The Tubman Command

by Elizabeth Cobbs

  “I’ll take thirty a the brown sugar and forty a the flour,” Harriet said.

  “Thirty o’ the sugar, tis,” Webster said to an assistant in ragged trousers who took up the burlap sacks that Harriet had placed on the counter. “Take the flour from yesterday’s shipment.”

  “Dose barrels empty, boss,” the contraband said. He was a short Gullah man with ears that stuck out like clamshells and a crooked nose that had been broken more than once. “You wan’ me get it from de other barrels you set aside?”

  “What do ye think?” Webster said abruptly, as if the answer was obvious. He returned his attention to the logbook.

  “Sugar still fourteen cents a pound?” Harriet asked as he wrote.

  “Tis,” he said. “Best bargain on Hilton Head.”

  “If you call prices twice those a Boston a bargain.”

  Webster looked up. “John Lilly over in Beaufort, why he’d charge ye sixteen cents.”

  “That’s why I’m here,” Harriet said.

  She leaned over to examine the ledger as Private Webster resumed writing. Most letters looked like broken twigs to her, but she’d recognize an “H” anytime. Harriet considered it fitting that the first letter of her name mimicked a rung on a ladder, helping people up. “T” resembled a tree: strong, tall, and reliable—as her husband had been until he wasn’t—though Harriet didn’t blame the alphabet for John Tubman. “H” and “T” were her letters. She didn’t need more, regardless of what some people thought. She had plenty on her brain already.

  The clerk wrote “30” in the fourth column to the right of her name, and “40” several columns over. Numbers were clearer to Harriet, who had learned to substitute them for the marks she once made on a tally stick for Master Brodess. The clerk’s pencil dragged slow gray tracks behind it like the ones snails left on the doorstep each morning, gone by afternoon.

  “I’d like that in ink,” she said.

  Webster straightened. He pushed his spectacles higher and waved a hand at the counter, empty save for a grimy canister of corncob pipes. “Ye see a fountain pen, Tubman? Some thieving black stole it.”

  Harriet stiffened at the accusation and pointed to the entries above her name. “Why them in ink?”

  Webster frowned. “That pass Hunter gave ye tisn’t a license for impudence.”

  “It do make me accountable.”

  The clerk shoved his pencil behind his ear and slammed the book. His poorly fitted glasses slipped again. “Then come back on the morrow. When I’ve nothing better to do than hunt up me bloody quill.”

  Harriet leaned closer, her gaze fixed like a cat on a cricket. The name of Rufus Saxton, the general in charge of civilians on the Sea Islands, ought to make matters plain. Saxton had welcomed her into his Port Royal office more than once to discuss contraband concerns. An abolitionist, he had recently married the prettiest missionary in a hoop skirt.

  “I’m in Hilton Head today, Private Webster. You gone sell me that flour now. You hear how much General Saxton’s new wife likes my gingerbread? A regular, she is.”

  He looked down his narrow nose. “Ye can’t be the only colored selling gingerbread.”

  “No, but Mrs. Saxton likes mine best,” she said. “And don’t think you doing me some favor calling me colored. I’m as proud a being black as you is a being white.”

  The stubble on Webster’s unshaven chin bristled. Without another word he opened a crowded drawer beneath the counter and pawed around until he came up with a quill. His assistant, who slung the full sacks on the counter, fetched an inkwell from a cupboard behind the worktop. As the colored man did so, he gave Harriet a wink and a smile that brightened his homeliness. Webster opened the ledger and traced over the penciled numbers.

  Once they’d completed the transaction, Webster’s big-eared helper loaded Harriet’s purchases into a wheelbarrow and followed her to the dock. There she gave the helpful man a penny and boarded the return packet for Port Royal Island as the steam whistle startled an osprey from the flagpole. She propped herself against her full sacks to nap. Rest kept the blackouts that had plagued her since childhood at bay. Stay calm, eat enough, get plenty of shut-eye, and “don’ tetch likker,” a root doctor had advised long ago. Even so, the fits that had begun after an overseer cracked her skull still came regularly, often at the worst times. Harriet closed her eyes and dozed to the lull of the ship’s engine.

  What seemed moments later, a jarring blow startled her from a deep sleep. She opened her eyes to find herself back in Beaufort. The steam packet had bumped the village dock.

  Harriet straightened her dress, shouldered her sacks, satchel, and gun, and proceeded down the gangplank into the town that was the pride of the Sea Islands. Imposing homes shaded by glossy magnolia trees lined the main boulevard, called Bay Street for its dazzling views of the water. The army had renamed it “A Street,” but no one paid heed.

  Beaufort hadn’t a patch on Auburn, where every dwelling bore the stamp of decency and liberty that marked upstate New York, from the picket fences of small homes to the sober portals of brick mansions that could have stood for courthouses. Yet Beaufort’s columned white clapboards, pink palazzos, and yellow stone villas were nonetheless handsome in an extravagant, lazy sort of way, even with their curling paint. Harriet admired the immense homes as she walked. God had preserved her thus far, and she sent Him a word of thanks as her nerves settled from the tense meeting.

  A clutch of barn swallow chicks chirped from a nest under the scrolled pillars of one mansion that was as pretty as a two-pound box of candy. English roses climbed to the second floor, interlaced with flowering jasmine that perfumed the soft air. Peonies hung their heavy heads over a fence. Port Royal Island’s main town looked nearly untouched by the occupation—except for the blacks who moved about freely, going wherever they wanted. It was a good thing the planters had skedaddled, Harriet thought. They would have died of heart attack.

  “Ma’am!”

  She turned slowly, careful not to upset her precarious load.

  A tall, well-built man hurried forward with hands outstretched. “Let me take those,” said Samuel Heyward. “They look heavy.”

  Harriet squinted up at her newest recruit. The scout’s wide-brimmed hat was pushed low on his brow to stave off the late-

  afternoon heat, but it didn’t obscure his sharp eyes. Three months earlier, Samuel had escaped the Heyward Plantation, upriver from Lowndes on the northern bank of the Combahee. He’d since grown a handsome, pointed beard that gave him a rakish aspect, a quality worrisome in a scout, as hotheads were worse than useless. Yet she’d observed with approval that Samuel generally turned somber before a mission.

  Around Harriet’s own age, he’d become valuable for his experience on the water. Samuel recognized every local inlet and could thread most any marsh. Unlike men she’d had to chastise for splashing their oars near Confederate pickets—such as Walter Plowden, a good waterman but prey to jitters—Samuel pulled ten-foot sweeps through brass oarlocks without a whisper. He could even swim, a rare skill that had proved handy when another scout dropped an oar in the Sound. Harriet thought more rather than less of Samuel when he flopped back into the boat as if chased by a shark and confessed a horror of deep water. Most of what they did would terrify anyone with working survival instincts. She preferred men who would do what was necessary despite their fears.

  “I got em, Samuel,” Harriet said and turned back to her walk. One bag slipped an inch, and she jogged a shoulder to reposition it. The heavy weight propelled her feet, and she was proud of the strength that had earned nods of admiration when she used to log with her husband. It was only two blocks more to the cookhouse. Harriet wondered what Samuel wanted, yet she was glad to see him. He might save her some time.

  “Sure I can’t lighten your load, ma’am?” he asked.

  A bead of sweat escaped Harriet’s kerchief. He’d called her ma’am again. The last thing she needed was a scout fussing over her. Then he would stop taking
her seriously—or taking orders.

  “That’s kindly, but you can best help by making a beeline for the soldier’s camp. Find our men for a meeting. I gone need Plowden and Simmons. The others, too. Any time after dark should work jest fine.”

  Samuel continued at her side. “Yes, ma’am. Soon as I deliver the message Colonel Higginson gave me for the harbormaster.”

  A metallic groan drew Harriet’s attention as they turned into a side street. Laden high with firewood, an unpainted mule cart approached on the opposite side of the lane. One of its wheels complained about a lack of oil, though the bells of the nearby Baptist Church, tolling four o’clock, drowned the sound a moment later. A white man held the reins of the cart. His unshaven jaw worked a cud of tobacco.

  Samuel lowered his voice. “Can I ask what the meeting’s about? Anything to do with our last . . . trip?”

  The stranger across the street slowed his balky cart. Harriet expected him to bend to the complaining wheel with a can of grease, but he merely stopped as the bell’s last toll reverberated across the sweltering town. A resentful look colored the man’s sallow countenance. Still holding the reins, he folded his arms and, after a moment’s rumination, hawked brown juice in their direction. A bad tingle climbed Harriet’s neck. The man must be one of the few poor whites who hadn’t fled the island along with the planters. She wondered if he rowed to the mainland after dark to pass intelligence. Port Royal had been evacuated twice when Confederates threatened to invade, alerted to setbacks in troop strength. Harriet cast down her gaze and kept walking. Samuel followed her example, though she saw his fists ball from the corner of her eye.

  “Hey, nigger gal,” the man called at their backs as they passed by. “Boy,” he added, raising his voice a notch, “that’s right. Keep walking.”

  The mule cart was soon well behind them. Harriet was relieved to hear its rusty whine as the man started again on his way.

  “Jackass,” Samuel murmured.

  Harriet kept her voice low and spoke in code. “Overseer says our row could stand some hoeing. Harvest ain’t ripe.”

  “Been hoeing my whole life. Time seems plenty ripe to me. Hunter worried bout weeds?”

  “Uh-huh. We don’t pull em, there goes the crop.”

  Samuel nodded. “I brushed against one the other day. Near Lowndes. Not close enough to catch a briar—but something bigger might.”

  Harriet thought of the barrel she’d seen hauled into Beaufort a few months earlier. Sealed with tar, the enormous cask looked innocent enough until a colored sailor pried off the lid and showed her the deadly gunpowder inside. Harriet wondered if Samuel’s comment meant he’d spotted a torpedo from his dugout and could plot the mine’s location on a map. Charting them was the only way to navigate the Combahee without getting blown up—and to convince Hunter that she knew what she was talking about.

  As they approached the pink mansion where she rented a cookhouse, Harriet stuck out her foot to push open the gate in a low picket fence covered with creeping vines. At the same instant, a small dog dashed under her skirt, tangled with the petticoat, and escaped through the opening. Harriet’s shoe caught on her hem, and she stumbled backward. The gunnysack slipped from her shoulder.

  Samuel caught the bag with one arm and placed a steadying hand on Harriet’s waist. “Whoa,” he said.

  The weight of the second bag pulled Harriet even farther as she fought to regain her balance. It slipped, too. The momentum carried her against Samuel. The waterman dropped the first sack and clasped Harriet around the middle as the second bag landed on the gate, unbroken but trailing sugar from the corner.

  Solid on his feet, Samuel absorbed her fall without moving. The sensation of a man’s torso behind her was jarring. Samuel’s arm held her securely, despite her satchel and musket.

  Harriet pulled away and bent to reclaim the flour, in time to knock heads with Samuel as he reached for it, too. They came up laughing. Samuel rubbed his forehead. “Y’all right, ma’am? You got a noggin like a nut.”

  Harriet smiled. “So I been told.”

  “Sure I can’t help with them bags?”

  “How bout you get one, and I get the other?” she said.

  With a flash of white teeth, Samuel hoisted the full gunnysack to his shoulder. The size of shovels, his hands made the sack look small. They were nicked and callused, yet efficient.

  Harriet picked up the bag of sugar and carried it through the vegetable garden to the kitchen. Weeds grew on the short path between the mansion and the cookhouse that once fed a planter’s family. A steamy fragrance of sassafras, ginger, juniper, and sarsaparilla root wafted through the open door along with the sound of humming. Septima must be finishing the day’s root beer. Harriet nodded to the stone slab where they kept an ash bucket. “Thank you. Jest put it there.”

  The scout set down the flour. “Glad to help. I’ll rustle up Plowden and Simmons.”

  “Any time after dark is fine. Meet me at the Savan House, and we’ll head to the usual place.”

  Samuel nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”

  That word again. She didn’t want him getting a single idea. “Moses is fine,” she said and brushed her hands to remove stray granules of sugar. “Jest call me Moses.”

  “Uh-huh. Yes, Moses.” Samuel paused. The muscles in his neck bunched, and his lips tightened. She had the impression that he intended to confront her about something, though she couldn’t imagine what. He cleared his throat. “One more thing.”

  Harriet realized then that it wasn’t the sight of her laboring under a heavy load that had brought him running. Although she wouldn’t tolerate scouts treating her like a female—and none tried—she felt oddly disappointed. Samuel seemed headed in that direction for an instant. She couldn’t figure him out.

  He glanced around the deserted yard, then toward the empty lane. He turned his eyes back. “I got family on the Cum’bee. They in a misery.”

  “That’s why we meeting tonight.”

  “You sure Hunter ain’t stalling? I never met a single reliable white man,” he said.

  “You never met John Brown,” Harriet retorted, though she sounded more certain than she felt. In a decade on the Underground Railroad, no one had told her when to strike or lie low. She had picked every battle. Now she awaited orders from a government that hadn’t freed a single person until it started losing the war.

  Samuel nodded at the name contraband recognized like a cross around the neck. “Well, there best be a plan,” he said. “Cause I ain’t leaving folk behind. I ain’t gone do that.” He sounded like he was hammering a placard to a post.

  “I don’t leave people behind,” Harriet said, irritated. The man ought to know better. “Not if they willing to run.”

  Samuel crossed his arms. “You can’t get everybody.”

  Harriet’s face flushed with anger. No one needed to tell her that. “Look here,” she said. “This our chance to free a thousand and more. That ain’t everybody, but it’s as many as the Railroad ever did in a year. And that’s jest the start. I ain’t never gone quit.”

  A smile curled the corners of Samuel’s mouth. “So I been told. Jest wanted to hear you say it. That’s why I’m with you, Moses. No matter what.” He tipped his hat. “See you tonight.”

  Harriet watched him walk up the path and through the gate. She shook her head in exasperation. Was he testing her? She didn’t know him well enough to tell. Most men hoped merely to escape, but Samuel seemed resolved to go back. And why had he grown that rakish beard? Unaccountably, she wished she had broken away first. He needed to learn who was boss.

  Harriet mounted the steps to the cookhouse behind the mansion. The humming had died. In the doorway, she glanced back over her shoulder. Samuel had vanished up the street. She ran her tongue over the gap in her teeth, of which his smile had reminded her. Too bad he was so attractive, she thought. Spies shouldn’t warrant a second glance.

  “You busy, Septima?” Harriet asked as she turned into the room. “I co
uld use a hand.”

  Septima was scrubbing the worktable with a boar bristle brush. Her wet forearms glistened, and her eyes were trained on the task. “Give me jest a minute, Miz Harriet.”

  “That’s all right,” Harriet said as she deposited her satchel and musket in a corner and stepped back into the fading heat to retrieve the sack of sugar. “I got us some supplies. But the neighbor’s terrier done tripped me,” she said as she laid it on the hearth. “Nearly busted the bag.”

  “Who dat fellah he’ping you?” Septima asked. She rubbed an itchy nose with an upper arm. “Dere a fine-looking man.”

  “Jest one a Hunter’s scouts.”

  “Uh-huh. I see he a scout,” Septima said. “His eye tied up on you, for true.”

  Harriet shook her head. “He had something else on his mind. And how you know what he looked like?”

  “Dat doorway awful wide, Miz Harriet.”

  Harriet glanced across the room. “You’d need the neck of a goose to see from here.”

  Smiling down, Septima brushed the wet wood vigorously. “Jest checking de cupboard to make sho we wasn’t out a cinnamon, too,” she said, and then she broke into a giggle. “I know you likes yo gingerbread dark ’n spicy.”

  Harriet rolled her eyes, amused. “What makes you think I’m hungry?”

  Septima looked up, her smile bolder. “Every lady git hungry.”

  Harriet recalled her empty sheets. John Tubman had met her needs once—and she’d been a fly trapped in honey. That was a mistake she didn’t need to make twice. “I’m not every lady.”

  Septima blinked, startled by Harriet’s vehemence.

  “If you looking for supper, best not count on a man to feed you,” Harriet added.

  “Yes’m,” Septima said apologetically. “I spose you right.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  We have had the greatest heroine of the age here, Harriet Tubman, a black woman, and a fugitive slave . . . She has a reward of twelve thousand dollars offered for her in Maryland and will probably be burned alive whenever she is caught.