The Bloody Ground - Starbuck 04 (18 page)

And those, Delaney knew, were the skills he would need if he was ever to send any useful intelligence to Thorne. Weeks before, when Thorne had despaired of the North's ability to spy on its foe and had demanded that Delaney somehow inveigle himself into Lee's headquarters, Delaney had foreseen the problem. George lacked the skills to carry the messages, while Delaney lacked both the skills and the nerve, and so Delaney had suggested that Adam Faulconer should be the courier, yet even Delaney had not yet devised any means of actually contacting Adam. It was all so very frustrating.

As Delaney had journeyed north he had not let the problem worry him. He very much doubted whether he would discover any intelligence worth passing on to Thorne; indeed the whole expedition, to both Delaney and to George, was a desperate inconvenience, but

Delaney knew he needed to show willingness if he was ever to garner the rewards of his secret allegiance, and so the lawyer had resigned himself to a few weeks of discomfort after which he could return home, soak in a hot bath, sip cognac, and smoke one of his carefully hoarded French cigarettes before sending a message to Thorne in the old safe manner. That message would regret his silence of the past few weeks and explain that he had discovered nothing worth passing along.

Only now he had discovered something. Indeed, within minutes of arriving at Lee's headquarters, Delaney knew he held the fate of North and South in his hand. Damn it, but Thorne had been right all along. There was a place in Lee's headquarters for a spy, and Delaney was that spy, and Delaney now knew everything that Robert Lee planned and Delaney might as well have been on the far side of the moon for all the. ability either he or George possessed to send that information to the Northern army.

Delaney had caught up with Lee's men at Frederick, a fine town that lay among wide Maryland fields. Nine streets ran east and west, six north and south, a concentration sufficient to persuade the inhabitants that their town should properly be called Frederick City, a name that was proudly painted above the depot of the spur line that ran north from the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. The spur had carried the region's fat harvest of wheat and oats east to Baltimore and south to Washington, leaving only the corn waiting for harvest, though now much of that crop had been stripped by hungry rebels. "I'd rather find shoes than corn," Colonel Chilton said querulously. Chilton was a Virginian and, like any senior officer who had been stationed in Richmond, was well known to Delaney. Chilton, a fussy man in his middle forties, was now Lee's chief of staff, a position he had gained through his punctilious diligence rather than from any flair for soldiering. "So Richmond sends us a lawyer instead of shoes," he greeted Delaney's arrival.

"Alas," Delaney said, spreading his hands. "I would it were otherwise. How are you, sir?"

"Well enough, I suppose, considering the heat," Chilton said grudgingly, "and you, Delaney? Never expected to see a fellow like you in the field."

Delaney took off his hat, ducked into Chilton's tent, and accepted the offer of a chair. The shade of the canvas offered small respite from the heat wave that had made his journey a hell of dust and sweat. "I'm well," he answered and then, asked to explain his presence, launched himself into his well-rehearsed rigmarole about the War Department being concerned about the legal repercussions of actions that, if undertaken on Confederate soil, might be considered felonious, but that, done to the enemy, fell into an unknown category. "It is
terra
incognita,
as we lawyers would say," Delaney finished lamely. He fanned his face with his hat brim. "You wouldn't, I suppose, have any lemonade?"

"Water in the jug," Chilton gestured at a battered enamel pot, "sweet enough to drink without boiling. Not like Mexico!" Chilton liked to remind people that he had served in that victorious war. "And I can assure you, Delaney, that this headquarters knows quite well how to treat enemy civilians. We're not barbarians, despite what those damned newspapers in the North say of us. Carter!" he shouted toward an adjacent tent. "Bring me Order One-ninety-one."

A sweating clerk with ink-stained hands came to the tent with the required order, which Chilton scanned quickly, then thrust into Delaney's hands. "There, read it for yourself," the Chief of Staff said. "I'll be back in a few moments."

Delaney, left alone in the tent, almost did not bother to read beyond the first paragraph of the order, which was headed "Special Orders, No. 191. Hdqrs. Army of Northern Virginia. September 9, 1862." In pencil, next to the heading, a clerk had written "Gen. D. H. Hill." The first paragraph, which Delaney idly scanned, was a prohibition against soldie
rs going into the town of Fred
erick without written permission from their divisional commander. A provost guard was stationed in the town to enforce the order, which was designed to allay the inhabitants' fears about being overrun and looted by a rapacious horde of half-starving, ill-dressed soldiers. The paragraph entirely met the manufactured concerns that justified Delaney's presence in the army. "And quite right, too," Delaney said to no one in particular, though in truth he would not have cared if the soldiery had dismantled Frederick City shingle by shingle.

He poured himself a mug of warm water, drank, grimaced at the taste, then, for lack of anything else to read, went back to the order. The second paragraph arranged that local farm vehicles be commandeered to transport the army's sick to Winchester. "Poor bastards," Delaney said, trying to imagine the rigors of a fever-racked journey in a dung-stinking farm wagon. He fanned himself with the order, wondering where in hell Chilton had vanished. He leaned forward to look out of the tent and saw George standing stiffly beside the horses, but no sign of Chilton.

He leaned back and read paragraph three. "The army will resume its march tomorrow," the paragraph began, and suddenly Delaney went chill as his eyes scanned the rest of the closely written page. The order might have begun with commonplace arrangements for policing the army and providing transport for its wounded, but it ended with a complete description of everything Robert Lee planned to do in the next few days. Everything. Every destination of every division in all the army.

"Sweet Jesus," Delaney said, and was overcome by a rush of terror as he thought what would follow his capture. One part of him wanted to thrust the order away and pretend he had never seen it, while another yearned after the glory that would surely be his if he could just smuggle this paper across the lines.

General Jackson will recross the river and, by Friday morning, take possession of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. He would occupy Martinsburg and cut off the road by which the Federal garrison at Harper's Ferry might retreat.

General Longstreet was ordered to advance to Boonsborough, wherever in hell that might be. General McLaws would follow Longstreet, but then branch off to help capture Harper's Ferry. General Walker was to cooperate with Jackson and McLaws by cutting off another road to Harper's Ferry, and once that Northern garrison was taken, the three generals were to join the rest of the army at Boonsborough or Hagerstown. Hagerstown? Delaney's geography was shaky, but he was fairly certain Hagerstown was a Maryland town close to the Pennsylvania border while Harper's Ferry was in Virginia! Which surely meant one part of Lee's army was going north, the other south, and so leaving the two parts vulnerable to separate attacks.

Delaney's hands felt almost nerveless. The paper fluttered. He closed his eyes. Maybe, he told himself, he did not understand these things. He was no soldier. Perhaps it made sense to split an army? But it wasn't his responsibility to decide if it made sense, but merely to send this news to the Northern army. Copy it, you fool, he told himself, but just as he opened his eyes to search Chilton's table for a pen or pencil, he heard footsteps outside the tent.

"Delaney!" a cheerful voice called.

Delaney ducked out of the tent to see that Chilton had returned with General Lee himself. For a moment the usually suave Delaney was lost in confusion. The order was still in his hand, and that flustered him, then he remembered he had been given it by Chilton and so no guilt could be attached to its possession. "Good to see you, General," Delaney finally managed to greet Lee.

"You'll forgive me if I don't shake hands?" Lee said, holding up his splinted and bandaged hands as explanation. "I had an altercation with Traveller. Well on the mend, now. And the other good news is that McClellan is back in command of the Federals."

"I heard as much," Delaney acknowledged.

"Which means our foes will dawdle," Lee said with satisfaction. "McClellan is a man of undoubted virtues, but decision
-
making is not one of them. Chilton tells me you're here to make sure we behave ourselves?"

Delaney smiled. "I'm truly here, General, because I wanted to see some action." He told the lie smoothly. "Otherwise," he continued, brushing his gray coat, "it would seem to me that this uniform is not properly earned."

Lee returned the smile. "Witness your action, Delaney, by all means, but don't get too close to McClellan's men, for I should be sorry to lose you. You'll dine tonight?" He turned as the clerk who had brought the copy of Order 191 to Chilton's tent reappeared with a sheaf of envelopes that he hesitantly held toward Colonel Chilton. "That's the order?" Lee asked Chilton.

"Seven copies," the clerk confirmed, "and Colonel

Chilton's original is in that gentleman's possession," he indicated Delaney, who guiltily flourished the original copy.

"Eight copies in all?" Lee frowned and took the envelopes from the clerk and, as swiftly as his awkward bandages allowed, leafed through them to read the addressees' names. "Do we need one for Daniel Hill?" Lee asked, flourishing the empty envelope addressed to General D. H. Hill that was evidently waiting for the original copy of the order in Delaney's hand. "Jackson will surely copy Hill the relevant parts?" Lee said.

"Best to be sure, General," Chilton said soothingly, retrieving the envelopes from the General and the single copy from Delaney. He folded the order and slipped it inside the envelope.

"You know best," Lee said. "So, Delaney, what news from Richmond?"

Delaney retailed some government gossip while Chilton placed the last copy of Order 191 in General Hill's envelope, which he laid with the others at the edge of a table just inside his tent. Lee, in affable mood, was telling Delaney his hopes for the next few days. "I'd have liked to march north into Pennsylvania, but for some reason the Federals have left their garrison in Harper's Ferry. That's a nuisance. It means we have to snap them up before we march north, but the delay can't be long and I doubt McClellan will summon the nerve to interfere. And once we've cleared Harper's Ferry we'll be free to make a nuisance of ourselves. We'll cut some Pennsylvania rail roads, Delaney, while McClellan makes up his mind what to do about us. In the end he'll have to fight and when he does I pray we can so mangle him that Lincoln will sue for peace. There's no other point in coming north, except to make peace." The General made this last pronouncement gravely for, like many other Southerners, he worried about the propriety of invading the United States. The legitimacy of the Confederacy's war depended on being the aggrieved party. They proclaimed that they merely defended their land against an external aggressor, and many men questioned their right to carry that defense outside their border.

Lee stayed a moment or two longer with Delaney, then turned away. "Colonel Chilton? A word?"

Chilton had been summoning the dispatch riders, but now followed Lee across to the General's tent. Delaney was again left alone and the bowel-loosening terror almost swamped him as he looked at the pile of orders awaiting dispatch. General Hill's envelope was uppermost on the pile. Dear God, Delaney thought, but dare he do it? And if he did, how would he ever send the stolen order across the lines? His hand was shaking, then an idea struck him and he ducked into Chilton's tent and sorted through the piles of paper on the trestle desk. He found a copy of Lee's proclamation to the people of Maryland and that, he reckoned, would have to serve his purpose. He folded the proclamation twice, hesitated, looked into the innocent sunlight, then snatched up the envelope with Hill's name. It was still unsealed. He took out the order, inserted the proclamation, then pushed the stolen paper deep into a pocket of his jacket. His heart was thumping terribly as he placed the still unsealed envelope back on the pile and then stepped out into the sunlight.

"You look feverish, Delaney," Chilton said, returning to his tent.

"It will pass, I'm sure." Delaney sounded weak. He was amazed he could even stand upright. He thought of the gallows' raw pine beams oozing turpentine and dangling with a noose of rough-haired hemp. "The heat of the journey," he explained, "brought on a stomach fever, nothing else."

"Tell your man to add your baggage to ours. I'll give you a tent, then get some rest. I'll send you some vitriol for your stomach if it's still troubling you. You're dining tonight with us?" Chilton spoke about these domestic arrangements as he gummed a wafer over the unsealed envelope's flap. He had not looked inside the envelope and so had not detected
Delaney's substitution. "Signa
tures, gentlemen," he reminded the junior officers who would now carry the orders to their destinations. "Make sure they're all signed for. On your way, now!"

The staff officers rode away. Delaney wondered if Hill would think it odd to receive Lee's proclamation, for surely he would already have received his own copy of the document that tried to justify the South's invasion of the North. "Our army has come among you," the proclamation said, "and is prepared to assist you with the power of its arms in regaining the rights of which you have been despoiled." But Delaney, if he was not caught, and if he could just devise a way of reaching Thorne or Adam Faulconer, would despoil the South of its victory. There would be no peace, no truce, no Southern triumph; just Northern victory, complete, crushing, and implacable.