Free White Doves at Morning: A Dave Robicheaux Novel by James Lee Burke Page A

hills, saw him rise from behind earthworks and walk with an extended sword toward a line of dark-clad soldiers, perhaps boys from Massachusetts, who in unison fired their muskets in a roar of dirty black smoke and covered Robert's face andchest and legs withwounds that looked like the red lesions of the pox.
    What about her participation in the Underground Railroad? she asked herself. She had told slaves of the land across the Ohio, filling them with hope, in some cases only to see them delivered into the hands of bounty hunters. Worse, she had personally put Flower's aunt on a boat that overturned and drowned her.
    She wanted to cut the word "traitor" into her breast.
    She fell asleep in her clothes, the late afternoon heat glowing through the curtains in her bedroom. She became wrapped in the sheet, her body bathed in sweat, and she dreamed she was inside a tunnel, deep underground, the wet clay pressing against her chest, pinning her arms at her sides, her cries lost inside the heated blackness.
    She awoke in a stupor, unsure of where she was, and for just a moment she thought she heard Robert's voice in the room. She pulled her dress over her head and flung it on the floor and, dressed only in her underthings, went into the backyard and opened the valve on the elevated cistern that fed trapped rainwater into the bathhouse.
    She closed the bathhouse door behind her, stripped off her undergarments, and sat in the tub while the wood sluice that protruded through the wall poured water over her head and shoulders and breasts. It was late afternoon now, almost evening, and the light breaking through the trees was green and gold and spinning with motes of dust. Somewhere a bird was singing.                                      ,
    You don't know that he's dead, she told herself.                              '
    But when she closed her eyes she saw shells bursting in a field, geysering dirt into the air, while men crouched in the bottom of a trench and prayed and begged and pressed their palms against their ears.
    Poseur, she thought. Self-anointed bride of Christ, walking among the afflicted. Hypocrite. Angel of Death.
    She put her head down and wept.
     
    LATER, she opened all the windows of her house to let in the evening's coolness and tried to sort out her thoughts but could not. Her skin felt dead to the touch, her heart sick, as though it had been invaded by invisible worms. She thought she understood why primitive people during, mourning rituals, tore their hair and gouged their bodies with stone knives. She lit an oil lamp on her living room table and began a letter to a Quaker church in Bradford, Massachusetts, resigning her title of deacon.
    Then she saw a man walk into her yard, wearing a gray officer's uniform and a soft white hat. He removed his hat when he stepped onto the gallery, and knocked on her door.
    "Mr. Jamison?" she said.
    "Yes. I was visiting in town and heard of your distress. Your neighbors and friends were concerned but didn't want to show a disrespect for your privacy. So I thought I should call upon you," he said.
    "Please come in," she said.
    He stood in the middle of the living room, his face rosy in the light from the oil lamp, his thick hair touching his collar.
    "I understand you've been longtime friends with Robert Perry," he said.
    "Yes, that's correct," she replied.
    "Are you and Lieutenant Perry engaged, Miss Abigail?"
    "No, we're not," she said, clearing her throat. "Could I offer you some tea?"
    "No, thank you." He smiled self-effacingly. "I arrived at your door in a peculiar fashion. By steamboat. Would you take a ride with me?"
    She turned and saw out the back window the lighted compartments and decks of a huge boat, with paddle wheels on both its starboard and port sides; a roped gangway extended from the deck to the bank.
    "The cook has prepared some dinner for us. It's a beautiful evening. As I told you, I'm a widower. It took me some time to learn it's