“Tell me something I don’t know.”
“And wipe out Scottish culture.”
Cottingsharm stared at him.
“Erase it. Like it never was. That’s what the Crown’s been up to—for centuries! And you’re one of the victims.”
“What do you mean, Wylings?”
“I speak of Cottingsharm Cottage.”
“The cottage? You’ve lost me.”
Wylings nodded seriously, but inside he was exuberant. Cottingsharm was eager to believe in anything that would stoke his irrational anti-British sentiment. “The cottage was stolen from the original Frederick Cottingsharm,” he whispered. “I have proof.” He patted his blazer.
“Cottingsharm Cottage was sold to the Gracels in 1596, and we got a fair price for an old stone hut,” Cottingsharm said. “Lord Gracel tore it down and built Loch Tweed Castle.”
“Wrong, Frederick. Even your family history lies to you. It was the first Frederick Cottingsharm, your ancestor, who actually built Loch Tweed. By rights, the castle belongs to you. It is Cottingsharm Castle!”
Cottingsharm looked confused but the idea invigorated him. He was ready to swallow the worm, the hook, all of it. “How could that be?”
“It was extortion. The Gracels did it, working with the Crown. They took Frederick Cottingsharm’s daughter and secreted her in London. They promised your ancestor to return the girl, but only if he would give Gracel the newly finished castle—and he had to agree to forsake all claims, even past claims, to the castle. It’s all right here.”
Triumphantly, Wylings flipped the envelope onto a parlor table. Cottingsharm opened it nervously and pulled out a photocopy of a centuries-old document.
“Look at the signatures. Does that not resemble the penmanship of your ancestor?”
“Yes,” Cottingsharm gasped. “It is nearly identical.”
“The other signature is Hartford Gracel.”
“I see. This is an agreement to a ransom, just as you said!”
“Exactly,” Wylings said. “Irrefutable proof.”
“Absolutely irrefutable,” agreed Cottingsharm. He began to pore over the faded text of the document, which Wylings had created on his iMac that afternoon using MicroFlop RelicCreator version 2.2. The software translated any text into the English vernacular of any given era between 1066 and the present day. It printed using dynamic fonts that simulated the inconsistencies of human handwriting. It had even come with a free six-month membership to MicroFlop Internet Portal, which gave Wylings instant online access to TV listings, movie show times and his up-to-the-minute horoscope.
“English bastards!” Cottingsharm fumed. “They stole my castle!”
Cottingsharm had swallowed the story completely. This was too easy.
“But you can get it back,” Wylings said with determination. “The Scots are standing up against their oppressors. They’re flexing their muscle at last. Cottingsharm, this is your moment to reclaim your heritage, your real estate and your family honor.”
Cottingsharm’s eyes were glowing with determination and no deliberation—a good thing, too, since Wylings couldn’t explain any of a hundred major holes in his bit of fanciful history.
“Frederick, will you go reclaim your castle?”
“I will,” he proclaimed. “With my determination as my talisman and this ancient document as my sword, I shall do battle against the English and take back my family home!”
Wylings smiled grimly. “I’ll help you load up the van.”
Chapter 9
The Mad Scots had only been in existence for twenty-four hours, but already they were the most feared street gang in London, period. The local Yakuza branch was going to learn that the hard way.
“You know why we’re the toughest bastards you ever saw, Chink?” Stewart McGarrity hauled the Yakuza leader off the grimy alley cobblestones, and dangled him by the collar of his jacket.
“I am Japanese, not Chinese,” the young Yakuza captain said weakly.
McGarrity’s fist slammed into his jaw.
“A Chink is a Jap is a Charlie. You got piss-yellow skin. Why do I care what p’ticular kind of yellow? Now, I asked you a question. Do you know why we’re the baddest bastards in London?”
“No. Why?”
“Because we got a cause. We got something to fight for. All you piss-colored Chinks ain’t got nothing to motivate yer, see?”
“Hey, fairy boy!”
The call came from the far end of the alley. All eyes turned. The beaten Yakuza man smiled with bloody teeth when he saw the assembled reinforcements.
“More Chinks!” McGarrity exclaimed.
His five companions chuckled.
More than twice as many Japanese street toughs advanced to meet them.
“You calling me a fairy boy?” McGarrity taunted. “Look at yourselves. Chinks! All that shiny hair and shiny leather jackets and piss-colored skin. I can’t even tell the boy Chinks from the girl Chinks!”
The Japanese point man sneered. “A man in a dress has no room to talk,” he said. “Do you think to earn respect wearing a skirt in public?”
McGarrity tittered. ‘It ain’t a skirt, Chink. It’s a kilt. And you gotta be a real tough bastard to go into the streets wearing one, don’tcha think?”
This made sense to the Japanese and for the first time it occurred to them that the Mad Scots might not be bluffing. Could a bunch of high-country pretty boys really be that tough?
The Mad Scots had all the confidence in the world. They grinned at the outnumbering Japanese as if they couldn’t wait to get at them.
“You know what we do for fun back home, Chink?” McGarrity demanded. “We throw fucking boulders. I thrown boulders a lot bigger than any one of you!”
The truth was, Stewart McGarrity hadn’t been much involved in local sports. In fact, most of the Mad Scots that Stewart knew had come from the Fine Graphic Arts College in the Hills, which taught painting, sculpture and eclectic graphic arts. The College in the Hills had produced some of the most critically acclaimed—and commercially unpopular—artists of the last thirty years. Stewart was majoring in experimental geometric charcoal sketching.
But he had seen boulders tossed all his life, and right now he felt strong enough to toss two or three of them. So he snatched up the Yakuza captain and tossed him overhead. The man was too beaten to fight him off, and found himself sailing into his own men and snapping his spine noisily. He felt the paralysis but his vision kept working for several seconds—long enough to see the Mad Scots go mad on his street toughs.
Stew McGarrity arced through the air, kilt drifting up obscenely, his still shiny formal Oxford shoes landing heavily on the fallen bodies. McGarrity’s meaty fist slammed into more surprised faces, and his fearless mates were right beside him. They clobbered the Yakuza faces wherever they saw them. A knife slithered out at McGarrity, but he worked around it and got a little sliced up for his trouble, but it was just a scratch. Nothing to worry about.
One of his boys got it a little worse. Arthur Butler withdrew the switchblade that had impaled his lip and reached almost to the back of his throat. He sucked in the blood and grunted, “Dat stings, yuh piece of piss.” He propelled his assailant’s face into the alley wall.
McGarrity looked this way, then looked that way. His heavy brow wrinkled between his deep-set eyes.
“You could ’ave saved me another one of them mouses. This bunch was ’ardly worth getting outta bed for. Come on, let’s go see if we can find a real fight.”
They hit the streets. McGarrity’s band of toughs was just one of the cells of Mad Scots wandering London that night. The Mad Scots weren’t so much an organized street gang as an angry mob, but they did have the gang colors: every man jack of them was in a kilt displaying his family tartan. Those without a known pedigree simply adopted whatever tartan was most convenient. The clan didn’t matter, really. It only mattered that they were Scots and that they were mad as hell.