Soul of a Crow

Praise for Heart of a Dove

* Gold Medalist - 2015 — Independent Publishers Awards

“Set just after the U.S. Civil War, this passionate opening volume of a projected series successfully melds historical narrative, women's issues, and breathless romance with horsewomanship, trailside deer-gutting, and alluring smidgeons of Celtic ESP.” — Publishers Weekly

“There is a lot I liked about this book. It didn't pull punches, it feels period, it was filled with memorable characters and at times lovely descriptions and language. Even though there is a sequel coming, this book feels complete.” — Dear Author

“With a sweet romance, good natured camaraderie, and a very real element of danger, this book is hard to put down.” — San Francisco Book Review

Also By Abbie Williams

Forbidden

~ The Shore Leave Cafe Series ~

Summer at the Shore Leave Cafe

Second Chances

A Notion of Love

Winter at the White Oaks Lodge

Wild Flower

The First Law of Love

Until Tomorrow

The Way Back

~ The Dove Series ~

Heart of a Dove

Soul of a Crow

Grace of a Hawk

Copyright © 2016 Abbie Williams

Cover and internal design © 2016 Central Avenue Marketing Ltd.

Cover Design: Michelle Halket

Cover Image: Courtesy & Copyright: Christopher Martin Photography

ShutterStock: Oleg Gekman

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

Published by Central Avenue Publishing, an imprint of Central Avenue Marketing Ltd.

www.centralavenuepublishing.com

Published in Canada
Printed in United States of America

1. FICTION/Romance - Historical

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Williams, Abbie, author

Soul of a crow / Abbie Williams.

(Dove)

Issued in print and electronic formats.

ISBN 978-1-77168-036-3 (paperback).--ISBN 978-1-77168-037-0 (epub).--

ISBN 978-1-77168-051-6 (mobipocket)

I. Title.

PS3623.I462723S69 2016 813'.6 C2015-907436-3

C2015-907437-1

Not a day goes by when I do not think of you

Prologue

Leave it, Sawyer,
we'll not be needing a fire this night,” Gus told me. “It's warm enough.”

I obeyed, sitting back on my bootheels, and continued to stare fixedly at the kindling I had arranged in the shallow fire pit, freshly scraped into the earth with the blade of my knife. I blinked and attempted to refocus upon Angus Warfield's face; behind the full, unfamiliar beard, his flint-gray eyes were steady and blessedly recognizable. He was still the man I'd known in my old life, the life to which the path leading back had been obliterated. I knew that I would not ever find my way along its length again, despite the fact that the War ended.

The country was formally at peace.

Word came to us that Lee walked from the courthouse with his sword in hand; it had not been tendered in the Surrender. Eleven days later, modeling himself after Grant at Appomattox, Sherman formally accepted Johnston's surrender of the Army of Tennessee. All of the officers in attendance were allowed to keep their sidearms. Despite our lesser status in the eyes of the army, Boyd and I retained our .44 pistols, first issued to us as cavalrymen in 'sixty-two; Gus still had his Enfield rifle strapped to his horse, a solid, dappled gelding named Admiral.

Boyd and I found Gus by a stroke of sheer luck only days past; he had been riding west from Virginia, where his regiment spent its final weeks. Gus had been with Lee's army to the end; I couldn't look into his eyes for any great length of time, overwhelmed by the anguish that lingered there, just beneath the surface.

“We're going home now,” Gus said, crouching near me and studying my face. He said, low, “Sawyer, by God, it is good to see you. I haven't seen a soul from home in close to two years.”

Home
.

Where in God's name was home anymore? I could not have answered this question had my very life depended upon a response. I was so tired. I was tired way down deep inside my bones. I could feel it sapping at me, draining me of everything but the urge to sink into slumber. I could not deny that my mind flirted, however unwillingly, with the notion of death—it seemed an entity which crawled seductively near these days, as close as my own shadow at times, whispering a promise of rest, a cessation of the nightmares which plagued the meager sleep I could claim. It was all I could do to refrain from scouring the darkening woods for a glimpse of the black-winged death specter skulking amongst the tree trunks, whose concentrated gaze I could sense with a soldier's instinct.

Go
, I ordered it, though I didn't look its way.
Go, now. We have given you enough
.

But it remained unmoving, observing silently, and a distinct unease skittered along my spine.

Jesus, Sawyer
, I reprimanded myself, unable to restrain a shudder at what my imagination conjured. With a sincere determination, I shut my eyes and fixed a thought of Tennessee, which I had once called home, firmly into my mind.

The dusky evening, the pile of kindling, vanished as I imagined the Bledsoe holler where I'd been raised, a captivating place of early sunsets and old-growth trees, grapevines trailing my shoulders and icy creek water around my ankles as I explored with my brothers and the Carter boys. I had at one time known every gnarled tree root that snaked along the ground, every secret hiding place that young boys neglecting their chores could seek out.

Warming to this vision, I pictured the wide front porch that ran the length of my boyhood home, upon the railings of which honeysuckle grew so thickly that its flowering limbs seemed to support the porch rather than the wooden beams beneath. I saw the adjacent two-story barn silhouetted against the breast of a pale sky, gilded by a mellow amber afterglow of sinking sun, its upper windows propped open to the sweetness of an evening breeze. I recalled long afternoons spent playing in that barn, my brothers at my side, as they had been to the last.

My brothers…

Ethan
…

Jere
…

Just the thought of their names was painful as a blade between the ribs, with a slow death to follow, blood draining away like wine from a tipped bottle; I had witnessed many such sluggish deaths. Despite various injuries, my body survived the War and still remained functional—all of the death was in my mind, sticky as an orb spider's web, just as difficult to brush aside. The skeins of it clung.

No.

Do not think of being too late.

Do not think of crawling through the ditch with cold red water seeping over your wrists.

Oh Jesus, please…make it stop…

My head ached and I closed my eyes even more tightly, and there, just yonder in my memory, I could see ghost mist that rose up from the ground on spring evenings, tinted a haunting blend of indigo blue and deep green. I could smell the rich earth of Cumberland County, the syrup of the honeysuckle blossoms, the dusty, hay-filled barn and the horses therein, all scents as familiar to me as my own skin. Mama and Daddy would be waiting for me at the top of the porch steps, side by side; Daddy would have an arm about Mama's waist, holding her close, as always. I'd not received a letter from my parents in many months, but post had long since ceased to move freely; it was a gamble sending correspondence anywhere these days.

Though perhaps now that the War was over…

Boyd and I had spoken those words to one another as though mired in a dream when the news first came to us, in Georgia. Our regiment had been camped there, and we'd been eventually discharged. No money was paid out, though we'd been allowed to keep our armaments; our commanding officer's exact words were, “I don't give a flying fuck. And you'll need them on the way home, poor bastards.”

It was still surreal. The Confederacy, the dream of it, was dead, reduced to ash. I felt as insubstantial as ash myself, ready to scatter to pieces on the faintest breeze. If someone were to ask me why I'd fought, why I'd spent the last two and a half years as a soldier, I could not have articulated a response. I stared now at Gus without saying anything, and he gently curved a hand around my right shoulder, squeezing me the way my own father would have, had he been here in the clearing with us.

“It will be all right, Sawyer,” Gus said quietly. Though he said no more on the subject, I knew he understood what I was feeling; he did not press for a response.

Boyd joined us momentarily; he'd walked into the cedars for a bit of privacy. He bore dark smudges of fatigue beneath his eyes. With a thick black beard obscuring the lower portion of his face, he closely resembled his father, Bainbridge Carter, and appeared a good decade older than his actual age. I was certain the same could be said of me; I had not scraped a razor over my jaws in months. With sincere determination I kept my thoughts upon my parents, James and Ellen Davis, and upon Bainbridge and Clairee, imagining how they would rejoice to have us home again. And little Malcolm, who was close to ten years old by now. Malcolm, the only brother left to Boyd. My brothers had been slaughtered on a battlefield strewn with rocks within two months of leaving home; Beaumont and Grafton Carter had both been dead by the following summer, of 'sixty-three.

If I closed my eyes too long when awake and not numbed by the haze of exhaustion, images sprang forth, unbidden. The specter would scuttle closer, its black-bright eyes intent. I pressed both hands over my face, catching the scents of dirt and smoke from my skin. Boyd and I slept beneath the distant stars, though close to one another, our backs nearly touching, since leaving the regiment; the warmth of another person was the only thing that offered any hope of alleviating the night terrors, for the both of us.

Boyd and I had served together for the duration of the War and had seen more than any one person should be asked to bear witness to in a single existence. I prayed that in good time we would be able to speak of it, at least to one another. Boyd was the only person on the face of the Earth with whom I felt as though I could be completely honest, could speak without having to carefully guard each word. Perhaps Gus now, as well. Gus had been a soldier. He knew. I spoke little these days as it was; Whistler was the only one I could manage more than a few sentences for. My horse, my sweet girl. She had saved my life time and again.

And you kept her safe, in return.

You couldn't manage to keep Ethan and Jeremiah alive.

Don't let Mama and Daddy blame me.

I blame myself. I will always blame myself for it.

Gus's low, strained voice penetrated my desperate thoughts. He crouched on the opposite side of the cold fire pit and said, “I figure we'll be home by end of the week, if the weather stays fair. I've not a word from my Grace in months.”

It was concerning him greatly; he'd mentioned this at least three times. I tried not to let the knot of unease in my lower belly take precedence over my already-tenuous control. None of us dared to acknowledge what could await us upon returning home; I reminded myself that Sherman had not sliced so brutally through Tennessee, as he had Georgia…

Oh dear God…

Boyd held half a day-old biscuit towards me and his forehead wrinkled as he asked a silent question. I shook my head at once, not the least hungry, though we'd eaten little since mid-morning coffee and hardtack. Hunger seemed a trivial thing, food a luxury I could not bear just now.

“They've surely heard word,” Gus continued. “Doubtless they're expecting us any day.”

From the near-distance, perhaps a few hundred yards, came the sound of laughter, further adding to the nightmarish unreality of the evening. Men's laughter, rapidly approaching our position. We were not upon a well-traveled road and all of us tensed at once, hands lifting to the pistols strapped upon our hips.

“Shit,” muttered Boyd.

We hunkered, animal-like, wary as criminals in the gathering darkness, armed but still vulnerable; despite the fact that the War was indeed over, running across a group of Federals was not an encounter any of us were eager to experience. It would be inevitable, eventually, but I would much rather it be in daylight hours. Wounds were keen-blooded and raw, and animosity would rage for a long time, I felt certain. I listened hard, but we needn't have worried in that moment. The sounds of their passage, whoever they were, soon faded to silence.

“Come, let us retire,” Gus muttered.

Sleep came upon me like a heavy cloak, and so it was with an exaggerated sense of disorientation that I startled awake at some later point in the night. I blinked, confused, as though engulfed in ghost mist, the low-lying fog of home. I stared at the bare branches entwining their fingers high above me, mind reeling to full consciousness, and then heard the noise that had surely jolted me from sleep in the first place: Whistler's frantic whinny.

I moved fluidly, driven by instinct, knife in hand before I was even upon my feet. The moon was only a few nights past the new, just bright enough to lend the clearing a pale, eerie glow in which I could plainly observe two men, working swiftly to untie our horses. A third, mounted, lingered in the trees and whooped a wordless noise of alarm upon hearing me, lifting his pistol at once. Moonlight glinted off the long, slender barrel as he called over, with an almost jovial tone, “Hold up there now, Johnny Reb!”

Drunk
. I could hear it in his voice. Boyd and Gus scrambled to their feet as I disobeyed the order and stalked towards the horses.

Shoot me, bastard
, I thought.
You couldn't know how little I fucking care.

“Stand down!” he yelled, and fired twice when I did not.

No matter how grim my thoughts, instinct sent me instantly into a crouch. He discharged a third round. I heard the bullet strike a trunk mere feet from my head. Gus and Boyd disappeared into the cover of the trees, where they would certainly circle in an attempt to flank the thieving bastards. I kept to ground, ducking into dense brush, and whistled to my horse; I was heartened to hear her immediate nickering response. I knew she would dig in her heels until I could get to her.

One of the Federals whistled back, in mockery, as though for an errant dog. He called from the darkness, “Where you hiding, Johnny?”

“C'mon, let's ride!” a man urged from a different direction, and I sprang into flight, towards that voice.

They had reclaimed their own mounts and were preparing to flee, not twenty paces to my left, and I charged them. They had all three of our horses by their lead lines, somewhat hampered by this burden. I heard two shots fired at a right angle to my position, and knew it was Gus or Boyd, from the trees. Two of the Federals fired back repeatedly, cursing, and I was nearly upon them, breathing hard, fury lending my limbs additional strength. I came abreast of Whistler and caught her halter, forcibly stalling their forward motion.

“Sonofa
bitch
,” the man holding her line grunted, forced to rein to a halt. I didn't release my hold. He turned swiftly in his saddle, aimed directly between my eyes, and fired. The cylinder clicked on an empty chamber and he spat his frustration. Heart pulsing at this narrow escape, I saw the silver length of his blade flash seconds before the tip of it scoured my right cheek, sending trails of hot blood at once down my jaw.

Had he leaned forward even a fraction, he would have stabbed well into my face and rendered me incapable of responding; it was his misfortune that I was further enraged by this slicing of my skin. I was conscious of the surroundings only minimally behind the red haze that descended. My fingers closed around the wrist of his sword arm and before I realized I'd yanked, he was flat upon his back on the ground before me. I fell to my knees almost atop him, breathing harshly, knife already poised to kill.

Gunshots rang out directly above, but I didn't stop to see from where they were fired.