Siege of Stone (15 page)

No. It was a mistake only if he allowed it to become so. He knew how this creature could be contained, and there were enough men who served him to bring down Mulcifer by sheer strength of numbers, regardless of the great power his father had claimed he had. Colin had called some of his men who were still in Scotland and told them to have a leaden casket made in Glasgow that would hold a man. Were Mulcifer to grow too hard to control, they would simply force him into that, and there would be an end of it.

But first there were the strangers on his land to take care of. Exploring his castle for the first time would have to wait. The vehicles parked within the great square of the inner ward, and they all got out. Colin asked Rob Lindsay to see to the unpacking, and walked back out the way they had entered and across the field toward the strangers.

He easily hopped over the stone wall and walked up to them, two men and a woman who all looked tired and dusty. "Good afternoon," he said without a smile. "May I ask what you're doing here?"

The woman answered that they were archeologists from Princeton University, and were searching for the site of a seventeenth-century village that was reputed to be in the vicinity.

"Then you'd better search somewhere else. This is my land you're on."

The woman looked puzzled. "But I thought the wall marked your property line, Mr. . . ."

"Scobie. Francis Scobie. Believe me, madam, I've just spent two days in a solicitors' office in Inverness concerning this property, and I do know my boundaries. You're over them, and you're not welcome. I have plans for this land, and digging is not among them."

"Then I apologize, Mr. Scobie. We'll remove ourselves from your property immediately. Where does your line stop?"

"Along the crest of that rise." He pointed and moved his arm in an arc that spanned the darkening southeastern horizon. "On this side of it about twenty yards."

"We can replace the soil and turf first, if you like," the woman said, nodding at the pile of earth and the stacks of turf.

"Not necessary. I'll see to it myself. I shouldn't want to keep you here after dark." Then he turned on his heels and strode back to the castle.

"T
hat went well," Joseph said when Francis Scobie was out of earshot. "Let's get our tools and get out of here, boys and girls, or that Celtic warrior might be after us with his claymore."

"He was a big one, wasn't he?" mused Laika, watching the retreating form. The man's red hair gleamed in the dying light, and his tall body moved effortlessly.

Tony began gathering tools. "The bigger they are . . ." he said.

"The harder they swing their claymores," Joseph finished.

"We'll pull back to the ridge again," said Laika. "We can still see the castle from there. I want it kept under surveillance from now on. Did you see the way he looked at us?"

"And it got worse when you said we were from Princeton," Tony said. "I don't think he likes Yanks."

Laika kept watching the man walking back toward his castle. "The man's a firebrand. And whatever his name is, it isn't Scobie."

"What makes you think that?" asked Joseph.

"Because he didn't say it with enough pride."

"N
ow, O master, what is it you would have me do?"

Mulcifer eyed Colin Mackay over steepled fingertips. The Scot was sitting in a plain wooden chair, sipping from a cup of tea sitting on the chair's wide, flat arm. They were alone in the first bedchamber on the ground floor, which had been turned, by the addition of furniture, into a small meeting room.

"We want to strike against the English," Colin said. "The targets must be the British government and trade and not the Scottish people. No stores, no public places. Only government and military facilities and British business offices in Scotland."

"And would you like to restrict the victims to men only, and of a certain age group? No one with families, of course, for we can't have any orphans or widows, can we?"

"Don't be absurd."

"No, don't
you
be absurd, Colin Mackay. You want to be a terrorist, you have to spill blood, you know. I believe that's how it's done. Now you tell me specifically the kind of target you would like. What organization? What building? What man?"

He thought for a moment. "All right, then. The executives of British Petroleum, who take our North Sea oil. The British education officials who've funneled funds away from our public schools. The English monarchy itself—let their country cry for
all
their dotty, inbred rulers, not just their precious princess of hearts."

"Ah, you'd like me to extinguish the little princes then? Just like Richard the Third? Smother them in their beds?"

"I don't care
what
happens to that damned bloodline! Windsor, my arse—Saxe-Coburgs and Battenburgs and Tecks is what they are, as much German blood as English. And even if they weren't, what right have the English to rule us, anyway? They
stole
our land from us—"

Colin broke off when he saw Mulcifer's sneer. When he spoke, Colin heard the timbre of his own voice. "And the '45 and Bonnie Prince Charlie, and William Wallace and the Bruce, and Culloden and Glencoe and the Clearances . . . oh,
please
. . ." The voice returned to Mulcifer's own soft, velvet tones. "Spare me the lectures. I know all about the history of poor, bleeding Scotland. Now if you're finished spewing your chauvinist bile, may I present a plan of action that should accomplish what we both desire?"

Colin nodded. The man made him feel like a damned fool all too often. He mocked Colin's passion for his country the same way in which he would mock any passion for anything held dear.

"First, how many men do you have in your little shock troops? A dozen?"

"Fifteen here at the castle. Across the Isles, nearly a hundred, and they've all got mates—foot soldiers. We've men,
and
women, in Edinburgh, Glasgow, London, and in Belfast, too—anywhere the British can be hurt."

"And are they professionals?" Mulcifer asked, leaning toward him. "Have they set bombs under the Houses of Parliament? Picked off prime ministers through sniper scopes? Sliced the throats of dukes in public loos? Have they done, or do they have the
capability
to do, all these things?"

"I think . . . I
know
they have the capability."

Mulcifer sat back and crossed his legs. "Then what do you need me for?"

Colin held his mocking gaze. "Because you're
more
than a professional. You exist for violence, you feed on destruction. Your capabilities alone are far greater than my entire company of patriots."

"Which isn't too great a company at all . . . in number, at least. I take it you've heard all about me from your . . .
late
father."

"Yes. He told me a good number of things about you."

"And did your . . .
late
father tell you I was the Antichrist?"

"Yes."

"And did your . . .
late
father tell you I was the epitome of human and nonhuman evil?"

"He implied that. Look, why do you keep referring to him like that?"

"The answer puts me in mind of a story, probably apocryphal, that I once heard about a very much disliked jazz musician, a violent man who had made a lot of enemies with his temper and his bullying, a man after my own heart, in fact. It seems his widow received a telephone call asking for her husband, and she told the caller that he was dead. The next day she received another such call, and again told the caller that her husband was dead. The third day she received still another call, and was sure from the voice that it was the very same man. She said to him, 'Look, I already told you he's dead—why do you keep calling?' And the man said, very gently, 'I just like to hear it.'

"You see, Colin, that's the way it is with me. I just like to hear that your father, Sir Andrew Mackay, and the eleven other hounds who tried to undo my handiwork over the centuries are dead. Dead. Dead and gone, not to that heaven for whose blessings they so nobly strove, not to that hell whose lord and . . ." He raised both hands in self-recognition. ". . . Supposed minions they so despised. But gone to nothingness. Oblivion. Non-existence, from which they can never return, from which no sweet and mewling Christ can raise them. Thus, your . . .
late
father. I just like to hear it."

"Fine. Refer to him as you like."

Mulcifer raised an eyebrow. "I take it there was little love between you."

"We're not here to talk about me. Why don't you tell me your brilliant plan?"

"Oh my, do I detect a note of hostility? Well, politics does make strange bedfellows, and as your. . . late father might add, he who sups with the Devil had best use a long spoon. But as for my
brilliant
plan, as you so foresightedly put it, let me explain what I have in mind.

"I prefer to use other people to do my work. I don't care for making bombs and aiming guns myself. So the question becomes where to
find
those people. Now, being a prisoner for so long has given me a true empathy for other prisoners, particularly for those imprisoned for political and religious reasons. After all, I myself was cruelly confined because of . . . religious intolerance. My soul is not entirely devoid of sympathy, now, is it? At one stroke, I could aid your cause and satisfy my own needs while freeing these poor souls. What did Jesus say? 'I was in prison, and ye came unto me.'" Mulcifer grinned, and stage whispered, "Yes, that suits my purposes. Anyway," he went on, "I shall do more than simply come unto them. I shall free them, on the condition that they use their very specialized skills to advance our joint cause."

"And how do you intend to free political terrorists from the most well-guarded prisons in the British Isles?"

"Oh, I have my ways. Believe me, it will be quite simple, and the results will be nothing short of spectacular. You see, I intend to just walk into the prisons, introduce myself to the prisoners, and walk them out again."

"Ah," said Colin. The creature was insane after all. "And who's going to open the doors for you then?"

"Doors? Did I say anything about using
doors
? But don't you worry your head about that. You just make a little list for me. You list all the Scottish terrorists now in prison that you would like on your side."

Colin frowned. "That won't take long. There frankly aren't all that many . . . imprisoned Scottish terrorists."

"But you were just bragging about this wonderful network you have."

"Aye, we have the network, but there's been little activity. A couple of nutters who went off on their own, calling in reports of bombs under motorway bridges and in train stations, copycatting the IRA, mucking up the transport, and messing about with the tourist business."

"Ah, phone pranks. Dangerous men, indeed."

"A few planted bombs," Colin said defensively, then admitted, "Some didn't go off, some did, but to little effect."

"So do you want them freed at all?" Mulcifer laughed, and Colin felt his face grow red. "They sound like more trouble than they're worth. I'll tell you what, why don't I free some of these Irish boyos? They sound like they've got more experience than your little soccer hooligans."

"And why would IRA men do any favors for Scotland? We're bloody Protestants to them."

"For gratitude," said Mulcifer. "The cost of their freedom is one job for Scotland, and then they're on their own to bomb Belfast to their little hearts' content. Again, you leave that to me. As you know, I can be . . . persuasive. What I want you to do is make a wish list of, say, a dozen men in Irish and English prisons who you'd want working for you, in the order of their relative desirability—in terms of terror, that is. I know you're a man's man all the way."

"And assuming you can get them out of prison without getting caught, then what?"

"What do you
want
, O laird and master?"

"I'd not want them brought here to the castle. They could be given their directives elsewhere."

"A good idea. That way they can't ever betray their former emancipator. I don't know if their fabled loyalty extends to Scots. I'll also need to know where these men are held, and I'll need plans of the prisons along with the locations of the cells, so I won't have to wander around until I find them. Can you do that?"