Judith's Son

Elliot met her gaze and said nothing. Anna set down the bread she had half eaten, a look of faint bewilderment crossing her face.

"I can't tell whether Fredrick Dickens cherishes you terribly, or whether he thinks of you as nothing more than a chess piece."

"And how much have you heard about me?"

"He said you were a foolishly kind friend. Is that true?"

A look of pure, unguarded curiosity rested on him. Elliot blinked his weary eyes and began, slowly, to unwrap the sandwich.

"So even a man who has killed hundreds looks foolishly kind to a saint."

For a while the only sound at the table was the rustle of paper. Anna blinked her large eyes, plainly startled, and then tossed the words out as lightly as a pebble.

"…Interesting."

Interesting.

Elliot flung down the half-unwrapped sandwich with a flicker of irritation and rubbed at his stiff eyelids.

"How are you feeling? You slept the whole day."

"I'm all right now."

Anna tore into the bread in earnest. Elliot, still dragging a hand over his face, narrowed his bloodshot eyes at her.

"Now?"

"…"

"Were you unwell?"

Anna worked her lips and stared straight at him. Only after she swallowed the bread with an audible gulp did an answer come.

"Worry about yourself before you worry about me. You're the one who looks as if he needs a long sleep."

Finding nothing to say, Elliot swallowed a groan and rubbed his rough cheek. At last Anna finished off one piece of bread, came face to face with the sauce-smeared cabbage and the meat patty, and stuck out her tongue.

"And what sort of food is this, anyway, that it's so hard to eat? Don't they have forks or knives here?"

At that Elliot lifted his sandwich as if to make a point and took a large bite. Anna's face went blank, as though she had suffered some tremendous betrayal.

The next day.

Elliot made ready to go out early. The house had stood abandoned for a long time, and a broken bulb was hardly the only thing that needed replacing. Blankets, for one.

I'm cold.

The night before, back in the childhood home that had grown strange to him, he had lain staring blankly up at the dark ceiling. Anna had burst in without knocking and gone on and on about the cold. Leave her as she was, and she looked liable to crawl into the bed in search of warmth, so he had surrendered the last blanket whether he liked it or not.

But even in a mild country where the spring flowers were already budding, the sea wind that came in at night could not be called gentle. He lay down in his coat and could not sleep until late. All night the sound of waves leaking through the cracks of the window gnawed at his nerves.

Creak.

The rusted hinges of the front door complained. The moment he crossed the threshold, bright sunlight spilled across his eyes. He endured the brief dizziness, waited until the whitening of his vision settled, and set his feet down with care. As he went slowly down the hill, the tidy little country village opened before him, piece by piece, like a toy town.

Winsmore.

He had lived here for all of two years. They called it his hometown, but he had been taken to Castleleigh the moment he was born, and to him the gray streets of Castleleigh were far closer to a home.

An endlessly blue sky, the quiet swell of the sea, a whistle carried from far off. The ordinary scenery of Winsmore remained only as a faint thing, like an illustration in a storybook he had read as a child.

The village beginning its day in peace was not so different from that hazy memory. Shopkeepers lounged and yawned at their ease, and the children who were not bound for school gathered in knots and tore up and down the street. Even the dog barking fit to burst belonged to the harmony of a Winsmore morning.

But it took only an instant for a small crack to open in that ordinary life.

"Seventeen gelants."

As he drew the money from his wallet, the merchant whose eyes met his turned his head at once. Elliot started to speak, thought better of it, and set the coins quietly on the counter. This was not something he would endure only once or twice. He felt it to the bone: he was the outsider spoiling the peace of this village. How could he fail to notice the merchants' stinging glances following him from their stalls, or the children hiding in the alleys and peeking at no one but him?

"…Judith's son…"

"…When did he come back…"

It was a country village where outsiders were rare, and an outsider appearing all at once rarer still. He understood their curiosity. Even so, he could not help listening to the whispers that trailed him wherever he went.

Before he knew it he was carrying a load in both arms and stepping into the old butcher's shop. He had been fretting that they had gone two days without a proper meal. Anna was so thin a wind might have carried her off.

"Do you have any beef that came in today?"

A man sitting in a shadowed corner, puffing on a cigarette, braced a hand on his knee and rose. Elliot, who had been studying the cuts of meat hanging in clusters from the ceiling, turned to him a moment late.

He was a middle-aged man of burly build, a dark beard grown thick and unkempt across his face. He came over at a sluggish pace, set the half-smoked cigarette on the counter, and scrubbed his hands hard on his apron. Then he took down the cut at the end of the row and began to wrap it.

"Twenty gelants."

The man mumbled it. Elliot started counting bills. Once again he felt that lingering gaze, pretending not to look and looking all the same.

"…You've grown a great deal, Elliot."

In that characteristically clumsy voice, the dejection was plain. Elliot held out the bills without expression.

"You've grown a beard, Uncle."

A short laugh leaked out through the shaggy beard.

"Do you remember my name?"

"Uncle Tom."

"That's right. When you were little, it was Uncle Tommy."

Thomas Hill, the butcher, counted out the change with his thick hands, unhurried.

"I got a shock a little while ago, hearing you'd come back. I was sure someone had seen wrong. Never thought it would turn out to be true."

"It's strange that everyone recognizes me. I was nine when I left."

"Well, you're the very image of Judith."

Thomas glanced up. For all that his face was rough as a bandit's, his eyes were as simple and gentle as a cow's.

"There's still a great deal of Judith's face in you. The deep blond hair, and that straight nose. The eyes, though… do those take after the doctor? Judith's eyes were blue, and the shape of them drooped a little more, like this."

Elliot only smiled, saying nothing. Thomas studied that face for a long moment, then nodded readily.

"Yes. If not Judith, then the doctor. How is he? Is Dr. Olivier well?"

"He is."

The cigarette left on the counter had grown short in the meantime.

Thomas clicked his tongue and ground the still-lit stub out in the ashtray. He rummaged in his pocket and shuffled out of the shop, and Elliot followed quietly behind.

Thomas dropped onto the steps before the door and was drawing out a cigarette when he suddenly looked back.

"Want one?"

"Please."

Elliot set the cigarette between his lips, and Thomas held out the hand with the lighter. The lit tip began to char black. He drew a deep breath, and the acrid scent filled his lungs to the bottom.

For a while the two of them only smoked. Thomas, breathing out white smoke again and again, was the first to speak.

"What brings you here?"

Elliot watched the smoke leaving on his breath. Thomas, crouched on the steps, ducked his head and scratched the back of it, sheepish.

"It's too far to have dropped by without a thought. And it's not as if you'd grow homesick now for a hometown that was never much of one."

"…A younger cousin has been very ill. I came down so she could recuperate."

"A younger cousin? On the doctor's side?"

"No. My mother's."

Thomas's brow creased, just slightly.

"Strange. Far as I know, the Campbell line died out."

"You wouldn't have heard of her. I only learned of it recently myself."

His grandfather's cousin's son's daughter, was it?

Elliot thought of the forged identity Fredrick had taken such pains to build for Anna, and let out an empty laugh. A lineage like that was little better than none at all.

"Well, that's a queer business."

Thomas drew on his cigarette, unimpressed.

"And here I thought you'd come looking for Judith's grave."

"Mother's grave is in Castleleigh."

"Not that one. The village made another."

It was a fair way from here. Thomas had been about to explain where it stood when he felt Elliot's eyes fixed on him, and his mouth closed. The bearded lips worked for a long time, as if he were choosing his words with care.

"…You know. Judith was someone special to the people of this village."

"I know."

"Even so, it's finer than you'd think. Years ago, when the grave was finished, I sent Dr. Olivier a letter asking him to come and see it. I don't know what came of that. He may have looked in secretly and gone on his way. He was a man who embarrassed easily."

"I'm not sure that's for you to say, Uncle."

"You brat. Still as cheeky as when you were small."

Thomas gave a playful kick to the leg of Elliot, who was leaning in the doorway.

"Since you've come all this way, go and see it. The coffin's empty, but… the grave in Castleleigh is no different, is it?"

Elliot smiled faintly and breathed out smoke.

No body, and yet two graves. Could anything be more meaningless?

Where the pale smoke thinned, the mud-caked toe of a shoe intruded. Elliot lifted his head with the cigarette still in his mouth. A boy with dry hair piled on his head like straw stood hesitating at the foot of the steps.

"Luke, isn't it? Running an errand for your grandfather?"

Thomas, recognizing the boy, greeted him warmly. The boy called Luke startled and waved both hands.

"Ah, n-no. I was just passing by."

"Without actually passing."

"Th-that's…"

Undone by Thomas's teasing, Luke sneaked a glance at Elliot. Then he edged, hesitant, toward the man who only smoked, watching the world with a lazy air.

"Um…"

Feeling the look, Elliot took the cigarette from his lips and regarded Luke. The boy's face had gone so red it seemed about to burst, and he tugged uselessly at his sleeve.

"What is it?"

"A-are you C-Captain Olivier, sir?"

Elliot, who had been giving Luke a flat look, slowly set the cigarette between his lips again. It was Thomas who startled, eyes round, looking from Elliot to Luke and back.

"Captain? Then you're an officer. Elliot, what did you do to come back wearing an officer's rank?"

"What did he do? Do you have any idea how many honors the Captain has won?"

"Honors? What honors?"

"Oh, come on! Uncle, are you really going to make it this obvious you don't read the papers? Who doesn't know Elliot Olivier, the Blue Meteor?"

Luke raised his voice as if the ignorance pained him. Crushed by the boy's momentum, Thomas shrank at once.

"But the Blue Meteor was Judith's, surely…"

"Yes. It was the name of the Captain's mother, Judith Campbell. But now it's Captain Olivier's name too. Honestly, Uncle, you're completely stuck in the past. Who thinks of Judith Campbell these days when someone says Blue Meteor? Ten times out of ten, they mean Captain Olivier."

"Good heavens. Elliot, when did you get so famous?"

Thomas looked at Elliot with a sour, uneasy eye. Before there was room to answer, Luke's explanation came flying like a bullet.