The Tubman Command

by Elizabeth Cobbs

  She was glad it was dark so he couldn’t see the cracks in her expression. “It’s a fine boathouse,” Harriet said, struggling to keep her voice even. “Don’t let me interrupt. I jest passing by.”

  He glanced up at the roof. “Ain’t much left. Another few rows.” He looked down at her in the dark, his beard in silhouette. “What you doing?”

  “Taking care a loose ends at the cookhouse.” She adjusted her headscarf. “I best knuckle down. See you tomorrow. Montgomery says be there by noon.”

  He caught her elbow. “Not so fast, sweet girl. What about tonight?”

  Harriet allowed her eyes to warm on the chance that he could see them in the moonlight, though she felt as cold as it was possible to feel on the eve of June in South Carolina. The shape of her solitary life was as clear in her mind as the family home on the dock. She hardly even knew what to think about Samuel. If he were a good man, he wouldn’t leave Lucy. If he were a good man, he would be loyal to Harriet.

  “We both got a lot to do,” Harriet said. “There’ll be plenty a time when this is over.”

  Samuel leaned close to kiss her, but Harriet drew back. “Not here,” she said by way of excuse. “Get yourself some sleep.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “Moses,” he corrected himself with a chuckle. “I’ll lay my head here tonight. Later, it’ll be different.”

  Harriet retraced her steps along the road. She strolled at a measured pace, but once she’d passed the army dock, she broke into a fast, hard walk. The macadam road beat her thick soles. She wanted to get away from Samuel Heyward as quickly as possible. Put distance between their mission in the morning and the image of a woman and three boys eating supper alone under those eaves.

  Tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that would be different from what they expected, as he said. But no matter what happened, if Harriet made it back alive, she wouldn’t be the one who wrecked that home.

  Harriet took an apron from the nail inside the door of the cookhouse and rolled it into a hard pillow. The humid air was blanket enough. She settled on the floor behind the worktable. Harriet closed her eyes, numb with fatigue, and was drifting toward sleep when Trouble emerged from the dark and nestled against her chest. She circled the cat with her arm to make a wall against the world and fell into a deep slumber.

  In her dream, Samuel’s hand gently traced the outline of her breast until his fingertips rested lightly on her nipple, which he pinched as delicately as a gardener testing a peach. Harriet’s breath deepened, and she took in the warm smell of him, though she made no effort to assist his exploration. Instead, she waited, as patient as nature, allowing herself to experience what happened next. Wait, she told herself. Wait, and he would come to her, she thought as the sweet ache swelled. In the dream, his large hand traveled down her side, holding her entire hip between his thumb and fingers, until it slipped away, and she felt only the absence of fabric as he lifted her dress.

  Harriet’s head tilted back as Samuel parted her legs—as she wanted him to—but the apron-roll suddenly gave way to the hard stone of the floor, and she jerked, startled awake by the jarring bump.

  Samuel slid up next to her. “Baby,” he whispered in her ear, “Couldn’t stay away. I don’t want another night when we not together. Not one.”

  Still half asleep, Harriet wrapped her arms around him. She shut her eyes against the world that allowed her no love and the war that might kill them both tomorrow. Emotion and desire overcame every resolve. Even if it would never be right, she wanted him. She would have him.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead.

  Admiral David Farragut, at the Battle of Mobile Bay

  “HARRIET, YOU AWAKE?” AN ARM DREW her tighter. “Time to get up,” Samuel whispered in her ear.

  Harriet’s eyes opened in the early morning light to spy the battered legs of the wooden table and a tin cup that had rolled under the Franklin stove. She turned over and looked up into Samuel’s eyes. He smiled and brushed something—a speck of flour, perhaps—from her forehead.

  “Morning, baby,” he said. “Today’s the day.”

  Harriet tucked her chin, shut her eyes again, and nestled closer. He felt so good. Just five more minutes, she thought as she pressed her cheek to the rounded muscles of his chest. She could sleep a week in his arms.

  “Got to go,” he said.

  Harriet nodded but didn’t open her eyes. “I know.”

  Samuel kissed the top of her head. “This time, someone gone be looking out for you.”

  They were the sweetest words she’d ever heard. They made her feel part of the world, rather outside looking in. Samuel had rowed back upriver for her, she mused sleepily. He truly had. Maybe freedom did mean they could choose one another. But wasn’t that yielding to temptation? Taking something that didn’t belong to you?

  The guilty thought woke her more fully, and she recalled what she had meant to tell him the day before. Harriet sat up. The awful news couldn’t be postponed. “There’s something we need to talk about,” she said. “I would a told you yesterday, but you wasn’t well—and then you left.”

  Samuel looked up at her with a half-smile that suggested he had a comeback for any objection she could throw at him.

  Harriet forced herself to continue, despite the horror she felt creep over her as the images flooded back. Best to say it straight out. “When I was on the Lowndes Plantation night before last, that girl I told you about took me to Jacob,” she said. “Pipkin has him in that jail a his.”

  Samuel sat up. “Jail? What for?”

  “Jacob took a swing at Pipkin, the girl said. Jacob was defending her.”

  Samuel’s mouth fell open. “You see him?”

  She recalled the horrible odor. “It was too dark to see much, but he’s bad off.”

  “What you mean?”

  “Pipkin had him—” Harriet struggled with the words. Guilt thickened her tongue. “He . . . he had him strung up.”

  “Don’t tell me he used his Teacher on my brother.” Anger twisted Samuel’s features. “Don’t you say that.”

  “That’s what Kizzy called it. She said Pipkin’s letting him out soon. But Jacob gone have a hard time running.” Harriet longed to reach for Samuel’s hand.

  “You should a told me, Moses,” he said hotly.

  Harriet and Samuel stared at one another as the likely outcome got its talons into them, and with one accord, they stood and tugged at their clothes.

  Samuel buttoned his shirt and grabbed his hat. His bandage had fallen off in the night, but he didn’t reach for it. “See you at the dock. Noontime,” he said. His face was tight.

  “Noon,” she agreed. “We gone get him,” she said.

  “Hattie—” Samuel began, but then he just shook his head.

  Steps sounded on the path. Samuel walked to the door. He threw a glance back at Harriet and then turned to leave. “Morning, ma’am,” he said to Septima as they traded places in the doorway.

  Septima set a basket of blackberries on the worktable with a loud thump and took her apron down from the hook. Eyes lowered, she poured water in the pewter basin they kept for that purpose and washed her hands thoroughly. Then she began picking leaves and stems off the dewy berries, which she placed one by one in a clean bowl.

  “Morning,” Harriet said. She slipped her arm behind what was left of the Sea Islander’s waist. Septima’s presence eased her heavy heart. The berries reminded Harriet that she should eat, and she took one. “Can I?” she said.

  “You paying for em, Miz Harriet,” Septima said stiffly. “I jest works here.”

  “Jest work here? You practically running the place.” Harriet took a berry from the bowl and ate it. The room grew quiet.

  Septima kept her eyes on her work. “Den why don’t I know what’s happening under my own roof?”

  Harriet squeezed Septima’s torso and laid her cheek against the high abdomen. An abrupt kick caused her to start back.
Harriet put a hand on the dome just in time to catch the mysterious ripple. Septima held her breath and felt the other side of her taut belly. The two women laughed.

  “You ketch dat backflip?” Septima said. “I fearing I got me another boy.”

  “Or a girl who never gone mind,” Harriet said.

  “Hmm.” Septima shifted away and resumed sorting. “You know all bout dat, I ’spose.”

  “Samuel and I been helping General Montgomery,” Harriet said.

  “Dat what taking you clear to Hilton Head every other minute? Or have you finally gone sweet on somebody? Somebody like dat man?” Septima rested her purple-stained fingers on the basket. She looked at Harriet. Hurt clouded her eyes. “’Cause you don’t need to sneak ’round me. We friends or not?”

  Harriet bit her lip. She’d spent so much of her life dodging the law and avoiding the truth that it was hard to know how to answer simple questions. Lies sometimes sprang more readily to her tongue than the truth. She expected Septima to trust her, yet Harriet resisted doing the same. If one carried secrets, friends turned into strangers.

  “A course, we friends,” she said.

  “Den why ain’t you act like it? You don’t tell me nothing.”

  “You know I help General Hunter some.”

  “And what bout dat man who jest left? Lookin’ like a hound dog wit’ chicken feathers in his mout’?”

  “He’s a scout.”

  Septima resumed her task. She pitched blackberry stems onto the worktable. “I heard dat one befo’.”

  Harriet wished she could explain, but they couldn’t afford to lose the element of surprise. It took only one innocent slip of the tongue to alert a suspicious ear. One spy in a rowboat to deliver word to a picket on the Combahee. One picket on a horse to speed a telegraph message to the arsenal in Savannah. Just one.

  Yet all Harriet had on Port Royal was one real friend. Just one.

  “You might a seen them gunships down at the dock,” she said. “I’m going with them. Samuel, too. Colonel Montgomery’s in charge.”

  Septima looked at Harriet in surprise. Her curved eyebrows shot up. “Ki! To Florida, Miz Harriet? I hear dat boat captain got blowed clean out a de pilothouse last trip south.”

  Harriet ignored the part about Florida. “That’s right. Poor man. Buried him at sea.”

  Septima used her hand to sweep the discarded stems into her now empty basket. She set it on the floor. “How long you be away?”

  Harriet hesitated. “Couple a days.”

  Septima frowned. “Florida real far, ain’t it?”

  “Yes’m. Bout a hundred and fifty miles both ways.”

  “Dere and back in two days?” Septima said.

  Harriet selected another fat berry from the bowl and popped it in her mouth. She bet the farmer had used dried molasses for fertilizer. “These gone make good pie,” she said after a moment. “That crop finally hit its stride.” Harriet brushed her hands together to clean them. “The crop on the mainland, it’s ripe for picking too.”

  Understanding ticked across Septima’s face. “De inlet where you found me ’n de boys. Dat ain’t very far a’tall. Not like Florida.”

  Harriet didn’t blink. “No, ma’am. That’s much closer.”

  Septima crossed her hands atop her baby. “I got family scattered up and down dis devil coast, Miz Harriet. Most, I don’t even know where dey gone. My sistah, though, she on the Nichols Plantation. Lawd knows I’d give anything—everything—to see Juno again.”

  Harriet thought of her own lost sisters and rose on her toes to kiss Septima’s cheek. “I know jest how you feel,” she said. “Don’t you worry none. The Lord be watching over us both.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Our masters they have lived under the flag, they got their wealth under it, and [provided] everything beautiful for their children. Under it, they have ground us up and put us in their pocket for money. But the first minute they think that ol’ flag means freedom for we colored people, they pull it right down, and run up that rag of their own. But we’ll never desert the ol’ flag, boys . . . and we’ll die for it now.

  Corporal Price Lambkin, 1st South Carolina Volunteers

  HARRIET PULLED A SECOND HANDFUL OF bandages from the linen shelf in the hospital, concerned that she hadn’t gotten enough the day before. As she did, she wondered if she’d left her sewing scissors at the boardinghouse. She might need them later to cut away clothing. Harriet set her canteen on the floor along with the bandages. She groped inside the satchel. A moment later, she felt the pointed tips. Relieved, she stuffed the bandages on top.

  Doctor Durant poked his head in the doorway. “Harriet. Just in time. We’re out of whiskey for pain. Can you hold a patient for me?”

  “Sorry, doc,” Harriet said as she struggled with the bag. “Ain’t got time for surgery this morning.”

  “Won’t take more than twenty minutes. It’s a simple procedure. My Monday volunteer hasn’t shown up.”

  Harriet pushed harder on the bulky bandages, shoving the edges down into the crevices until she managed to buckle the bag. “Jest can’t, sir. Maybe Doctor Hawks can lend you someone.”

  Durant frowned, but Harriet kept her head down and made her way out the door with the satchel on one shoulder and a full canteen on the other.

  The street was deserted. Horses and soldiers that had been outside when she arrived were gone. Alarmed, Harriet hurried down the avenue. Not until she turned onto Bay Street and heard the roll of a snare drum did her nerves calm.

  Lined up in strict formation, troops of the 2nd South Carolina Volunteers waited in closely packed queues from the head of the wharf all the way up Bay Street. Sunlight flashed on their muskets and bayonets, arrayed like knives in a box across their blue-coated shoulders. The colored troops faced stoically forward while onlookers milled at the margins. Montgomery must be taking all of his men. Three hundred.

  Townsfolk and field hands from across Port Royal Island had turned out to witness the launch of the 2nd South Carolina. Harriet spotted a woman selling lemonade from a folding table. A dog was curled underneath. A boy with a basket on his head hawked fruit on the crowded walkway. “Best peaches on de islan’!” the youngster called. Shopkeepers stood with their arms crossed in doorways, and two clerks in a second-floor window whistled down at a young woman walking by who ignored them, though a corner of her mouth turned up. A silent mother gripped the hand of a small boy on the corner. “Where papa going?” Harriet overheard the child ask his mother.

  Harriet hurried by with the eerie sensation that every day of her life had been preparation for this one. It was the only day she couldn’t miss. Without thinking, she moved faster. Two horse-drawn wagons blocked Bay Street for an instant, and she dashed around them with an irrational fear of losing sight of the ships and being left behind.

  By the time she reached the dock, soldiers had begun to embark. Officers directed the queues to their appointed transports while sutlers toting baskets hugged the edges of the wharf, working to deliver the last supplies. Harriet waded through the crowd until she reached the John Adams at the end of the dock, leading the flotilla, where a black officer checked his manifest and waved her aboard the main deck. She passed under one medium-size and two large tenders lashed overhead. Opposite them on the starboard side of the ship, four small rowboats swung on hooks.

  At the foot of the ladder to the boiler deck, another officer checked his list carefully for Harriet’s name, as did a third before admitting her to the hurricane deck and up another ladder to the square glass pillbox perched over the forecastle of the steamboat. There in the pilothouse, Colonel James Montgomery consulted the captain and a local waterman. The chamber had windows on all four sides. Beneath them, the wealthy town, marshes, and estuary looked like a drawing room mural. Seagulls fought over a fish on a piling far below.

  Harriet stood in the doorway, waiting to be recognized. She noticed that Montgomery had finally shaved. His collar was open, but his missing
button had been replaced, and the uniform had been ironed.

  An enormous steering wheel dominated the pilothouse, which smelled of cheap pipe tobacco. A table and a captain’s chair sat in one corner, next to freshly painted millwork and a sparkling new pane of glass. The sharpshooter’s bullet that had shattered Captain Clifton’s brainpan during the last expedition to Florida must have busted the window, too. Although the pilothouse had been repaired, the man’s wife was still broken, Harriet knew. Whenever she passed Clifton’s home, his widow stood at the window, staring onto the port as if waiting for her husband to sail in.

  “What time will we approach the bar?” Montgomery asked the new captain, David Vaught. An older white man with a long, gray beard that brushed his chest, Vaught removed a corncob pipe from between his teeth and looked to the local pilot. Harriet had met Vaught once before when leaving Hunter’s office. He ignored her now.

  “What time, would you say?” Vaught asked the pilot in a flat New York accent.

  The Gullah waterman withdrew a watch on a chain. “Dat depend on when we leave, Cap’n.” He glanced at the timepiece, then at the tidal straits of the Beaufort River swirling past. “Round one in de morning, I ’spect. We gone have to hang back some til de tide rises, sah. Nuf to take over us de bar.”

  Captain Vaught put his pipe in a dish, shuffled aside the map on the small desk, and withdrew a chart underneath. It appeared to be a tide table. “The flood should be sufficiently high around three,” he told the colonel after consulting the paper. “But it’s best to arrive early and not cast anchor until we can cross. The tide waits for no one.”

  Montgomery nodded, satisfied. “We should have a couple hours’ leeway, then.”

  Captain Vaught cocked his head in Harriet’s direction without looking at her. “What’s a woman doing on board?” His voice was gruff.

  Montgomery gave her his attention. “Moses, find yourself a corner. I won’t need you for a while.” To Vaught, he simply said, “Tell you later.”