The Tubman Command

by Elizabeth Cobbs

Romulus turned his face in the direction of the woman’s voice. “Preacher Brisbane done it hisself. He slapped down dat false counsel long time ago.”

  Harriet rested her chin atop the broom.

  “Dem other Buckra try to push de preacher off de path of righteousness, but he warn’t having it,” Romulus continued. “Took his slaves north better’n twenty years ago. Freed em all. Wouldn’t truck with slavery no more. Give away ev’ry dime.”

  The young woman on the floor waved a bandaged hand to dispel the flies that clustered on her wrist. Harriet hadn’t seen her before. She must have been admitted while Harriet was on the Combahee. “Dem other Buckra is different from de preacher,” the woman said.

  The Baptist minister leaned forward with a paternal smile. Brisbane must find the hospital a congenial spot for a sermon, Harriet thought. Perhaps he’d courted his wife in this very ballroom as a young swain. Then, Romulus would have waited on him, and a banquet table with rum punch and pound cake might have stood where the hospital cot did now.

  “George Washington, the founder of our country, freed his slaves,” Brisbane said.

  “When?” the woman asked.

  “Upon his death,” Brisbane answered.

  The woman sat a little straighter and a glimmer of anger made her look more alive. “Figures,” she said. “When dem slaves can’t help him no mo’. Anybody else?”

  The preacher looked down at his Bible.

  Harriet spoke across the ward, causing heads to turn. “Plenty a folk,” she said. “Ain’t no more slaves in the North except ones Southerners bring in. None in Canada, neither. And the folks in England, across the ocean, they give it up, too. The British lion swept away them slavers thirty years ago. Freed everybody ’round the world. America jest catching up.”

  “Moses, I didn’t see you there,” the preacher said with a smile.

  Harriet directed her words to the patients. She wanted them to see the bravery she had seen. Lift their hearts in this backwater and let them know they were on the right path with plenty of company. Share the hope that other abolitionists—black and white—had given her.

  “White folks is jest folks,” she said. “Some of the Buckra are sinful, and they now reaping the wages of sin. They bloodied and bowed and their end ain’t yet in sight. Many is ignorant. They uneducated. But when I left my home, when I walked away from my family’s sheltering arm and every last person on Earth who loved me, it was white ladies who stretched out their hands. I saw em in a dream. And I saw em again when I crossed that holy line into Pennsylvania.”

  “Glory, hallelujah,” Brisbane said, as if preaching a sermon. “Amen.”

  “Amen,” Romulus and other patients echoed, with the exception of the woman on the floor, who just stared at the flies that again swarmed her bandaged wrist.

  On the other side of the ward, Harriet glimpsed Doctor Durant enter with someone she had hoped not to see a second time. The nurse held a spoon to the mouth of a young child, then she gestured with it across the room. The redheaded doctor caught Harriet’s eye. He telegraphed caution as he limped toward her.

  Sergeant Clyde Granville stepped around Doctor Durant to hand Harriet a folded document. “I’m here on orders of Captain Louis Lambert, Miz Tubman. He needs to speak with you.”

  “Can’t it wait, Marshal? I’m in the middle of sweeping this here ward,” she said calmly, though she fought an urge to throw down her broom and dodge around him.

  The possibilities cascaded in her mind. She thanked the Lord that Samuel had located the torpedoes and Montgomery had sent Walter back to camp, where the marshal wouldn’t readily find him. They had done the right thing going back up the Combahee. But what if there was something she hadn’t anticipated? She knew more about rescuing slaves than any person alive. Montgomery needed her. She couldn’t let Lambert arrest her. And the thought of jail frightened her, as black people often didn’t come out in one piece. Harriet’s hand tightened on the broom.

  Granville touched the butt of his pistol. “No, it cannot wait. Captain Lambert is a busy man. I need to take you in.”

  Several patients gasped at “take you in.”

  Romulus sat up. “Who this Captain Lambert? He know General Hunter? Hunter gone have something to say bout this.”

  William Brisbane rose from his chair with a finger still in the Bible. “Why does the captain need Moses? May I help in some way, suh?”

  “You can help by staying out of my way, old man,” Granville said. “Why the captain wants Miz Tubman is none of your concern. This is government business.”

  The aged patrician smoothed his threadbare cravat. “You may not be aware that I am tax commissioner for Port Royal, Sergeant Granville, under Federal jurisdiction. My labors fund your pay warrant.” He laid the Bible on the empty chair. “And I am coming with you, suh. Harriet Tubman is not seeing your Captain Lambert without me.”

  Leaning against a bedpost, Doctor Durant straightened with an impatient expression. “My patients need rest, gentlemen. Whatever you do, please do it outside the hospital.”

  Harriet set her broom against the wall with a cocky air to hide her fear. “Let’s go,” she said. “We gone take care a this nonsense right now.”

  An old man of fifty-six, Preacher Brisbane walked with a cane from gout. Harriet took an elbow to support him as they poked down New Street and turned onto Bay in the direction of the Verdier House. Harriet’s mind raced. Lambert’s trap was closing.

  She stared angrily at the dusty windows of John Lilly’s mercantile as they came abreast. A colored child swept the stairs and halted his broom when a customer traipsed down them to a horse tied up in front. Next to the horse stood a mule wagon. A wagon Harriet recognized. Webster’s wagon. She squeezed Brisbane’s arm and stopped walking. “Captain Lambert is investigating the theft of government stores, sir,” she explained. She turned to Sergeant Granville and pointed at the emporium. “The man with the real information is Private John Webster. This is his wagon. He’s inside a that store.”

  The marshal tugged at his blue collar as if the boiled wool had shrunk in the heat. “Miz Tubman, I don’t know what you’re up to, but you already have a preacher in tow. That’s plenty.”

  Harriet dropped Brisbane’s elbow and crossed her arms. “Webster’s behind this mess. You need to bring him in.”

  “I don’t need to do anything,” Granville said.

  Preacher Brisbane planted both hands atop his cane. “Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase appointed me personally, suh. If Harriet Tubman says there’s a witness to theft inside this establishment, we are going in. Or I will hold you responsible for thwarting justice.”

  Granville’s eyes shifted from Brisbane to Harriet and back. Again, he touched the pistol at his belt. “You have thirty seconds,” he said and nodded for them to precede him up the stairs.

  The colored boy stopped his broom as they passed by. The emporium was empty save for Private Webster and John Lilly, who shook hands in apparent farewell.

  “—at the social, then,” the stout storekeeper said to Webster. “Assuming you can get over to Port Royal for the day.”

  “Aye, sir,” Webster replied. “I promised the pastor I would.”

  “And honorable Welshmen don’t welsh,” Lilly said with a grin that Webster returned, though he looked uncomfortable.

  “Yorkshire born, sir. English, I am,” he said, as if that was different.

  Harriet approached the counter. “Afternoon, Mister Lilly, Private Webster. How you gentlemen find yourselves?”

  Webster nodded. “I’m well. Thank ye, Miz Tubman.” He touched his cap and turned to go.

  Harriet put up her hand. “Private Webster, hold up a moment. I’m awful glad to see you. I need you to clear the air. Mister Lilly has questioned some sugar I hoped he’d take off a me. Turned out, I ordered too much from you. Can you tell him that I bought that sugar last week on Hilton Head?”

  The pale-skinned commissary agent flushed to his sparse eyebrows. “Why, I
help hundreds a month—and we’ve had any number o’ dealings.”

  “I asking you to remember jest this one,” she said. “I was coming out a General Hunter’s office, and you stopped your wagon to see if I needed more sugar. Said you had extra.”

  He pushed his wire glasses closer as if trying to make out her point, though unable to do so. “I may have.”

  “You did,” Harriet insisted.

  Preacher Brisbane interrupted. “Mistah Webster, I take an official interest as tax commissioner for Beaufort. Our government is terribly short of funds to quell this rebellion. Can you please recount your business with Miz Tubman?”

  Webster shook his head. “Sorry, commissioner,” he said. “I just don’t recall.”

  The portly storekeeper behind the counter watched the conversation with a perplexed expression. He drew back, and his double chin became a triple. “Private Webster, surely you recall a sale just last week,” John Lilly said. “Tell Miz Tubman she’s mistaken.”

  “Robert Smalls passed by ’round the same time,” Harriet said, gauging how far the truth would stretch. “He saw your wagon, too.”

  Webster’s large ears, rimmed with short blond hairs, reddened in accord with the rest of his face. He scratched his head. His gaze shifted to a point over her shoulder. “Now that ye mention it, I do recall. We received an unusually large shipment, and I was concerned about palmetto bugs. It seemed prudent to part with some o’ the sugar before the roaches got into it.”

  Preacher Brisbane’s face lost its normally benign expression. Hard lines bracketed his mouth, and the experience of five decades glittered in his eyes. “I expect you to share this information with Captain Lambert.”

  The screen door behind them slapped closed. Three white soldiers laughed at a joke, then separated to examine the store’s wares.

  John Lilly nodded agreement. His chins jiggled. “You best sort this out,” he said to Webster, then he turned away as a customer approached the counter with a new jackknife.

  Webster looked around without meeting Harriet’s eyes or those of the marshal or preacher. “Of course. I’ll see you at the social, then, Mister Lilly. Miz Tubman, if ye need anything—” he said and walked out the front door.

  Harriet and Brisbane trailed the commissary agent down the stairs, with Harriet supporting the old preacher’s elbow. Webster cracked a whip over the heads of his mules and rolled away before they reached the last step.

  A sweet breeze came up Bay Street. Harriet smiled at the beauty of the day, in no hurry to pursue the cheating clerk. Time itself was going to catch up with Private John Webster. William Brisbane would tell Captain Louis Lambert what he had heard, and she’d be free to go. Lambert would be unable to indulge his animosity, and the army’s investigation would grind in the correct direction while Harriet Tubman sailed up the Combahee at the bow of a gunship.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Light of dim mornings; shield from heat and cold;

  Balm for all ailments; substitute for praise;

  Comrade of those who plod in lonely ways . . .

  Spell that knits friends, but yearning lovers parts.

  “Duty,” by Thomas Wentworth Higginson

  HARRIET SPENT THE LAST HOURS OF the afternoon giving the cookhouse a final scrubbing. It seemed important to put things to rights for Septima in case she didn’t return. So she filled two iron pots with water, heated them to boiling, rolled up her sleeves, and went to work with rags and a brush. The hot, soapy water felt good on her forearms. The sun declined in the red and inflamed sky while she scoured the last stains from the old stove.

  As twilight turned into dark, she lit the kerosene lantern and uncovered the slice of pork pie Septima had left on the mixing table sometime earlier on the Sabbath. Montgomery had instructed them to be at the John Adams by noon the next day. The first of June. The beginning of slavery’s end in South Carolina, Harriet prayed.

  Perched on the cookhouse stool, Harriet applied herself to the cold supper. The food tasted like nothing. She ate because she needed sustenance, but she took little interest in the proceedings until a shadow appeared on the windowsill and then jumped to the table. “There you are, you ornery critter,” Harriet said. She stroked the cat, which arched its back as she transferred it to the floor along with a large pinch of pie. Companionship made the pastry more interesting, and together they made short work of it. As she finished the homely meal, Harriet wondered if it would be her last supper. Considered that way, it was a feast.

  Once she’d washed the plate, Harriet decided to walk off her restlessness. It was too hot for a shawl, so she splashed vinegar on her neck to ward off mosquitoes before shutting the window and closing the door behind her. The danger ahead loomed like thunder clouds that caused the air to crackle with electricity. Pickets awaited them at Fields Point, Tar Bluff, and the Combahee ferry landing. An army of two thousand men camped nearby. Confederate cannons were somewhere on the route to Savannah. Rebels had bled the Union for two years. Hundreds of thousands had died, and more would perish. Maybe Harriet Tubman.

  She decided to return to the cookhouse to sleep. If this were her last night, she didn’t want to spend it under Ruby Savan’s roof. The times she had laid her head on the floors of strangers came back to her, and she felt close in spirit to the men and women who had followed her to Canada. They whispered encouragement now. She hadn’t lost a single one. Perhaps Louisa May Alcott would put that in an epitaph.

  Harriet walked along Bay Street until she passed the wharf. The stevedores had deserted it, but colored sentinels paced the length between bright torches. A shooting star streaked across the night sky and lost its way somewhere in the ocean. The moon was just short of full. Harriet came to the row of private jetties from which fishermen and other folk plied the waterways between Hilton Head, Port Royal, St. Helena, Lady’s, Parris, Coosaw, and all the neighboring islands where the Gullah people were building lives outside slavery. A fresh breeze beckoned, and Harriet turned onto a dock to walk out over the water.

  Hammering boomed from a small boathouse toward the end of the row. A carpenter on a ladder nailed the roof of a second-story addition by the glow of a lantern that hung from the eave. As she approached the last pilings that anchored the jetty in the shallow bay, Harriet wondered why the impatient man didn’t wait until morning, when the sun would provide all the light necessary, especially when she heard him exclaim as he hit his thumb.

  “Dang it to heck!” came a familiar deep voice.

  Harriet stopped short and contemplated turning around. She didn’t feel like seeing Samuel—but the cheat owed her an explanation, she decided as she continued to the boathouse. She halted under the ladder.

  Samuel reached into a pail that sat on the edge of the roof, withdrew something, and resumed hammering.

  “Hey up there,” she called, loud enough to be heard but not startle him.

  Samuel turned cautiously, holding onto the ladder. He looked down. “Harriet,” he said. She couldn’t see his features in the shadow cast by the moonlight but heard a smile in his voice. “Stand back, sugar, and I’ll come on down.”

  Harriet retreated two steps as Samuel descended the ladder with his hammer in the pail. “What’s this place?” she asked as she took another step backward, out of arm’s reach, once he’d gained the dock.

  “My boathouse,” he said. “What do you think?”

  “What do I think? I think I don’t know nothing about it.”

  “I got it off the tax rolls last month. It’s one a them the Secesh abandoned. Commissioner Brisbane’s letting me make payments. It’ll be all mine by the end a the year.”

  “How you paying for it?” she asked.

  “I been repairing old dugouts and selling em,” he said proudly. “Dragged my first from the marsh. I think it got away in a storm. I’m here first thing every morning when we ain’t scouting. When I sell one trus-me-Gawd, I find another.”

  Harriet shook her head with wonder. “You fixing to
be a boat builder?”

  “Yep. But my main idea is to start a ferry business. People need to get back and forth ’tween the islands. When the war’s over, that gone be me. Ain’t nobody rows faster. The packet to Sa’leenuh goes but twice a day. I’ll take folk whenever they want. Gone train Jake to row. Sam can take the money.”

  “But why you working after dark? Why you down here fore we set sail?” She heard her voice rise. “Why you . . . leave this morning?”

  Samuel cocked his head. “Oh, that’s right. My noggin.” He reached up and touched it tentatively. “I decided to get back to work. Found a medic. He said the wound looked dry. Walter stopped by after you left, so I knew he made it back after seeing Lucy. She’s in on the plan, he said. The rock a Jesus, she is.”

  Harriet didn’t know what to say. Of course his wife was a rock. She was there for Samuel’s children. Harriet knew she should be grateful that Lucy Heyward was prepared to risk everything for their mission, but it was hard to hear her name.

  “Why the hurry?” she asked. “Seems like healing up your head fore the raid is more important than this roof.”

  Samuel looked down at his pail. “I need to get it ready by tomorrow.” His voice was no longer prideful. “I got to finish this for Luce and the boys. Especially now,” he said as he reached out to touch her elbow.

  “Why now?” she said.

  “They gone live upstairs.”

  They. He’d said they, not we. He must be planning to live apart from his wife. Perhaps he was rushing to finish the roof to ease his guilt. An awkward silence grew between them. Three boys, she thought. Sam, Jake, and Abe.

  “Nobody can say my boys want for anything. Nobody,” Samuel added, as if nailing an argument and not just the roof. “And Lucy, she didn’t want me to start with. She don’t need me.”

  Harriet drew a deep breath. He was wrong and would see it once reality in the shape of a wife and three boys arrived, should they be lucky enough to get out. This was the world for which they were fighting: one where fathers and mothers weren’t separated from their children. Where they lived free lives together under one roof.