And survival was his own responsibility, which was why Belvedere Delaney took such exquisite care not to betray his own treachery. Colonel Thorne knew he was a Northern spy, and maybe Thorne had confided in one or two others, though Delaney had asked him not to, but other than Thorne the only human being who knew Delaney’s true loyalty was his manservant, George. Delaney was punctilious in describing George as a manservant, he never called him a slave, though he was one, and he treated George with a grave courtesy. “We make each other comfortable,” Delaney liked to say, and George, hearing the description, would concur with a smile. When visitors came to Delaney’s exquisite apartment on Richmond’s Grace Street the servant would behave like any other, though when Delaney and George were alone it seemed they were more like companions than master and slave, and some shrewd folk had scented that closeness and were amused by it. It was simply another part of Delaney’s eccentricities and they supposed that master and slave would grow old together and that, if Delaney died first, George would inherit much of his master’s wealth along with his own freedom. George had even taken Delaney as his surname.

On the occasions when Delaney had cause to send news to Thorne it had always been George who took the risks. It was George who carried the messages to the man in Richmond who passed them on northward, but George could not carry the messages now. George was as uncomfortable as his master at being among the rebel army, and George had no skills that could take him through a soldier’s picket line. George could dress a salad, roast a duck, or whip up an exquisite custard. He could reduce a sauce to perfection, had a nose for fine wine, and could play with equal facility upon a flute or violin. He could take a coat made at Richmond’s finest tailors and, with a few hours’ work, so remake it that a man would swear it came from Paris or London. George had a connoisseur’s eye for fine porcelain and many a time he had returned to Delaney’s apartment with news of a fine piece of Meissen or Limoges being sold by a family impoverished by the war and which would fill a gap in his master’s collection, but George Delaney was no man for hiding in thickets like a sharpshooter or riding across country like one of Jeb Stuart’s cavaliers.

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.