The Tubman Command

by Elizabeth Cobbs

  Squeaking planks interrupted Harriet’s reverie as Jacob fell back on the slats and pulled up the blanket. His eyes were shut.

  Harriet wiped her tears on her sleeve and crawled to the man’s side. He needed to drink. Needed to cough up the mucus. If his fever didn’t break, he would die without giving Harriet the information she needed. The baby his wife carried would live the same half-life as every other slave. Harriet fetched the jug, lifted his shoulders, and placed it to his lips. “Drink,” she ordered. “Come on. Let the good Lord heal you.”

  Jacob pursed his mouth.

  Her voice grew steely. “Don’t you quit on me. You gone drink this water, or I’ll make you a swamp to lie in.”

  He opened his lips and took a few sips, but he writhed when she adjusted her grip to hold him more securely. There was a fetid smell Harriet hadn’t noticed before. It came from the moss on the pallet. No, it came from his clothing. “Let’s get these off,” Harriet said and slipped the rough vest from one shoulder, then the other. Jacob cried out when she inched the shirt over his head and rolled him onto his side.

  Scars crisscrossed his muscled back. Most were old. The salt water poured into wounds to make suffering livelier had also done its job of cauterizing the broken flesh. The long lumpy welts looked like ship’s rigging splayed on a Maryland wharf. Some of the damage was fresher. A gash from shoulder to tailbone had reopened, ruptured by coughing. Pus seeped along his spine.

  Harriet glanced around the bare room for a clean cloth. He needed bandages to protect the wound. A sheet, perhaps. Spying nothing that would work, she stood with a cautious glance at the window, reached under her skirt, untied her cotton petticoat, and tugged it down her hips. She hesitated a second at the lace edging, then tore the undergarment into strips. As Harriet dribbled water on Jacob’s back, she recalled the gray-haired benefactress who had pressed the petticoat into her hands when she sailed from Boston a year earlier. Harriet had never had so feminine an article. She washed it every day. Dingy from its earlier bath in the Combahee, the fine fabric nonetheless took up the sticky pus cleanly. She laid long strips across Jacob’s back and tied them around his stomach. He fell asleep as she wrestled on his shirt to hide the unusual dressing.

  Harriet resumed her post against the wall and dropped her head onto her knees. She needed rest. A short nap at least. Before she had a fit when she couldn’t afford one.

  A faraway bark woke her sometime later. She lifted her head to see Jacob studying her. He’d propped himself on one elbow. “What your name?” he asked hoarsely.

  Harriet hesitated. If Pipkin questioned him in his weakened state, he might give her away. Yet she needed to earn his trust. “Moses,” she said simply. “Folk call me Moses.”

  He nodded without expression, seemingly prepared to accept any name she gave him. “What you doing here?”

  “Samuel sent me,” she said.

  Pained recognition showed in his eyes. “Must be alive, then. I heard he ran. You running from Heyward, too?”

  “No. I’m with the Yankees. On Port Royal. We looking for someone to tell us bout the torpedoes in the river.”

  Jacob started to answer but coughed instead. He collapsed back on the bed.

  Harriet moved to his side, put a careful arm under him, and lifted his shoulders. This was her chance. He seemed stronger, ready to rally. “Bring it on up,” she urged him.

  He struggled to sit again, coughed roughly, and finally spat into the hand she held out. Harriet wiped the mucus on her skirt.

  Jacob pulled away and lay back down with his eyes shut. “The barrels, right?”

  “Yep. The barrels with gunpowder. Secesh call em torpedoes.”

  He tugged the blanket fretfully. “We anchored em with chains a few months back. They was four. No, five.”

  Gunships could navigate around five mines, she thought. And they would have to. No way could her crew dismantle chained torpedoes without being spied. “Men from other plantations lay em, too?” she asked.

  Jacob answered with his eyes closed. “No. Secesh took us from Fields Point clear up to the ferry landing. We would a seen em doing it, if they was.” His voice drifted to a lower register. “I got an eye on the river most a the time. A trunk minder—” He trailed off.

  Harriet unbuttoned the collar of her dress and reached for the paper she’d tucked into the band supporting her breasts. “Can you look at this?” she said.

  The man didn’t answer. His breathing had slowed. Harriet shook his shoulder. “Wake up.”

  Jacob blinked and rocked his head.

  Harriet unfolded the sketch of the river and held it to his face. “Show me where you put them barrels.”

  Jacob squinted and reached a hand above the blanket. “There,” he said, and his finger pointed to a small island across from Fields Point that divided the broad river into two channels. “We put the first one there. You sail up their blind side, pickets ain’t gone see you—but you’ll hit the torpedo.”

  Harriet nodded. The Secesh would count on the Yankees trying to avoid the lookout.

  Jacob scrunched his eyebrows. He seemed uncertain. His finger swayed, and he pointed to a spot near Tar Bluff. “We put a second one here. And another there,” he said, tapping a stretch on the approach to the Nichols Plantation. “I . . . I think another there,” he said as he rested a finger on the bend just before the Heyward estate, near the ferry landing that served the plantations on the upper Combahee. The Confederates had a reinforced contingent there.

  “Jest a second,” said Harriet. She took a nail from her pocket and poked tiny holes in the spots he had indicated. The torpedo near the Heyward Plantation must be the one Samuel had spotted from his boat. They had marked it on their map in Beaufort. She held the paper up again. “Where you put the fifth one?”

  Jacob had become more ashen, and his eyes were sunken. He didn’t answer. Harriet shook the sick man’s shoulder. “Jacob, wake up.” She placed a hand on his forehead, now dry and hot. The fever had spiked again. She set aside the map, reached for the jug, and lifted the man’s dead weight. “Come on, Jacob.”

  Harriet placed the spout to his lips, but he was unresponsive. Water trickling down his chin failed to rouse him. His lips were shut tight. A hound barked close by. Harriet shifted back against the wall, still holding the vessel.

  Boots approached. It was the same tread as before, now accompanied by an animal, its nails clicking against gravel. They bypassed the window.

  Harriet heard a dog whine. The boots turned back toward Jacob’s cabin. Harriet stopped breathing.

  “What is it?” Pipkin said.

  The hound bayed under the window.

  “That’s Jacob,” the overseer told the dog, which bayed and then whined again. A distant gong clanged.

  “Hear that, boy? Chow time,” Pipkin said. He walked away.

  The dog whimpered. It pawed the wall under the window. Harriet braced herself. Bloodhounds would track a runaway across three counties. They wouldn’t stop to eat or drink. They’d run themselves to death to get their man. The gong sounded again. Pipkin whistled from afar, but the dog scratched harder.

  “Come on, now,” the overseer called. He whistled again, and then he turned back, walking quickly.

  The hound barked more ferociously. Harriet shut her eyes. She felt him close in. A thud, then a sharp yelp, filled her ears. A second kick produced whimpering. “Damn dog. I said now!”

  Harriet heard the boots pivot. The crunch of gravel faded. She opened her eyes. Blood thrummed in her temples. Pipkin must have some task near the cabins or smokehouse. He’d return after supper—and Kizzy wouldn’t be there to distract him. Harriet must leave and hope the noontime bustle covered her movements. If only Jacob could tell her the location of the last mine. She looked at him again. His face was slack.

  Harriet set aside the jug, tucked the map into her bosom, and stood to find a new prop. A small crock on the hearth caught her eye. She quickly swept up a handful of ashes, dropped th
e powder into the vessel, and poured some water over it to mimic a midwife’s poultice. A square of white fabric, tied around the neck of the crock with the last strip of her petticoat, served for a lid.

  Harriet tightened her headscarf and fumbled for her gray braids. She bent over to tuck Jacob’s blanket more securely, then placed her hand on his brow. On impulse, she knelt. The hard floor dug into her knees, but she closed her eyes and put her hands together. Keep Jacob safe, she prayed. Safeguard him from sickness, dear Lord. And don’t let Pipkin hurt the girl too bad. Keep her heart strong. Tell her your servant is coming for her.

  Harriet drew a deep breath. The air of the cabin seemed less foul than before. She knew He was present. “Amen,” she whispered, and then she patted Jacob’s hand. “Hold tight,” she said to the sleeping man as she stood. “I’m coming back. I always come back.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Yes, you are fighting for liberty—liberty to keep 4,000,000 of your fellow beings in ignorance and degradation; liberty to separate parents and children, husband and wife, brother and sister; . . . Liberty to seduce their wives and daughters, and to sell your own children into bondage; liberty to kill these children with impunity. . . This is the kind of liberty—the liberty to do wrong—which Satan . . . was contending for when he was cast into hell.

  Major General David Hunter to President Jefferson Davis

  SAMUEL WITHDREW A PACKET FROM THE folds of his coat. The night was breezy.

  The trio sat in the bottom of the dugout on their way back to Beaufort, anchored in an inlet where an unusually high sandbar topped with salt grass hid them from view. The tidal pull toward the sea had slowed, and they had an hour or so before the Combahee reversed itself and nudged them back upriver. The trus-me-Gawd was maneuverable enough to battle the current once it turned, but it was better not to pick a fight with the tide, which could be both friend and enemy.

  Harriet watched Samuel unwrap their provisions on the plank seat. Famished, she considered devouring the canvas in which he had packed the pork. She had eaten two biscuits and some peanuts hours earlier under a stand of pines a mile past the Nichols Plantation, but it wasn’t much. When the moon disappeared over the horizon around midnight, Harriet had slipped down to the river to find Samuel and Walter.

  “Five, he say?” Walter murmured. His eyes followed Samuel’s hands, too. Walter must have the same hard yearning in his gut as she did, his appetite wakened at last.

  “Yep,” Harriet said. “Wish he could a told me bout the fifth, but he was in a fix, and Pipkin didn’t give us time.”

  She had sketched Jacob’s illness without revealing its seriousness. She realized what kin meant to Samuel and didn’t want to tempt him into something rash. There was nothing they could do that wouldn’t jeopardize the mission and the safety of others. The only solution was to convince Major General Hunter to raid upriver as soon as possible, though she knew how agonizing it was to wait. It had taken her two precarious years to get her own brothers out of Maryland, and Rachel had died before Harriet could save her. Harriet had been the middle child, the one her overworked parents didn’t take much notice of, but she’d seen from her quiet spot what had happened to the four older children, and what might happen to the four younger ones if she didn’t act. Samuel must have the same sense of urgency.

  He looked up from his task. “But he ain’t coughing blood, right?”

  Harriet shook her head.

  “Fever?”

  “Some. But it gone come down with rest,” she said, conscious that it was a half-truth. No one knew whether a fever would come down or not, though she felt the Lord would watch over the man.

  Samuel’s mouth tightened. “Not much chance a that.” He stared down at the dried pork. “Jacob always been first to get sick in winter. Never could learn that boy to swim. Say it make his ears hurt.”

  “He was coughing up the catarrh,” Harriet said. “That’s a good sign.”

  From his pocket Samuel had taken a fisherman’s knife that looked like a toy in his outsized hands, making nicks with his knife to size the portions of their skimpy meal. The meat was thicker on one end. He waved away a mosquito that dove for his hand and turned the meat over to make certain the pieces were equal.

  Harriet’s stomach grumbled.

  Samuel looked up with a half-smile. “Got anything more to say?”

  “Nothing other than hurry up.”

  Samuel placed his knife on the first cut and sawed through the salt pork. He repeated the task and handed each of them a slice. She noted that he kept the thinner end for himself. “Keep the smallest piece if you can’t size something right,” Mama had taught her. “That’s only fair.” Harriet wondered if Samuel’s mother had told him the same.

  They ate in silence, working their jaws on the leathery flesh. A surge of strength washed over Harriet as she ate. When she finished the last gamey bite, she closed her eyes and heaved a sigh. She had rested behind a fallen tree during the afternoon to get off the road, but it had been a long journey across a terrible day. Food tasted good.

  “You okay, Moses?” Samuel said.

  Harriet darted him a look. Why was he asking? What did he think she was—some kind of weakling? Who would put such a question to his commander?

  “A course,” she said curtly. “Jest waiting on y’all.” Harriet looked at Walter. “Time to go.”

  Walter nodded. “Yes, Moses.”

  Samuel sheathed his knife and shoved it in his pocket. He leaned forward. “Want to play a trick first?”

  “A trick?” Walter said. “What you talking bout?”

  They were anchored across from Fields Point. Samuel nodded toward the earthworks in the far distance. He stroked his pointed beard. The rakish look appeared. “This,” he said, and he pulled a jar of spiny cockleburs out of yet another pocket. “We know them pickets been chided for false alarms. How bout making em jumpier?”

  Harriet turned the plan over in her head as Samuel laid it out. His idea for spooking the Confederates’ horses was clever. Keeping the pickets off-balance was desirable. Yet she wasn’t used to altering her route—literally midstream—once she’d finished a mission. Improvisation meant delay. Delay was risky.

  Walter stuck his fingertip in a small phial that he took from his knapsack. He applied liniment to his dry lips. “What you think, Moses?” he asked as he corked the phial, rubbed his lips together, and put the salve away. “I don’t know it worth another day in the marsh, waiting out the tide and hoping the skeeters don’t pick us apart.”

  Harriet knew he was joking. Rebels were the problem, not bugs.

  Samuel cocked his head.

  Harriet studied his face. She sensed bitterness behind the mischief. Was he a hothead, after all? His lips were seamed tight. He must be upset about Jacob. That wasn’t a reason for running risks. “No,” she said. “We got what we come for. This ain’t no time for pranks.”

  Samuel frowned. “It ain’t a prank. If those pickets send another report upriver that makes em look like fools, it gone help us.”

  Walter’s eyebrows lifted, and he gave a shrug. “Ain’t a bad idea, Moses.”

  Harriet realized that Rebel commanders in the field might be slow to heed a warning if they thought the guards on the river prone to false alarms. Anything that bought Union gunships more time during a raid was invaluable, yet Harriet hesitated at taking another risk when they were almost clear of danger.

  Samuel might have read her mind. “Ain’t much farther to the Sound,” he said. “We can be in open water in fifteen minutes, well before the tide turns. Secesh ain’t got no navy there. Won’t be nothing to fear.”

  Harriet recalled the runaway tied behind the patroller’s horse, which now seemed a year earlier. This was her last chance to improve the odds of men like him—their last scouting expedition before the raid itself. The man’s feet looked as if he’d run across knives. Harriet reminded herself that a plan could be smart even if she hadn’t hatched it. She brushed a hand ove
r her lips, reminded of the mouthful of sand. She was tired of eating their dirt.

  Harriet nodded. “All right. I’ll give you five minutes. That’s all.”

  Walter poled them out of the inlet. Samuel took over the sweeps. He rowed like a pantomime in a minstrel show, the quietest oarsman Harriet had ever observed. A gentle wind ruffled the water, which lapped the bluff as they approached. Dawn was at least an hour away, judging from the hint of gray in the sky, and Harriet could see that the outpost remained unfortified. She listened for any noise beyond the rhythmic wash of river against rock, yet the fort was as quiet as if it had been deserted for a month or everyone inside had taken a dram of opium. She knew not to hope for either.

  When the dugout reached the black shore a hundred yards beyond the landing, Walter stood and grabbed the limb of an oak tree that hung well over the water. He tethered the boat to keep it from knocking against the rocks. Samuel leaned forward and put his lips to Harriet’s ear. His breath tickled her neck. She caught the masculine tang of his sweat and flinched away.

  “Your life’s worth more ’n ours,” he whispered. “You hear shots, or we don’t come back, row on home. Get to General Hunter.”

  Samuel reached up after Walter, and the two shimmied along the branch like circus performers, before they dropped soundlessly to the ground. A second later, they vanished.

  The shore fell silent. Harriet strained her ears for any alarm from the pickets, but the only sound was the moan of the rope. She clasped her knees to her chest. The air was sharp on the water. Without a petticoat, the dress provided scant warmth. Five minutes turned into ten on her internal clock. She shook her head, confirmed in her opinion of men. Always promising more than they delivered. Slower than molasses in January.