The River of No Return

pain was real enough. Perhaps he was alive, but trapped in some blanched and fevered nightmare. How cruel of his dreams to mock him like this, when the war was grim enough.
    When he opened his eyes, the old man was still there, watching him with soft-eyed compassion. Nick had to pull himself together. Even in a dream he wanted no mawkish tenderness. He would play his part. “So.” He tried to sound like a gentleman and a soldier, assured and calm in the face of crisis. “They are dead in 2003. But they are not dead in 1812. They need me. You must send me back.”
    The old man sucked in his cheeks and regarded Nick over the top of his peculiar eyewear. “There is no going back.”
    “Surely if I came to this time I can return.”
    “There is no returning, I’m afraid. Progress is only forward. No one has ever gone back.”
    “Then I shall be the first.”
    “You cannot.” The old man spread his hands, like an innkeeper apologizing for having run out of roast beef. “I’m sorry, but no one ever returns. It is impossible.”
    “I am not no one.” Nick made a motion to straighten his cuffs, a gesture that never failed to intimidate, only to discover that he was dressed in almost nothing.
    “I’m very much afraid that, in this regard, you are no one. Even if it were physically possible to go back, which it is not, the Guild has rules and you must abide by them.”
    “Guild? What control can a guild have over me? I am Nicholas Falcott, Marquess of Blackdown. I am no artisan.”
    “Please, listen to me.” The man leaned forward and propped his elbows on his thighs, his hands clasped down between his knees. Behind his freakish spectacles, his hazel eyes were huge and earnest, like the eyes of an old plow horse. “I know it is hard to understand, but please be attentive.”
    “Which monarch now reigns? I must speak to the king immediately—”
    “Young man!” The hazel eyes flared, their fire stirred. “You will listen to me!”
    Nick raised his eyebrows but shut his mouth.
    The old man subsided into his seat. “Thank you.” He took a deep breath. “Now. You are in the year 2003. It has been almost two centuries since you are believed to have perished in Spain. You left no heir. The marquessate of Blackdown died with you.”
    The marquessate—extinct. It had passed from father to son since Lord Clancy Falcott had routed the nuns and razed the convent that had stood by the River Culm; for his pains he had been made the first Marquess of Blackdown by Henry VIII. Nicholas had never seen a nun until he went to Spain, and then, at Badajoz . . . He shut his eyes. This deathly dream was bad enough. He did not wish to add to its horrors by thinking of Badajoz. Yet how fitting it would have been for the marquessate, born from the destruction of a convent, to expire at Badajoz, in defense of those pitiful women.
    But that hadn’t happened. Instead, Lord Blackdown and his title had marched away from Badajoz with the rest of Wellington’s infamous army. He and his title had stumbled together across Spain for a few more hot and desolate weeks, only to die together for no cause at all, scrabbling in the dust, watched by the flat black eyes of Jem Jemison. . . .
    The old man cleared his throat, and Nick opened his eyes. “I’m dead.”
    “You are not dead,” the man said. “Nor do you dream. The marquessate is extinct. Falcott House is now owned by the National Trust. And the king is a queen.”
    “The National Trust? What in blazes is that?”
    “It means, essentially, that your former estate is well cared for. By a charity.”
    “My former estate.” Nick blew his breath out between pursed lips.
    “Yes. I know it is a shock, but I’m afraid I have news you might find even harder to stomach. It is a harsh rule, but the Guild insists that you must leave the country of your birth. Leave and never return. Not ever. Not for as long as you live.”
    The dream became truly terrible then. Nick’s head seemed to crack open with pain, and his sight darkened and the room seemed to be full of people. Nick heard his own voice but wasn’t sure if he was speaking words. Then something sharp pinched his arm, and the dream was washed away into blissful nothingness.
    * * *
    When Nick woke again, he was without pain. But he was still in the too-white, too-bright room, and the old man was still beside his bed, though he was wearing a different shirt, a bright orange one, which had the word GAP printed across