Isla didn’t know what made her pull the panel loose. Only that she had been bored and brooding, clearing the last of her mother’s things from the old tenement flat. The day had been difficult - part hard graft, part heartache.

 

The sideboard was the final thing to move, solid and stubborn after fifty years in the same corner. It was full of sewing boxes, offcuts, and biscuit tins of buttons. Isla promised herself a well-earned tea break once she got the heavy old thing in her van.But then she saw the loose wooden panel, standing just slightly proud of its neighbours, held by a few old tacks. A flicker of childish curiosity broke through the dull determination that had carried her through the day.

 

A screwdriver and a few choice curses later, Isla pulled the board away, and flinched as a dusty oilskin-wrapped bundle tumbled into her lap. Enthralled, she unknotted the faded ties, so ripe that they almost fell apart.

 

Inside was a bolt of cloth, its weave fine, its pattern a striking tartan. She unrolled it onto the waxed floor. Barely enough for a blanket, but beautiful. Moss green crossed burnt orange, the blue of a stormy sky, and the purple-grey of slate, with threads of blood red running through. She’d never seen such a combination - and as a textiles student, she’d seen a lot.

 

All through the long drive home, Isla couldn’t keep the pattern from her mind. She’d wrapped the cloth up again, tucked it amongst her mother’s things in the van, and reattached the wall panel, wondering who had hidden it and why. She hesitated at an intersection, tired out by the day’s work, but unable to put her thoughts to rest. On a whim she turned left toward the library.

 

She scoured familiar books on clan patterns: formal and hunting tartans, ancient and modern. Nothing matched. But the methodical rite of research helped ease the sadness of the day. She was ready to call it a night when a footnote caught her eye: a weaver, prosecuted in 1746 for weaving “bold and seditious messages.”

 

Following the footnote’s citation, Isla fell down a rabbit hole. She read about the Dress Act which outlawed the wearing of tartan. Of Jacobites who had defied the Act, to keep their craft alive. And of weavers who had encoded messages into their cloth. A code of almost invisible irregularities - double ends, dropped stitches, small knots and splices. Through these they’d arranged meetings, given warnings, and planned uprisings.

 

At home, magnifier in hand, Isla examined the cloth again for loose wefts, broken warps or subtle flaws. Over days and weeks, she mapped them, and gradually what looked like mistakes formed something else entirely: directions.

That night Isla dreamed of threads. Some fine and flimsy, others thicker and more defined, all interweaving, intertwining. All coming together in a single direction. All she had to do was follow them.

​

The next morning she skipped breakfast and clambered into her van, still weighed down with her mother’s furniture. She followed her own hastily-written directions, cross-referencing decrypted longditues and latitudes with 16th Century maps, then again against a modern road atlas.

​

As she drove north, the buildings thinned, giving way to rolling hills brushed with gorse and bracken, the air sharpening with the scent of peat and pine. By the time she reached the loch, the land felt ancient: stoic, windswept, and wide, as though it had been waiting for her.

​

At the end of the track stood a cottage. Or at least, it had once been a cottage. A croft, then a grain store, then nothing. The lock had long rusted away, and Isla easily pushed the door back on its hinges. Inside, the air was cool and damp, laced with the smell of heather and rot.

​

Isla paced the small space intently, paying attention to the bare walls, the empty hearth. A floorboard creaked hollow beneath her feet and a familiar sense of excitement washed over her, just as it had in her mother’s flat.

​

Beneath the board was a box. Isla’s hands trembled as she opened it. Inside: a velvet pouch of shillings, a silver brooch with a Stuart rose, and a small leather-bound ledger.

​

The pages held names. Meetings. Plans. A web of loyalists meeting here, in defiance of the crown. This humble, crumbling croft had once been a Jacobite meeting house, its whereabouts hidden in the very weave of the fabric the King had outlawed.

​

One year later, Isla stood in the same small room, new windows thrown back to air the freshly-painted walls. She’d reported the finds from the croft, and they were purchased by a museum in Glasgow. Her cut from the sale had combined with her inheritance to buy the old meeting house outright. 

Now her mother’s old sideboard stood beside the hearth, and a long table graced the centre of the room. A floor loom sat in front of the window, and a spinning wheel by the fire. It was the perfect studio.

​

There was just one more thing to do.

​

Isla smiled as she positioned a hefty frame on the wall. In it was a bold chequered pattern: a reimagining of the cloth that had led her here, imperfections and all. Unmistakably tartan, yet belonging to no clan. A map for trained eyes only.

​

Isla adjusted the picture then stood in the doorway, watching the sun catch the weave. The colours burned in the evening light: moss, stone, blood, sky. She thought she could be happy here.