“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 soldiers going into the town of Frederick 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.