The River of No Return

saying, Nick. You cannot gift it to me. You have returned. Blackdown is yours and it cannot be otherwise.”
    “I’m saying I don’t want it, aren’t you listening?” The words came tumbling out of his mouth. “You take it. Take it and sell it all. I don’t care. I will renounce the title and give you the whole estate.” Nick had to bite down on the urge to tell her everything. Once upon a time, a man went and lived in a future age. In this future, the human race had walked on the moon. Buildings scraped the sky. Mechanical carriages went four times faster than the fastest horse. There was no primogeniture.
    But he couldn’t tell her. She was right: the choice wasn’t his to make. His ebullience died, fast, like a man shot through the head. He was left staring at her blank, white face and he knew his own was equally expressionless.
    She probably thought he was mad.
    “Nick—”
    “Please, Clare. Give me a moment.” He turned from her, twisting in his chair to look out of the window. Outside the soft night was brooding over the awakening earth. The commons. He could feel it out there. The ancient will of the land to be free of him.
    “Nick?”
    He turned back slowly, gathering himself together again.
    “Shall I pour you another cup?” She spoke as if nothing had happened and held the teapot, that most benign weapon of civilization, poised above the china.
    He breathed in, then out, and summoned up a small smile. “No thank you, Sister. I’m sorry I . . .” He fought the phrase stressed you out and came up, after a panicked trawl through his memory, with the correct expression. “I am sorry I discomfited you. I quite literally forgot myself in Spain, and I am afraid I forgot myself again just now. Of course I will not, indeed cannot, renounce my title. I am glad to be home, and I am eager to take up the reins again.” He inclined his head to her. “And I am quite willing to apprentice myself to your greater knowledge of how to manage this blasted place. Are you willing to serve as my steward? Alongside Mr. Cooper, of course.”
    She set the teapot down again. “Mr. Cooper ran off with a seamstress from Tavistock. Mrs. Cooper is now the housekeeper at Castle Dar.”
    Nick paused, assimilating that information. “And you were selling land because you need the money? The land . . . it isn’t in good heart? What are the problems?”
    “No, it isn’t for the money.” She shook her head. “Or rather, it is for the money, but mostly it’s because everything has changed, including money itself. All the silver’s drained away to China and India, and now into the war. There’s hardly enough silver left in Britain to make a child’s rattle! They’re overstriking foreign coins, asking us to accept slips of paper and thin little tokens that represent nothing at all.”
    Nick raised his eyebrows. “My apologies, but I have no idea what you are talking about, Clare.”
    She looked at him curiously, her head on one side. “I suppose you are more familiar with lead than with silver. But honestly, Nick, you will have to start noticing the way things are if you are to make Blackdown a success. The weight of a coin in your hand will tell you everything about the trouble we’re in. And not just here. All over Britain. Nothing adds up. It’s a different time now.”
    “I know it is,” Nick said. “Believe me. And I want to learn from you.”
    “So humble!” But her smile was sad.
    “Tell me what happened,” Nick said. “Just tell me the truth.”
    “All right.” She glanced down, then up at him again. “You know, you are like the old Nick again. The way you were before Father died. Kind. I wouldn’t have thought war would do that to a man. Open his heart.”
    Nick blinked, confused. “I thought we were talking about the degradation of British coinage. What does that have to do with my heart? Or with the estate, for that matter?”
    “Nothing. Nothing at all.” She sighed. “Except that I am glad you are more like your old self. It makes it easier to tell you the state of things here. You have heard, perhaps, of the riots a few years back? The Luddites? But I am ahead of myself. After you left, we began to lose tenants. To America. To the wars. Two men didn’t come back from Spain. Ben Tucker and Red Wycliff. Jonas Hill came back and he seemed physically fit but . . .” She paused.
    “He was unable to work,” Nick said.
    “Yes. And one day he just went away.” She searched