Copperhead. Bernard Cornwell

Lightning, a factory building which stood on Cary Street next to the two big storage tanks that held the gas supply for the city’s street lighting. The clothes of the released prisoners hung loose, evidence of the weight they had lost during their confinement in the commandeered factory.

      The men shivered as they waited for permission to board the truce boat. Most carried small sacks holding what few possessions they had managed to preserve during their imprisonment: a comb, a few coins, a Bible, some letters from home. They were cold, but the thought of their imminent release cheered them and they teased each other about their reception at Fort Monroe, inventing ever more lavish meals that would be served in the officers’ quarters. They dreamed of lobster and beefsteak, of turtle and oyster soup, of ice cream and apple butter, of venison steak with cranberries, of duck and orange sauce, of glasses of Madeira and flagons of wine, but above all they dreamed of coffee, of real, good, strong coffee.

      One prisoner dreamed of no such things, but instead paced with Adam Faulconer up and down the quay. Major James Starbuck was a tall man with a face that had once been fleshy, but now looked pouchy. He was still a young man, but his demeanor, his perpetual frown, and his thinning hair made him look old far beyond his years. He had once boasted a very fine beard, though even that had lost its luster in Castle Lightning’s damp interior. James had been a rising Boston lawyer before the war and then a trusted aide to Irvin McDowell, the General who had lost the battle at Manassas, and now, on his way back north, James did not know what was to become of him.

      Adam’s duty this day was to make certain that only those prisoners whose names had been agreed between the two armies were released, but that duty had been simply discharged by a roll call and head count, and once those duties were done he had sought James’s company and asked to talk with him privately. James, naturally enough, assumed Adam wanted to talk about his brother. “There is no chance, you think, that Nate could change sides?” James asked Adam wistfully.

      Adam did not like to answer directly. In truth he was bitterly disappointed with his friend Nathaniel Starbuck, who, he believed, was embracing war like a lover. Nate, Adam believed, had abandoned God, and the best he could hope for was that God had not abandoned Nate Starbuck, but Adam did not want to state that harsh judgment, and so he tried to find some shard of redeeming goodness that would buoy James’s hopes for his younger brother. “He told me he attends prayer meeting regularly,” he answered lamely.

      “That’s good! That’s very good!” James sounded unusually animated, then he frowned as he scratched his belly. Like every other prisoner held in Castle Lightning he had become lousy. At first he had found the infestation terribly shaming, but time had accustomed him to lice.

      “But what will Nate do in the future?” Adam asked, then answered his own question by shaking his head. “I don’t know. If my father resumes command of the Legion, then I think Nate will be forced to look for other employment. My father, you understand, is not fond of Nate.”

      James jumped in alarm as a sudden eruption of steam hissed loudly from a locomotive on the nearby York River Railroad. The machine jetted another huge gout of steam, then its enormous driving wheels screamed shrilly as they tried to find some traction on the wet and gleaming steel rails. An overseer bellowed orders at a pair of slaves who ran forward to scatter handfuls of sand under the spinning wheels. The locomotive at last found some purchase and jerked forward, clashing and banging a long train of boxcars. A great gust of choking, acrid smoke wafted over Adam and James. The locomotive’s fuel was resinous pinewood that left a thick tar on the rim of the potlike chimney.

      “I had a particular reason for seeing you today,” Adam said clumsily when the locomotive’s noise had abated.

      “To say farewell?” James suggested with an awkward misunderstanding. One of his shoe soles had come loose and flapped as he walked, making him stumble occasionally.

      “I have to be frank,” Adam said nervously, then fell silent as the two men skirted a rusting pile of wet anchor chain. “The war,” Adam finally explained himself, “must be brought to a conclusion.”

      “Oh, indeed,” James said fervently. “Indeed, yes. It is my prayerful hope.”

      “I cannot describe to you,” Adam said with an equal fervor, “what tribulation the war is already bringing to the South. I dread to think of such iniquities being visited on the North.”

      “Amen,” James said, though he had no real idea what Adam was talking about. In prison it had sometimes seemed as if the Confederacy were winning the war, an impression that had been heightened when the disconsolate prisoners from Ball’s Bluff had arrived.

      “If the war continues,” Adam said, “then it will degrade us all. We shall be a mockery to Europe; we shall lose whatever moral authority we possess in the world.” He shook his head as if he had not managed to express himself properly. Beyond the quay the train was picking up speed, its boxcar wheels clattering over the rail joints and the locomotive’s smoke showing white against the gray clouds. A guard jumped onto the platform of the moving caboose and went inside out of the cold wind. “The war is wrong!” Adam finally blurted out. “It is against God’s purpose. I’ve been praying on this matter and I beg you to understand me.”

      “I do understand you,” James said, but he could say no more because he did not want to offend his new friend by saying that the only way God’s purpose could be fulfilled was by the Confederacy’s defeat, and though Adam might be voicing sentiments very close to James’s heart, he was still wearing a uniform of rebel gray. It was all very confusing, James thought. Some of the northern prisoners in Castle Lightning had openly boasted of their adultery, they had been blasphemers and mockers, lovers of liquor and of gambling, Sabbath-breakers and libertines; men whom James had deemed to be of the crudest stamp and vilest character, yet they were soldiers who fought for the North while this pained and prayerful man Adam was a rebel.

      Then, to James’s astonishment, Adam proved that supposition wrong. “What is necessary,” Adam said, “and I beg for your confidence in this matter, is for the North to gain a swift and crushing victory. Only thereby can this war be halted. Do you believe me?”

      “I do, I do. Of course.” James felt overwhelmed by Adam’s sentiments. He stopped and looked down into the younger man’s face, oblivious to a bell that had begun ringing to summon the prisoner aboard the truce ship. “And I join my prayers to yours,” James said sanctimoniously.

      “It will take more than prayers now,” Adam said, and he took from his pocket an India-paper Bible that he handed to James. “I am asking you to take this back to the North. Hidden behind the endpapers is a full list of our army’s units, their strength as of this week, and their present positions in Virginia.” Adam was being modest. Into the makeshift slipcase made by the Bible’s leather cover he had crammed every detail concerning the Confederate defenses in northern Virginia. He had listed the ration strengths of every brigade in the rebel army, and discussed the possibility of conscription being adopted by the Richmond government in the spring. His staff job had enabled Adam to reveal the weekly total of newly manufactured artillery reaching the army from the Richmond foundries, and to betray how many of the cannons facing the northern pickets from the rebel redoubts around Centreville and Manassas were fakes. He had sketched the Richmond defenses, warning that the ring of earth forts and ditches was still under construction and that every passing month would render the obstacles more formidable. He told the North of the new ironclad ship being secretly built in the Norfolk dockyard, and of the forts which protected the river approaches to Richmond. Adam had included all that he possibly could, describing the South’s strengths and weaknesses, but always urging the North that one strong attack would surely crumble secession like a house of cards.

      Adam desperately hoped this one inclusive betrayal would be sufficient to end the war, yet he was sensible enough to know that whoever received this letter might well demand more information. Now, pacing the greasy quay in the cold rain, Adam told James precisely how a message could reach him from the North. Adam had worked hard on his scheme, attempting to foresee every liability that might reveal his identity to the southern authorities, and he knew that the greatest danger would be posed by northern messages coming south. “Which is