‘Oh, William.’ Annie reached for his hand, holding it fearlessly.
Harri still couldn’t quite function, an awful desperation was setting in, and guilt too. His main concern should be William, like it was for Annie. She seemed to have forgotten everything that had happened.
William talked softly on. ‘I did my best by him. He was agoraphobic, you see? Always was. Even in seventy-six when I responded to his advertisement for an antiquarian and steward. The outside world drove the fear of the devil into him, so we kept our own company here.’
‘Minty said he was a recluse, a hermit?’ said Annie.
William laughed sadly. ‘He can’t be blamed for that. Have you seen the world? Oh, we had doctors stop by, over the years, and they questioned and prodded, psychoanalysed and so on, but the truth of the matter was, Nicholas didn’t need the whole world; he only needed his own little kingdom.’
‘And you were part of it,’ said Annie.
‘I was half of it,’ he corrected, sorrow splitting his face as his eyes filled. ‘Oh dear, oh dear, what would Nicholas say if he could see me now?’
Annie looked to Harri and the pain in her eyes startled him into action. Harri came to crouch by the man’s side too.
‘He’d say how glad he was to see his old friend still here, I imagine,’ said Harri.
‘But they’re selling it all out from underneath me, aren’t they?’ said William, with the look of a child.
‘They auctioned off the house contents today,’ Harri said, and a fresh wave of remorse came as he remembered the bidding and how easily he’d helped break apart the estate with the wave of a card. ‘To recover some… debts.’
‘But they can’t sell the castle,’ Annie put in. ‘Not yet. There’s some legal stuff stopping it. I don’t really understand.’
‘Because Nicholas died intestate,’ Harri put in. ‘No will.’
William kept his eyes on the handkerchief in his hand. ‘The castle will be sold by the Crown. Itisbeyond repair. Perhaps it is for the best.’
‘But where will you live?’ said Annie, her voice swelling with emotion. ‘Have you no family?’
William shook his head and looked around his library like he was watching ghostly scenes playing out everywhere. The place was haunted with his memories. He smiled at them as they danced across his vision. He and Nicholas by the globe, lost in conversation; his friend pacing with his hands behind his back, William smoking by the fire, debating some idea from a dusty old tome open upon the desk; the pair of them pinpointing a spot on a map and sharing their knowledge of the place, all gleaned from books, never from travel or experience. Their experiences were those recounted by authors and adventurers told in manuscript and print. They were collectors, connoisseurs, bookish companions. They had everything they needed right here in Castle Lore.
William would receive from Nicholas a list of treasures to hunt down on the first Monday of every month and he’d add them to his friend’s other requests, writing off letters to collectors and repositories across the world looking for them.
Nicholas would have the sole pleasure of unpacking them when they arrived, and so the men would have new material to read, new matters to discuss, and life went on, full of interest and intellectual endeavour. Their friendship had been their lives’ work, the rarest treasure they had.
‘I’ll stay another night,’ said William. ‘To say goodbye.’
‘We’ll stay with you, then,’ Annie replied, without asking what Harri thought.
‘And then tomorrow, we’ll all go back to Clove Lore and decide what’s to be done,’ Harri put in softly. ‘You’lldecide. If you don’t want to go back to the hospital or wherever Social Services put you, I don’t see how they can make you. And you don’tseemill.’
‘I’m not,’ he snapped. ‘I’m old and alone, that’s all.’
‘You’re not alone,’ Annie insisted, still holding his hand. ‘You have new friends now.’
The three of them prepared for a night at Castle Lore, William showing them where the woodstore was and how to toast bread on the library fire. There was loose tea in a silver caddy and, Nicholas’s favourite, the last of the Marc de Champagne truffles they’d have sent over from France, and as everyone busied themselves with settling down to sleep – William insisted on sleeping by the library fire, so Annie and Harri took the other armchairs – Harri felt his opportunity slipping away to talk about where he and Annie stood now that they had absolutely overstepped the boundaries of the friend zone (and Annie looked nothing but relieved not to have to talk about it).
They all slept, Annie and William more soundly than Harri, until the winter morning came. Clove Lore Castle had housed its last ever overnight guests.
When day came, it was no longer a home, but a relic out of time, its library collection hours away from being packed up and scattered across the four corners of the earth, a testament to the friendship of two men who found a whole world in each other and which had been adventure enough for both of them.
Chapter Eighteen
Reaching Out
Everyone was soon alerted to William’s reappearance at the Borrow-A-Bookshop. The village’s (self-appointed) authorities in these matters had concluded that a few days’ rest by the sea would do him good. A room was reserved for him at the Siren, what with it being their quiet time of year, though Finan the landlord pointed out his pub was booked out for the upcoming Valentine’s weekend so he couldn’t stay indefinitely.
William had said he might like to spend some of his daytimes at the bookshop amongst the stock. Perhaps he could make himself useful, he’d said.
