th and second to last child of Maria Theresa, Empress of Austria, and her husband, the Holy Roman Emperor, Francis I.

In 1770, when she was just 14, she was shipped off to France along with a caravan that is said to have included 50 or so carriages, 100 plus footmen and more than 350 horses. She was a key element in a political deal between Austria and France. The teenager was to become the bride of a boy who became King Louis XVI.

Today, we know her as Marie Antoinette, the haughty last Queen of France, who “allegedly” told Parisians complaining of the price of bread to eat cake.

As queen, Marie Antoinette had the bad luck to rule during the French Revolution when, along with her husband, she lost her head in a very public fashion.

The queen's supposed connection to the Edgecomb house has been celebrated for more than 100 years.

Sitting in her tidy office in her celebrated house, Wait pulls out a series of framed post cards, one over a hundred years old, that feature photos of her home. They all call it “The Marie Antoinette House.”

Nearby, in a binder housing fragile, yellowed newspaper clippings, are versions of the tale, some true, others probably not, that have been attached to the home her family bought in the 1950s.

The short version of the Marie Antoinette tall tale, as Lea Wait tells it, has Capt. Clough, a merchant seaman working in the “spar and salt” trade.

“He would sail to Europe with spars cut from the area and return with a cargo of salt.”

While in France during the revolution that deposed and jailed the royal family, Clough and his ship Sally, supposedly, allegedly, and might have been involved in a plot to break the queen out of the clink and sail her away to America.

The story continues with the good ship Sally loaded with Marie's fancy furniture and other goods as Clough waited for her to arrive. But the French Revolution intervened and the queen was unable to keep her appointment to sail to Wiscasset.

So, once the skipper leaned of her demise, he just sailed home with all her stuff. And he filled up the white house on the hill with all the royal furniture. Over the years, it was sold and given away and — or at least that is the story for now.

Next week, Lea Wait will share some of the outlandish tales surrounding her fascinating residence.

Stay tuned. This is a fun story.