Siege of Stone (17 page)

Still, in both cases, Sir Andrew's thoughts had been more on himself. The offer of the cup had had behind it the ulterior motive of the preservation of his precious Templars. And making Colin's birth legitimate was born of Catholic guilt. Yielding to his lust had been a sin, but having a bastard child would have been a greater one.

Besides, what did marriage mean to an immortal, anyway? The woman would be old and dead soon enough. Sir Andrew had never offered his wife the cup, and that omission told Colin that he had never loved her.

Colin knew that his father had never loved him, either. His constant absences told him that. Of course, Sir Andrew gave his excuses that business kept him away from his family, but Colin's mother had told him the truth about what his father's business was. The seeming romance and mystery of it were what had seduced her in the first place, like Othello's tales of adventure had seduced Desdemona.

His father had told him the entire story when Colin had become a man, and when he had turned thirty, Sir Andrew had offered him the cup. Colin had taken it less for the promise of immortality than because it was the first thing his father had ever truly given him that meant something. And having just seen his mother die slowly of cancer was another spur to a disease-free longevity.

Nearly seventy years had passed since then, and he had seen his father less than once a decade. Sir Andrew had provided him with money, large amounts of it, and had shown him during their infrequent meetings how a man who lives long enough can become very rich indeed, even by investing conservatively. Colin had grown rich quickly and had become even richer. He still received a hefty sum every month from his father's trust funds, funneled through a number of international accounts designed to hide both father's and son's true identities.

That was something else his father had taught him, that governments tended to look with suspicion upon people who lived for several hundred years without dying or aging. Sir Andrew changed his identity every generation as a matter of course, and Colin had done the same. His closest associates still knew his true name, and thought that the Francis Scobie alias had been created simply to evade the attention of England's counterterrorist division.

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.

W
hile 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 S
ûreté
."

"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."