“Yes, sir,” the aide said and trained his telescope south again.

Belvedere Delaney climbed up through the gravestones to join the nervous band of aides who stood a few paces behind Lee. Delaney’s uniform was bloody and his face sheened with sweat. Lee noted his arrival and smiled at him. “Are you wounded, Delaney?”

“Other men’s blood, sir,” Delaney answered. He was tired through and appalled beyond measure by what he had seen this day. He had never dreamed that such horrors could exist outside of slaughterhouses. The town was filled with wounded, and every house was sheltering dying and broken men. Yet the worst moment of the day had been when Delaney had gone down into a cellar to fetch some apples that the householder was storing for the winter and now offered to the wounded troops. As Delaney had filled a pail with the fruit he had felt liquid drip on his head. It had been blood seeping through the floorboards. He had begun to weep then, and his eyes were still red.

Lee saw that the lawyer was engulfed in horror. “Thank you for all your efforts, Delaney,” he said gently.

“I did nothing, sir,” Delaney said, “nothing,” and he suddenly felt guilty, for it was he, surely, who had precipitated this slaughter. He suddenly resented it, fearing that the memory of blood dripping through floorboards would sour his idyllic life in some foreign capital. He shook that suspicion away, then frowned and managed to blurt out what he had been sent to say. “Colonel Chilton wonders if you should withdraw, sir.”

Lee laughed. “And you were the only man brave enough to convey the message? Maybe you should abandon the law, Delaney, and take up soldiering. We need brave men. But in the meantime you can tell Chilton that we haven’t lost yet.” Delaney flinched as the shrapnel from a Yankee shell whipped the air overhead. Lee appeared not to notice the whirring sound of the hot metal. “We haven’t lost yet,” he said again with a tone of wistfulness.

“No,” Delaney said, not because he believed the general, but because it was not his place to point out the obvious. The Yankees were winning. Half the Southern army lay in exhaustion and the other half was being driven remorselessly back by the vast Northern assault. Colonel Chilton had readied an ambulance to hurry Lee away from the imminent disaster, but Lee, it seemed, was not willing to go.

More troops appeared in the south. Lee glanced at them, but even at this distance it was possible to see that the new men were wearing blue. He sighed, but said nothing. The aide turned the glass on the newly arrived troops who were dangerously close to the single road south. The air was hazed by the heat and obscured by filaments of smoke and the aide stared for a long time before he spoke. “Sir?” he said.

“I know, Hudson,” Lee said gently. “I’ve seen them. They wear blue.” He sounded immensely tired as if he was suddenly realizing that it was all over. He knew he should make some effort to withdraw now, to rescue what he could of his army, but he seemed consumed by a terrible lassitude. If he did not escape then he would be captured and McClellan would have him as his guest at dinner and the humiliation of such a meal seemed unbearable.