Siege of Stone Read online

  And now "Mr. Alister Scobie" was presumed dead, and the wealth accrued over seven hundred years had come to Colin. It was not, however, as much as might have been supposed, for no bank could have been expected to remain solvent through seven centuries of changing political climates. Still, it was an amount more than sufficient for Colin's purposes. It would buy explosives and weapons and cooperation. It would feed and house his men. And when the time came, it could help to finance a new, free Scotland.

  But first Mulcifer would have to fulfill his end of the bargain.

  Chapter 18

  While Tony watched the comings and goings in Castle Dirk from the ridge above it, Joseph and Laika traveled to the county town of Dingwall, where the public records of Ross and Cromarty County were kept. Their Princeton credentials gained them admittance, and they told Mr. Douglas, the young man in charge of the records, that they were looking for information on the ownership of a certain castle and adjoining lands, back as far as the thirteenth century, if those records existed.

  "Oh, they exist, all right," the young man said. "County deeds date back just that far, in fact. After the defeat of Edward I, the Scottish nobles wanted done with Scotland what William I had done in England centuries before with the Domesday Book—a complete record of land ownership. It was attempted during the reigns of the Bruce and David II, but was never completed. Still, Ross and Cromarty historians were fortunate in that our county was pretty accurately recorded."

  "But the Domesday Book was written in a clerical Latin," Joseph said.

  "Which hardly anyone is capable of translating today, yes, I know," said Douglas. "But we were fortunate in having the Reverend Stewart translate the whole of the records a century ago." He pointed toward an identically bound set of thick volumes sitting in a glass-fronted lawyer's bookcase. "They were published in the 1890s by the county record society. You'll find both the translation and the original Latin, should you need it."

  "I doubt it," Laika said. "My Latin's a bit rusty. Where would we find more recent records?"

  "Everything from 1400 to 1900 is in the record society's volumes on that far wall. And after 1900, there are only individual deeds in filing cabinets. Those I'll have to get for you on request."

  There was no mention of Castle Dirk in Reverend Stewart's translation, so they searched for any large properties on the Gairloch peninsula. But since the entries were listed in alphabetical order by the fourteenth-century names of the land holdings, they found themselves having to examine every one to see if its location matched that of Castle Dirk's.

  After two hours, Joseph finally said, "Bingo," and read:

  Andrew Mackay Knight holds SRON EILEAN near GAIR LOCH. Neilson has there 3 ploughs; and 40 petty burgesses, 12 cottagers, 12 villagers and 5 smallholders who have 15 ploughs. A castle is there and a church and a priest. 1 fishery, two mills, which pay 26s.

  Joseph broke off his reading. "There are some more details about how big the pastures and woodlands are, along with what's taxable, but the key is Gair Loch and the castle."

  "But where's 'Sron Eilean'?" Laika asked. "I haven't heard of that."

  "Names don't last forever," Joseph replied. "Let's see if we can find some old maps." As it turned out, they didn't need very old maps at all. As late as the 1960s the area of coast near Castle Dirk was referred to as "Sron Eilean an Air."

  "Must be it," said Joseph. "Andrew Mackay, Knight. Templar, do you suppose? Now that we've got an owner, let's see who else the castle of Sron Eilean belonged to."

  It took the rest of the day to glean the information. In the intervening seven hundred years, there were twenty-three individual owners of the property from a dozen families: Mackay, Pollard, Magee, Nelson, Macphail, Bayne, Paulson, Allen, Morgan, Williamson, McQuaid, and Scobie, the most recent owners, according to the deed, which had been amended only a week earlier to reflect the ownership's passing from Alister Scobie to his son Francis.

  "Twelve families," Laika said thoughtfully. "Could they be the names of the twelve Templars?"

  "I suppose it's possible, but I don't know. Sometimes a dozen is just twelve." He looked over the list and dates again. "This is a long record of owners, but there's a consistency to it. In 1353 the property passed to Andrew Mackay's son Peter. Then, fifty years later, it was sold to Simon Pollard. Went to his son in 1451, then sold in 1498 to Richard Magee, and so on until the 1700s, when the changeovers start every thirty years or so instead of every fifty. But it's still the same—a sale to a different family, the son of that family inherits, or here and there a nephew, but that might have been just to obscure the transitions a little, and then he sells the property some years later . . ."

  Joseph sat silently for a moment, then got up and went over to young Douglas's tiny office and asked where the family and clan histories were kept. It took only a minute for Douglas to find a history of the Mackay clan.

  "This look familiar?" Joseph asked Laika, when Douglas was back in his office. He pointed to a gold coat-of-arms stamped on the front cover cloth. The picture was of a fist holding a dirk upright, and the words on either side read, "Manu forti."

  "This is the coat-of-arms Tony saw in Castle Dirk," Laika said. "But 'Manu forti'?"

  "'With a strong hand,'" Joseph said. He opened the book and found in an appendix a list of clan septs down which he ran his fingertip, smiling. "Every one of the twelve family names who have owned Castle Dirk," he said, "is a sept of the clan Mackay."

  "So what's a sept?" Laika asked.

  "An associated family. Sometimes it's just a variant of the clan name, like Mackay produced MacCoy and Mackie and Magee, to name one of the castle's owners. Other times, as in the case of Nelson and Pollard and Allen, they're families who would fight with the Mackays and also claim that clan's protection."

  "So what's the big deal? Maybe they just kept the castle close to the family."

  "Or maybe," Joseph said slowly, "the family never got rid of it at all. Look, we know . . . or think . . . that the Templars, including this McAndrews, had abnormally long life spans. What if all these sales and transfers were just a cover? What if every single person listed here, fathers and sons, were all Sir Andrew Mackay?"

  "There's no way to prove that, Joseph."

  "Maybe there is." He made a list on a piece of paper, approached Douglas again, and asked him where the actual deeds were kept, the ones that would bear the buyers' and sellers' signatures.

  "They would be in the archives, sir," he answered. "I'm afraid they're classified as historical documents, and are not accessible to the public."

  "Do you have them on the premises?" Joseph asked.

  "Well, yes, but . . ."

  "There's no one here but we and thee, Mr. Douglas, and of course, the ever popular Sir Walter." Joseph took a roll of Scottish currency out of his pocket and fanned it so that Sir Walter Scott's face looked up from its pink background multiple times. "If you can allow me to see three of those actual deeds on that list, from any three different centuries, a number of Sir Walters will be happy to make a new home in your pocket. You can even hold the deeds for me so that I won't have to touch them, if you like."

  Douglas rubbed his right thumb with his fingers, and then took the roll of bills from Joseph. "Madam," he said to Laika, "if you would keep an eye on things up here, I'll take the gentleman down into the archives for a moment."

  The archives were a temperature and humidity controlled room in the basement. Douglas searched for several minutes, then opened a document case, took out a quarto-sized paper in a Mylar sheet, lay it carefully on top of the case, and, with a charmingly antiquated gesture, invited Joseph to view the item.

  It was the deed of sale from 1353. The writing was barely legible, but Joseph could see where Peter Mackay had signed to claim his father's estate. He took detailed notice of the signature and nodded that he was satisfied.

  The procedure repeated itself twice. Joseph viewed the 1498 deed in which James Pollard had sold the property to Richard Magee,
and the 1832 deed in which Robert Allen had sold it to Brian Morgan. Then he nodded his thanks to Douglas, who returned the third deed to its case, and they returned upstairs.

  Joseph and Laika left, with a final expression of thanks to Douglas. It wasn't until they were in the Peugeot that Joseph answered Laika's anxious inquiries. "The deeds spanned nearly five hundred years," he said. "I'm not a handwriting expert, but I'd bet my life that those signatures were written by the same person."

  "The lawyers must have been in on it, then," Laika said.

  "Back then lawyers weren't as prevalent in every aspect of life as they are now. But even in the 1400s, I'm sure there were lawyers whose silence could be bought. We have to break that silence, though."

  "I don't think the townspeople are going to be very helpful."

  "Then we'll talk to somebody else—a neighbor." He glanced at Laika. "How about Mr. and Mrs. MacLunie?"

  "Of course," Laika said. "They've lived near the castle for years. We can show them McAndrews' picture, the one we got from the Sûreté."

  "The ninety-year-old one," Joseph said, thinking of the first time they had realized that "Robert Gunn," "Kyle McAndrews," and whatever other aliases he might have used had been around since at least the beginning of the present century.

  "Yeah. Maybe they'll recognize him."

  By the time they stopped at the cottage and picked up the photo, it was nearly dark, and Tony had returned from his surveillance. He told them that the van that had left the day before had not yet returned, and they told him what they had learned about the castle and its possibly long-lived owners.

  They made dinner, and afterward Laika telephoned the MacLunies. She asked if they could come over to ask them some questions, and Mr. MacLunie agreed without a moment's hesitation.

  Both the man and his wife were waiting eagerly at the door when they arrived. They immediately offered tea and cakes, and would not take no for an answer. Mr. MacLunie asked if they had found anything yet, and they said they hadn't, and then told him that they had become interested in the castle.

  "Aye," MacLunie said. "Someone's come back, then. There's young men there. I've seen them goin' in and out of town."

  "But it's not time yet, that's what puzzles me," said Mrs.

  MacLunie, her first words since she had offered them cake. "Not time?" said Laika. "What do you mean?"

  "Oh, well, it's every ten year, isn't it?" Mrs. MacLunie said shyly, as though she shouldn't have spoken at all.

  "Every ten years for what?" Laika pressed.

  "Well, till they gather, isn't it? Every ten year they come. But it's nae been that lang now. And they look different, too, not as gentlemanly as before. I think there's more of them, too."

  "Wait a minute, Mrs. MacLunie. You're saying that every ten years there's been a gathering of men at the castle?"

  "Oh, aye," her husband interjected. "Ever since lang as I can recall."

  "What do they do?" asked Joseph.

  "That's what we never knew," MacLunie said. "But around here we're not ones to go pokin' our noses into things. I recall once when I was just a lad, though, I seen some of them close up. Me mates told me they'd heard from their parents as how they was a bunch of dell worshippers, and dared me to climb in and take something from the castle to show as how I'd been there. Well, I was a braw lad back then, so I did. I'd seen the motors arrive and knew they was all parked in the courtyard inside, so I decided to steal me somethin' off one of 'em.

  "I waited till night and then went in right through that front entry, bold as you please. And dumb as I was, I was caught right quick by a rough dressed fellow, I guess a servant. He drags me into the kitchen by the ear, and a couple of gentlemen all dressed in tweeds come in and look at me like they were preachers and I'd just pissed on a Bible, and the one says to me as how I don't belong there and I'd better go and never come back or nobody'd see me ever again. Then that servant drags me out by the ear and lets me go. I ran, I'll tell you."

  "What did your friends say?" Laika asked, not wanting to push too fast. "Did they believe you?"

  "Ach, as scared as I was, they believed me all right, even the next day."

  "Mr. MacLunie," Laika said slowly, as though she'd just thought of it, "do you think you'd remember the men's faces?"

  "I'll never forget them. Burned like a scar into my brain, they were." He laughed. "Why, seen 'em around?"

  Laika reached into her purse and took out the photograph of Kyle McAndrews. "We were doing some research into the castle today and came across this picture—it's just a copy." She handed it to MacLunie. "Ever seen him before?"

  MacLunie looked at the photo and his face went blank. Then he murmured, "Shite . . ."

  "Now, now," Mrs. MacLunie said reproachfully.

  "Aye, I'll never forget that one. He's the man I saw, told me to go or die. Christ, what a cold one he was." He looked up at Laika. "Where'd you get this?"

  "Over in Dingwall," she lied. "When would this have been, Mr. MacLunie?"

  "Well, I'm sixty-three now, I must've been around nine or ten then, so that's fifty-some years back." He snorted. "Like it was yesterday. And do ye know, I've stayed away from that damned castle ever since."

  Chapter 19

  "I think we have our Templar connection," Joseph said on the ride back to their cottage. "A mysterious group meeting every decade, a castle that's had the same owner for seven centuries, the French priest's story, and the fact that Kyle McAndrews, aka Robert Gunn, one of the twelve departed Templars, was one of the group at a meeting fifty years ago."

  "I hate to jump to conclusions," Laika said, "but you know what else I think about Kyle McAndrews?"

  "You think," said Joseph, "that he was Sir Andrew Mackay, because that's exactly what I think."

  "Me too," Tony said. "And Andrew Mackay was every owner of Castle Dirk, father and son, all through the centuries. Just one thing, though. Andrew Mackay—also known as Alister Scobie—is dead now. So who's this Francis Scobie who's supposed to be his son?"

  "If I had to guess," said Joseph, "I'd say that Francis Scobie is his real son—the young Mr. Mackay."

  "It's as good a theory as any," said Laika, "with the information we've got. Maybe he's leading a new bunch of Templars, with a more contemporary look, as Mrs. MacLunie implied. I think we should just maintain surveillance for the time being, if you don't mind being outside in the Scottish mist, Tony. They're calling for rain this week."

  "Goody. I'll pretend I'm Mel Gibson."

  "And Joseph," she said, turning toward the back seat, "you and I will just—" But her words were broken off as Tony jammed on the brakes. "Jesus, what the . . ."

  Laika turned and looked through the windshield. There, ten yards away, was a glowing, upright form like a man or woman shrouded in white. She felt her breath lock in her throat as she watched it hover several feet above the surface of the roadway.

  There was no face, just a smooth plain of white, and as Laika's mind struggled to see features there, a gaunt, terrible face began to take form upon the empty canvas. Then, just as she thought she saw the eyes start to open, the image vanished utterly, leaving not even a nimbus of light behind to mark its passing.

  "What the hell," said Laika slowly, "was that?"

  "That," Tony replied, "was what I saw in the cellar of the castle."

  Laika took a deep breath, then took a flashlight from the glove compartment. "Turn off the engine, but leave the lights on," she told Tony. She opened the door and got out. The men followed. She walked to where the manifestation had appeared, shining the light down on the road and to either side, and up into the air. "Let's check the brush," she said.

  With their flashlights they explored the area to either side of the road, but the vegetation was low, and no trees were in view. There seemed to be no haven in which anyone might have hidden a projector or other device to create an illusion.

  "Well," Joseph said, his voice trembling slightly. "I didn't find any spiritualists lurking in t
he heather, so what was that thing?"

  "Tony, was that exactly what the other one you saw looked like?" Laika asked.

  "Absolutely. Only it was a little closer in the castle. I think. Kind of hard to judge size and distance with the damn thing."

  Laika cleared her throat, wishing the fear would dissipate. "Did any of you see any kind of face?"

  "Not I," said Joseph. "Not really. I think maybe I started to imagine one the longer I looked."

  Tony nodded. "Same with me. I could swear something started to form both times, but when I look back, I think that maybe it was just my imagination."

  "The human mind demands order," Joseph said. "We'll imprint what we expect to see on whatever blank screen comes along." He smiled. "Reminds me of M. R. James's 'face of crumpled linen.' "

  Laika couldn't place the name. "Who?"

  "The English ghost story writer. His most haunting image was a face of crumpled linen that formed out of the bed sheets. I always wondered if James intended that face to be real, or just a projection of the protagonist's fears."

  "Well, if I'd want to scare the greatest number of people," Tony said, "I'd use a blank face myself. You see whatever frightens you most."

  "Did either of you hear anything?" Laika asked. "Because I didn't. Not over the sound of the engine."

  "No, not this time," Tony agreed. "But in the castle I heard that high-pitched humming. Like a machine of some kind."

  "Sure it wasn't the sound of glowing ectoplasm?" Joseph asked, then held up a hand. "I'm not baiting you. I've seen it too. I know it's real, unlike my dream about one of the things, and I know we've got to find out what's causing it, especially in light of the Templars in the castle. This has all got to tie together somehow."

  "And the more we learn, the stranger the connections get," Laika said as they walked back to the car. "Let's just keep on keeping on. Something else has to happen sooner or later."