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In the amber glow of artificial candlelight, that face wore an unusual concentration laid over a profound blankness. It was as though too many emotions had converged and cancelled one another out, compressing into a single point so dense it had been drained of all colour.
At four in the afternoon, the daylight was already retreating, rendering any prospect of a view impossible. A hard wind was sweeping across North Yorkshire in February. Freezing rain, somewhere between ice and water, struck the windowpane in scattered drops, adding a thin, irregular tapping to the long howl of the gusts. Even indoors, a damp cold persisted in the air, faintly tinged with the chemical scent of plastic packaging, settling into the interstices of stirred dust.
He wore only a black oilskin coat falling just beyond the hips, its unfastened buttons parting to reveal a pale grey striped shirt beneath. Beside the faulty radiator, he stood with a posture at once lax and upright, gazing out at the severe weather beyond the glass. He seemed to have become one with this castle and the climate; only the lips, breathing slow trails of pale mist, sustained the illusion of life. Preston Caldwell couldn't help but feel another surge of excitement.
"...all refurbished between 2016 and 2019. This area has never been accessible to the public, affording you a view of the castle in its most authentic, unaltered state. Mr Caldwell, might I suggest stepping away from the window? It is considerably warmer towards the centre of the room," Lauren remarked, harbouring a hint of sourness. "Regrettably, due to the short notice regarding your visit, the heating in this wing has yet to reach an optimal temperature."
"Sure, I get it." Preston, soon to turn twenty-five, continued toward the window until his mud-splattered light suede sneakers came to a halt beside England. "What are you looking at?" he asked. Both his expression and tone suggested genuine curiosity, yet his blue eyes never wavered from the living nation before him. Just as he had for the past seventy minutes, he reverently scoured the figure beside him for every detail his vision could capture.
That perfectly empty face turned towards him. The dark green eyes blinked once. Had the light, indoors and out, not been so meagre, Preston believed he might have seen minute crystals of frost along the fringe of those lashes.
"Snowdrops," came the reply in a polished English accent. "At the edge of the woods. Can you see them?"
England took a half-step back, yielding an extra space between them. Preston took a step forward accordingly, looking out into the windswept afternoon. Behind him, the Christie's senior estate specialist was directing another removal man, who was clutching bubble wrap in one hand and a wooden crate in the other, and offering another apology to this young American buyer. He had to understand, the castle was in the midst of a full inventory and the relocation of family collections. "Had we been granted even twenty-four hours' notice, you would certainly not be seeing the property in such a state," Lauren reiterated.
Preston wasn't sure what state he'd expected to find it in. He had been en route to Paris to celebrate his birthday when he learned that his father was considering the purchase of an English castle, currently offered at reduction. Since he was already in Europe, Preston might as well make a detour to inspect it. Preston had no particular enthusiasm for castles, and it wasn't until he'd landed in Manchester that he'd realised this might prove a rather miserable errand. After more than two hours on the road, halting and proceeding through dense fog, desolate moorland and vacant farms, and finally stepping into the muddy, sodden grass of the English countryside amidst freezing rain and gale-force winds, Preston was quite certain he desired no European castle at all.
That had been before he encountered England at the Boar's Head. Preston squinted, edging closer to the single-glazed window through which the cold continued to seep, searching the thickening dark for those small white flowers. Had it not been snow caught against the gnarled roots and the ashen stone wall, he might have seen them.
He could not recall when he had first seen his own country, but this was Preston's first time seeing another national personification in person, let alone exploring a castle bearing centuries of that country's history alongside him. Upon learning that the director of country houses couldn't arrive in time, England had offered of his own accord to accompany this rather anxious citizen and supplement the tour with whatever historical anecdotes might prove useful.
It turned out that Preston retained almost none of Lauren's explanations regarding maintenance costs, renovation scales, or arrangements for loaning out the collection. Most of his attention had gone into asking about the Gunpowder Plot, the English Civil War, and how the oak deck of the HMS Rose had been laid to floor the tower room. Only when they exited the castle and passed the bullet scars on the gatehouse wall did it occur to him that he had prompted England to recount the many ways in which his own people had once killed one another.
England came to a stop beside a casually parked white Ford Transit van, seeming genuinely surprised by the American's sudden expression of regret. Behind him, several logistics workers, evidently delayed by the unscheduled tour, were packing up their tools and preparing to leave.
"Please don't think of it that way." An expression of measured courtesy returned to his face, even in the bitter wind of the northern English countryside. "It's been a long time. Those who bled, and those who grieved for them, left us hundreds of years ago. Thank you for your consideration, Mr Caldwell. Will you be staying the night?"
"I can't," Preston replied. "Tomorrow is my birthday. I've got a pretty full itinerary."
"Happy birthday, Mr Caldwell," England smiled. "We are deeply honoured that you should choose to mark the occasion in our country."
"Actually, it's in Paris," Preston said, a flicker of unease surfacing. "But I'm planning to come back next year."
"That would be most welcome," England said. "You may find the great hall particularly suited to receiving guests. The visitor facilities in the east wing could easily be adapted for use as a banqueting space."
"Next year – " the young American stopped, then decided to finish the question, "If I held it here, would it be possible for you to come to my birthday party?"
England paused. Perhaps it was the van door suddenly slamming shut behind them, or the way Lauren's face brightened up, or perhaps he was not as surprised by the invitation as he appeared.
"Mr Caldwell, thank you for the invitation." The lips that breathed slow trails of pale mist spoke softly. "Should the opportunity arise to return, it would be a very great pleasure indeed. You may contact me through whichever social platform you prefer. The accounts are managed by a professional communications team, but I am certain they will pass your message along."
Back in his car, England spent a few minutes reviewing his social media accounts. Most accounts had been updated with a photograph taken with his elder brother in Edinburgh the day before; only Bluesky still showed the New Year's greeting video. Perhaps the communications team had given up on that platform; or were simply stretched too thin. He could not be certain.
The engine hadn't been started. It was cold in the car, but the rain had stopped. Remnants of dirty snow, veined with black grit, had collected at the base of the windscreen wipers. Lauren’s Volvo SUV drove past in front of him, heading toward the roundabout. He raised a hand in acknowledgement, whether or not she'd seen. Outside the castle remained only a single local delivery van and England's own Vauxhall.
He unlocked his phone. His finger hovered above the screen until it dimmed again. He looked up. The van was still there. The light outside the gatehouse finally came on. England pulled the boots he'd bought a few hours earlier from the backseat, changed into them, fastened every button on his coat, left his phone in the glovebox, and stepped out into the cold.
He entered the castle through the servants' passage, or what had several centuries ago been intended for servants. The thick stone walls still held a faint trace of warmth. He owed that to the impromptu visit from the youngest son of the Caldwell family. It would not last long. But he had zeroed in on one or two target locations, aided, again, by the tour he had rather neatly inserted himself into.
As compensation, perhaps, England had made a fairly convincing effort to sell this ancestral property for his own citizen. A skill he had honed over recent decades. He did not know what figure Caldwell might offer, but more bidders were always preferable to fewer. Only now did the act of interfering in a citizen’s affairs, polishing the past, and promoting fragments of his own history on the market stir within him a peculiar blend of pride and something akin to guilt. He was generally adept at displaying such feelings when they served a practical purpose. Now, there was none.
He easily avoided the few motion sensors on the ground floor. This wasn't good news; he might have arrived too late. But he wasn't supposed to be here in the first place. After concluding his work in Scotland, he ought to have turned south toward Liverpool. The event was postponed at the last minute, and he'd found himself in Newcastle, an hour and a half's drive from this castle currently at auction. He'd walked into a shoe shop on the high street and purchased the desert boots he was now wearing, in his Scottish brother's size. He could only hope the Cabinet Office auditors wouldn't notice that this gift was purchased the day after their meeting.
Had he known the caretaker resided in the gatehouse, he might never have bought the boots at all. As England mounted the cantilevered staircase in a wash of reluctant moonlight, the crepe soles moved in near silence, though a castle was never without sound. The night wind let out a mournful wail as it funnelled down the chimney flues. Windowpanes, held within their leaded frames, trembled intermittently against the cold. From the depths of empty corridors came sharp, sudden cracks as timber floorboards or upper beams contracted against the cold. Just now, the hot water pipes behind the panelling were knocking consecutively as they expanded, as though a heavily built labourer in waterproof boots were advancing one step at a time. When England reached the top of the staircase, in the range where the brightening moon allowed him to see, he made out they were Red Wing work boots.
"The Right Honourable England," the figure called him with deliberate precision.
England, standing in the moonlight filtering through a stained-glass window, raised a gloved hand to shield his eyes. The aggressive beam of the high-lumen torch swung down, whether intentionally or not, to settle on his groin.
"At this hour," came a provocative interrogation, "what are you doing in an empty castle? "
England lowered his arm and addressed the logistics worker still half-submerged in shadow. "I might ask the same of you, Mr United States of America, who has spent the better part of the day moving crates within a castle on my territory."
Before England could finish his sentence, America had closed the distance between them, shrugging off his own down jacket and draping it over the older nation's shoulders. He drew the sides together, and in the same motion pulled England closer into his chest.
"Obviously," said the younger nation, "I'm here to save some amateur thief from both starving and freezing."
The heat radiating from another body, and the residual warmth still clinging to the jacket now wrapping him, made England realise he hadn't noticed the cold until now. He glanced at the heavy hooded sweatshirt beneath America's high-visibility vest, and the tactical thermal underlayer almost certainly worn beneath that, and decided to accept the gesture.
"Phone?" America mouthed.
"In the car," England answered aloud, then raised his left wrist and tapped it.
"In D.C.," America replied in kind. "I traveled all the way here in disguise. You think I'd slip up like that?"
England had no doubt that America had come in disguise. Given their various experiences on Halloween, at comic conventions, and in some hotel rooms, he'd say America wasn't just good at dressing up - he relished it, and his talent for passing as human was nothing short of exceptional. Whether being ordered around by auction house staff or yelled at by genuine logistics men to move the van, he carried himself as a typical British working man to perfection.
Whether they carried any traceable devices was less certain. These days, they were seldom informed of government intelligence in advance. Much of what they learned came from news reports. But of late, the nature of the private relationship between America and England had become a subject of scrutiny. Some voiced discomfort at the implications of consanguinity. The result was that they were permitted to appear in family photographs together only at Christmas, and preferably in the company of as many other nations as possible.
"How did you know I was here?" England pointed out the obvious security flaw.
"Relax. Phone tracking," America added. "Some old friends at the NSA still take my calls."
"Then why are you here?" England demanded.
"You really don't know?" America countered.
America had released the front of the jacket, yet the two nations remained standing close. At some point, the moonlight had once again been obscured by the clouds. The dim, organic restlessness that seemed to inhabit the stones of the castle itself receded from perception. Amidst the warm breaths brushing intermittently against their freezing skin, they found themselves searching the dark for each other's faces.
"...Greenland." America said, with a blink. "Thought I'd do a little reconnaissance. And checked up on you on the way. Turns out you're having a date with a young American kid in an old castle. If I remember it right, it took centuries for you to celebrate my birthday. You've known Preston all of a few hours and you're already ready to show up at his party?"
"Is this the United States of America being jealous?" England's tone lightened, almost flirtatiously. "I thought you'd already made your feelings clear via the unfortunate rear door of that Ford Transit."
"Not at all. I'm always delighted to see my citizens fascinated by you, Lord England." America smiled. "So are you really going? To his party?"
"This castle has been on the market for more than a year, Alfred." England used his human name. America had never quite grown immune to it. "Preston will have forgotten what he said before he crosses the Channel," England said.
"Don't say that." America's posture softened despite himself. "...Don't say that."
England didn't think he'd misspoken, yet he understood. As a fellow nation, he understood completely what it cost America to hear it. He lowered his voice. Even so, in the gradually emptying corridors, their words sounded too distinct, creating an illusion of conviction. "You know that on the matter of Greenland," England said, "I stand with Europe."
"I'm not sure Europe stands anywhere as one," America replied. England knew he was right.
"How bad is it?" he asked.
"Bad enough," he answered. "But they know what's best for me, don't they?"
England prepared to answer this statement of fact with composure, but found something had lodged in his throat. Aside from the jacket now draped over England’s shoulders, America's attire differed little from the afternoon's disguise. The iron-grey beanie concealing his blond hair, the plain hooded top, and work trousers with reinforced knees. He'd put his glasses back on and removed the dust mask, while England still saw the careful mimicry of humanity in the nation before him, and felt a pull of sympathy misapplied, accompanied by a memory not quite distant.
Less than two hundred and fifty years ago, at the edge of a garrison in what was then called the neutral ground, in New York State. Word of England's arrival in Manhattan had travelled north along the Hudson Valley. They were not permitted to meet; Alfred came nonetheless. England still insisted on calling him that name. Outside a burnt farmhouse, two national personifications moved among the charred remains and soil blackened with livestock waste and human blood, attempting to find their footing on that land, and with each other.
America had grown weary of accusation, but the questions had not left him. He felt anger. He felt betrayal. He wished to know whether what he felt belonged to him, or to the British Empire, and what difference the distinction made. England felt anger also. And betrayal. Yet he could not give America the answer he wanted. He knew only one answer. No matter who had said it, the answer was always the same.
"It's because they love you, Alfred."
"Love me? Then why does it hurt this much?" America turned sharply, his every movement still carrying the naivety and defiance of youth. It was partly the clothing, England thought; it was indistinguishable from any ordinary man's. A projection. A longing. While England remained encased in ceremonial scarlet, by royal command.
"My people hate and slaughter one another, Arthur," he said. "And you say this is for me?"
In the memory, which was always accurate and left nowhere to hide, England had wanted to look away, and hadn't. He had wanted to close his eyes, and hadn't. Perhaps he had wanted to reach out and pull the other close; this he would not admit. On that afternoon in the American colonies, in air thick with gunsmoke and dried blood and dung, England drew a slow breath.
"They are the reason we exist, Alfred. They know what is best for us."
Throughout the war, the colonies' attachment to the mother country had seeped out across the borders of the territory like venous blood without a heartbeat. Tired, frightened, they returned to the British Isles and to the other holdings of the Empire. Until England could no longer feel them. He began to cough up blood.
England thought the torch America had brought was too bright. America insisted it would make the search quicker, though he had no idea what England was looking for. They made their way toward the second floor. The temperature indoors continued to drop until the genuine clanging of expanding metal pipes echoed within the walls. Unfortunately, the hot water pumped from the boiler would not reach the part of the castle they were about to enter.
America had always enjoyed treasure-hunting in attics; England knew that well. Yet standing before the attic door beneath the castle roof, America's expression held none of its usual anticipation. He knew it was because of the blood rising in his throat. England passed it off as a chill-induced cough, wiping his mouth with practised ease against a handkerchief. America watched him complete the performance, waited as England folded the cloth inward to conceal the reddened patch and tucked it back into his inner coat pocket. At once America brightened, "Shall we continue our castle exploration?"
Experience had taught them that distraction was the most effective remedy. His face, young as it appeared, bore no trace of guilt, yet England could read from every faint sign that America remembered their conversation from centuries ago just as vividly – one that echoed scenes from decades ago, or days, or perhaps only hours before. History repeated itself, changing its sets, its sequences, and its audiences. Only they remained in the cast.
The old black iron box lock embedded deep in the elm door was no obstacle to England. America was almost inclined to think their infiltration too easy, lacking any real tension. That was before his torch illuminated the layers upon layers of trunks, furniture, and miscellaneous objects of all kinds in the depths of the attic.
They stepped onto the rough pine boards; several planks gave the same thin, piercing creak beneath their different footwear. America, walking ahead, bent to pass under a thick beam crossing the room and brushed aside a hanging veil of grey cobwebs. The cold here was of a different kind. Stone that had not known central heating for centuries exhaled a stagnant, tomb-like chill. The disturbed air carried a scent of dead insects desiccated to dust.
England drew out his penlight and cast its narrow beam over an empty display cabinet, a Victorian armchair with a crooked leg, and finally across America's back. Between the fluorescent sheen of the safety vest and England himself, countless particles of dust whirled like a silent blizzard. America sneezed.
"This jacket makes it rather difficult to move," England remarked, in a tone of mild complaint.
"Keep it on," America replied without turning around. "It's only cold. That's not what makes us ill."
England paused, fingers resting on the zipper, neither agreeing nor protesting. Perhaps in half an hour America would change his mind. He did not know how long he would have to remain here before finding the thing he sought, whatever that might be.
"I'll start here?" America stood beneath the frost-filmed dormer window, beside several skewed pale white rectangles of light, gesturing with his torch toward a cluster of furniture further into the room. The broad beam unintentionally swept across a wooden rocking horse with most of its paint gone and several cracked porcelain dolls; he gave a small, involuntary shudder.
"You don't know what I'm looking for," England said, amused.
"Well, you don't know what I'm looking for either." America replied, shrugging with studied nonchalance as he strode toward the eerily tinted rocking horse. His footsteps were so familiar to England that he forgot to remind America to move quietly. America had already crouched down, apparently intent upon the hollow eye socket of a doll. England turned to his own search.
This down jacket did make it difficult to move nimbly; he had not been entirely lying. England removed his gloves and sifted, bare-fingered, through a bundle of old newspapers and books tied with plastic cord, though he knew it would not be there. He had some sense of what he was looking for. Other, less nameable impulses kept pulling his eyes elsewhere.
On a carved dressing table with no mirror lay a white curtain cloth, perhaps once meant to keep off dust. Folded on the tabletop were a few Edwardian silk gowns, their fabric embrittled along the folds, the edges bearing the tracery of moth damage. A row of small glass and ceramic cups. Hard-shell travel cases stacked one on another. Empty picture frames. A heap of iron fireguards. Tangible traces of family life across successive centuries.
What he had seen on the ground floor had made it clear. Most valuables had been catalogued; what the present owner wished to keep had been packed away. In this attic at the castle's edge remained only those objects unfit for auction and equally unfit for disposal. Such things surrounded him now.
He opened a wooden chest that smelled of camphor. Beneath several tablecloths lay a stack of soft leather-bound ledgers. Holding the penlight between his teeth, he withdrew one and flipped it open. On its bone-coloured pages, dated entries itemised eighteenth-century purchases of grain, horses, livestock, and servants' wages.
There had been a time when he assumed everything in the world could be traded. Territory could be traded; sovereignty could be traded; even human beings could be traded. But not everything. There were always things left behind. Unrecorded. Unbid for. Until time consumed them entirely. He closed the ledger. The beam of light trembled faintly over the ink-stained, worn-edged parchment.
"Come see what I've found," America called from across the room.
England extinguished the penlight and replaced the book beneath the cloths. By the time he straightened, America was beside him, holding a plastic console dulled by dust. He wiped the label clean with his thumb, revealing dot-matrix lettering. "An original Magnavox Odyssey. First generation!"
America turned the console in his hands. A trailing cable swung through the torch beam, casting a fleeting serpentine shadow against the attic wall.
"I didn't find the light gun. Not sure it still works." He lifted the console to eye level, inspecting the power switch in the torchlight. Out of production for over fifty years. "Haven't seen one in decades. I might buy it, if they're selling it."
"If you exercise a little patience, you may find it in a skip," England said. "Sometimes time is worth more than money."
America looked back at him. The beam of his torch dipped slightly. The cord, unattached to any controller, swayed within the light like a metronome winding down. Wind slipped through the window frame with a faint whistle. It was the quietest the night had been.
"Maybe I am jealous of Preston," America said, as his gaze became too naked to conceal. "He can purchase a portion of you with money. I have never owned you for a single second."
That was true, but also not true. Among the many things denied to nations, ownership was not one. There were certain things they could own. England had once believed he had owned Alfred. Many historians might agree that was true. But what humans knew to describe was hardly what nations owned.
Having lived as long as he had, England could only say that something existed within him that might be named an emotion, though not the kind found in human beings. It was more doubtful, and more helpless. Human love carried subjective meaning; it possessed genuine agency. That force could alter the fate of a single person, even the course of a nation's future. The feelings England knew had never served any function. Not even at their fiercest had they been able to keep America from leaving.
Here, in a castle he might own, within an attic he might soon lose, the source of that interior disturbance compelled England to look inward once more. If only it were possible, as Cherubino once sang, to have those who know what love is open his heart and look within. They would not recognise it. The language human beings had invented for themselves was insufficient to describe it. It could not be recorded, nor priced. Yet it pointed, unmistakably, toward someone.
"But we have time, don't we?" America said, flashing a smile at the older nation. "Like now."
A sudden, forceful, muffled vibration pulled them both up short. It took England several seconds to realise it was a military-grade encrypted pager clipped to the back of America's belt - just as he frantically fumbled through layers of clothing, tore the black device free, and hit the confirmation key just before it escalated into full alert.
So far, they had not been discovered. It might have been the laxity of British security measures. It might have been the espionage skills they had honed during the Cold War, not yet dulled. England didn't believe it was the latter, but could not quite bring himself to admit it was the former. He let America draw his own conclusion.
Standing outside the driver’s window of the Ford Transit, England asked dryly, "Didn't you say we had time?"
"Not today." America rested his right arm on the half-lowered window, his other hand loosely holding the steering wheel.
He had already removed his glasses, set the navigation, and prepared to return the van to the local logistics company's car park so they could report for work again tomorrow. After that, he would have to change once more and reach the hotel before the official aircraft landed in Copenhagen. America claimed to have generated a flawless sequence of full-day selfies placing himself in Helsingør, scheduled for gradual release to the communications team. Some of them were probably already live by now. England had promised to notify the team, asking them to leave comments beneath the photographs.
"And you?" America leaned out one last time before raising the window, calling to England as he stepped back from the drive. "Going back to find what you were looking for?"
"No." England halted, realising from America's expression that his answer had come too quickly, and been too brief. Somewhere in his mind something was assembling itself. Words that did not yet exist in any human language gathered without form. But the time they had did not belong to this moment. England added only, "It's been found."
Back in his car, England spent a few minutes changing his shoes and checking his messages. When the heater began to dissolve the thin frost on the windscreen, he realised he was still wearing America’s down jacket. He tried to recall the company name on the side of the van, and searched the map for nearby firms. The same Ford Transit pulled up again in front of him.
"Have you checked the socials?" America jumped out.
"That's hardly urgent," England said. "The communications team has clocked out anyway."
"I’m talking about your accounts." America pulled open the driver's door of the grey Vauxhall and pushed himself halfway in. "Quickly."
As the United States of America supervised, England checked every public platform under his name. No new posts; a few new reactions; the inbox remained a neat column of messages he was not permitted to answer personally. Each account had gained one new follower named Preston Caldwell. Including Bluesky.
"Told you!" America turned from the screen to England’s face. "Arthur, I hope Caldwell buys this castle. I really do. Whatever it is you're selling, I hope an American buyer takes it."
"I'm not quite that desperate," England said, switching off the screen. "Hadn't you somewhere to be?"
America reached out and caught the hand England had raised to conceal some flicker of feeling. His right knee, padded beneath thick fabric, came down onto the gravel slick with muddy water, as if it had been planned all along. Moonlight fell, intermittently, through gaps in racing clouds onto the North Yorkshire grassland, but the streetlamp beyond the castle gate left England's face nowhere to hide.
"I love you. I loved you, and I will fall in love with you again," America whispered, breathing slow trails of pale mist between them. "Every time a single American longs for you, that's me."
On February 13, 2026, four hours and twenty-one minutes before Valentine's Day, outside a castle where, across centuries, people had been born and died, betrayed and cherished, forgotten and embraced, from the eyes of an ancient nation who had witnessed too much, a single tear slipped in silence.