Page 2 of Highlander’s Sloth
“Curse ye! Er, I mean to say, how annoying,” Lachlan said, and promptly went down to the kitchens to find a bannock and help himself to a mug of warm mulled wine. But he wanted some more of the whisky given to him last night.
Everywhere in the monastery, he found chaos.
“What’s to do?” he asked a friar running past him with a trunk.
“The king’s soldiers are coming!” The friar gasped, and hefting the large chest under his arm, ran to the great hall to place it with all the rest of the treasures.
Lachlan was intrigued. He followed the monk, asking him more questions.
“Methinks ye all took a vow of poverty, Friar. What d’ye have to save from making its way down south to the king’s coffers?”
And then he entered the hall. Piled on trestle boards as far as the eye could see were books and scrolls. Lachlan wanted to see more and began to weave in between the trestles, poking his head into chests of parchment and fingering folios.
“Can I be of assistance to ye, young man?”
A voice as calm as the summer seas interrupted Lachlan’s perusal. He jumped, and it was then Lachlan knew he was going to steal anything of value he found laid out on the boards. And why not? He was not the one to have taken a vow of chastity and poverty after all.
“Some of these auld Bibles look very interesting,” Lachlan replied in a light tone. “What’s in those six small lockboxes over there?”
Friar Bernard guided Lachlan away from the lavishly decorated Bibles and over to where the locked wooden boxes were neatly stacked against the hall walls.
“It’s the receipt to our whisky,” Friar Bernard said. “No brither can ken what’s in the other five boxes. Each friar gets one box, does whatever is written on the parchment inside, and then the parchment is put back into the box. The friar leaves and does nae ken what follows next. When the six stages of the preparation are complete, a friar completes the final stage kept hidden in this box over here.” He indicated a seventh locked box to Lachlan. “And in that way, the receipt is kept secret. Not even I ken what the full methods or ingredients are. This is the first time in over two hundred years these boxes have been assembled together in one room.”
Lachlan tried to say as nonchalantly as he could, “Are ye no’ afeared some scallywag will steal the recipe?”
Friar Bernard looked at Lachlan square on. “I have no fear of that. The monk who concocted the brew is said to have laid a curse on the keeper of the receipt. It is said whoever makes the whiskey unbidden will find their heart’s desire, but discover it comes with a heavy price.”
Superstitious flim-flam, Lachlan thought to himself, as he smiled at the friar and followed him to look at the next precious item.
The next day, Friar Norton came rushing into the cloister with more bad news.
“Brither Bernard! The guest has gone and taken the seven whisky receipt boxes with him! We have no horse and don’ even ken from which clan he hails. What are we to do?”
Friar Bernard looked solemn but did not see the need to panic.
“Be still, Brither,” he said. “The whisky has finished its work here at the monastery. ‘Twas time for it to leave and serve another master. We will be made homeless in a very short while, and it’s nae fitting the receipt is displaced with us. ‘Tis better served whither it goes.”
Friar Norton looked aghast. “But what about the curse, Brither?”
Friar Bernard looked grim. “It may not come home to roost in this generation or the next, but mark me, Brither Norton, the heirs of that man will each face an unenviable crossroads: to rise up and break the curse, or roll over and allow it to erase their clan from the face of the earth!”
