Free True Highland Spirit by Amanda Forester

no’ receive the missive I sent? Sodden Sal promised to deliver it direct.”
    “Nay, we received naught.” Morrigan stood and put her hands on her hips. “Let me understand, ye entrusted yer message to a knave named Sodden Sal ?”
    “I am short o’ funds,” Archie said with a shrug. “But how is the clan? Why are ye are here?”
    Morrigan glanced around. “Are we alone? Can we talk?”
    Archie shut the door and they both sat down on the bench. Morrigan noted he appeared to be well fed and adequately dressed. There was also something different about him, something she could not name.
    “What is it? Tell me the whole,” said Archie in a way Morrigan appreciated. Archie may have foolish notions, but when it came to the clan he took his leadership seriously. There was little he would not do for the clan. It was the one thing they had in common.
    “The main fields were burned, we lost a third of the crop,” Morrigan said bluntly.
    “Nay!” Archie shook his head, the haunted look returning to his eye. “We need it for the winter. How did such a thing happen?”
    “It was set purposely. I was given this.” Morrigan reached down her shirt into the linen strips she used to bind her chest and produced the threatening missive with the odd seal.
    McNab took the folded parchment and held it up to the gray light of dawn, but did not open it, a flicker of recognition crossing his face. “Please tell me ye did no’ harm the bishop.”
    Morrigan shook her head. “What is happening, Brother? Who sent this? ’Tis time to tell me the truth.”
    “I ne’er meant it to come to this,” Archie mumbled and closed his eyes for a moment, rubbing his face with his hands. “It started many years ago, before either o’ us was born. Ye recall the stories o’ Robert the Bruce fighting against the English?”
    “Aye. What has that got to do wi’ this?”
    “Around that time the Church declared the Templar Knights to be heretics and persecuted their members. Many fled to Scotland for safety.”
    “I ken the history, what is yer point?”
    “A group o’ these Templars was traveling in winter and got caught in a blizzard. Our grandfather found them and offered them shelter. They had some things wi’ them. Things they were anxious to hide. They paid Grandfather McNab handsomely for his charity and asked for something more, the ability to buy a portion of our land. The only condition was he could ne’er tell anyone he had sold the land.”
    “The farmland we are not allowed to use!” said Morrigan. She had always wondered why some of their best fields had been allowed to go fallow so long. It was all starting to make sense.
    “Aye. A few years later, when the McNabs were punished by Bruce for choosing the wrong side of the conflict, the Templars advocated for leniency, ensuring we kept our land.”
    “But not our sheep or chickens or pigs,” interrupted Morrigan, her bitterness seeping through.
    “Aye. Though I doubt the Templars cared for us as much as they wished their treasure to remain safely hidden.”
    “Wait—treasure? Did you say they hid treasure on our land?”
    “Their land actually…”
    Morrigan waved a hand impatiently. “Do ye mean to tell me there is a treasure on our land and ye ne’er looked for it?”
    “O’ course I have, what do ye take me for?” Archie scowled. “There is naught on the land they bought but a cave. And aye, I have searched it. ’Tis just an empty cave. Whatever they hid there must have been moved long ago.”
    “Which cave? Where is it?” Their problems were not so lofty a good amount of coin could not solve them.
    “The one by Loch Pain.”
    Morrigan knew of the cave with all its creepy passages. She avoided it, but she knew others, including her brother, had explored it. It contained no treasure. She should have known better than to hope, if only for a moment, for a lost treasure to fall into her hands. “Perhaps our clan would have better luck if we renamed our