Go Down, Moses, way down in Egypt’s land,
Tell old Pharaoh, “Let my People go.”
Spiritual
“CONTRABANDS BELONG IN BACK,” THE SOLDIER repeated with a scowl that cottoned no sass. He tilted the barrel of his long-shanked musket to indicate the path leading around the porch to the refugee camp and beyond it, the rows of silky white cotton for which Hilton Head was famous. There were dark half circles under the sentry’s armpits. Summer came early to the islands that hugged South Carolina’s coast. May was August on a low boil.
Being female wasn’t particularly useful, except as a disguise, which was another reason Harriet had mostly given it up. Frustrated, she gazed up at the blue-uniformed sentry who blocked the entrance to army headquarters. Here was her chance to free more people in a day than she had in a decade. Raise an army. Turn the war around. Make up for all she’d sacrificed. This man stood in her way, and he wasn’t the first. Harriet drew herself as tall as five-foot-zero would allow. She knew she looked no different from other former slave women in her gingham dress and yellow headscarf, despite the regulation musket.
The soldier tilted his barrel toward the path again—and slapped a mosquito on his neck with his free hand. “Damn!” he cursed in a brassy Boston accent. “Off the porch, I said. Now.”
Harriet guessed he was another collegian come south to serve as an officer and assigned guard duty to learn the business of soldiering. Sunburn glowed on his cheeks where his blond beard still grew in patches, somewhere between the full whiskers fashionable among white soldiers and the smooth shave preferred by colored ones. She saw he was only a handful of years older than Margaret and it mitigated her impulse to kick him in the shins. His mother must worry about him, too. She had probably woken alongside the boy’s father year upon year. They’d seen him take his first step, say his first word, jump his first puddle. Everything Harriet and John had missed and could never get back.
“The general’s expecting me,” she said in the confident, storyteller’s tone she used with people who must be convinced to mark her words despite believing she could have nothing to say. In Boston years before, crowds curious about the Underground Railroad had pressed into theaters to hear thrilling tales of midnight raids and brazen reconnaissance missions from someone they would not have noticed folding their laundry. Northerners listened more attentively after the gentlemen of Charleston set fire to the Constitution and eleven states bolted the Union.
The sentry’s expression toward Harriet wasn’t hostile—she was only a woman after all—but his gray eyes narrowed. “General Hunter’s in a meeting.”
“Uh-huh. I supposed to be there,” Harriet said.
The sentry leaned forward, casting a shadow across her face. “Orders are no interruptions. Except for a scout named Moses.”
“That’s me,” she said.
He snorted. “You’re Moses? Well, if you’re Moses, I’m God Almighty, and I’m telling you, get your fanny off this porch. Field workers started five hours ago, mammy.” Before Harriet could reply, he snatched her musket with his free hand, quick as a copperhead in slack water. “And I don’t know what you’re doing with this,” he said, “but you’d best let go before you hurt somebody.”
Harriet couldn’t believe she hadn’t seen him coming. She must be wearier than she realized. No Massachusetts toy soldier, no matter his height, could compete for grip with a woman who could pull a hysterical runaway from a swamp after dark.
Most assumed the scout everyone called Moses was a man. When strangers met her, they saw a woman. Once they knew she was Harriet Tubman, they saw a neuter without personal needs or soft spots. Saintly John Brown had called Harriet him. He meant it as a compliment. “I want him—General Tubman—leading my right flank,” Brown had told a meeting of their supporters in Boston before he got himself killed. His comment stung, but she knew better than to disturb a notion that allowed her to do things otherwise unseemly. On the Underground Railroad, the name Moses had kept bounty hunters looking for a man.
The soldier rested the butt of Harriet’s musket on the porch with a hand around the barrel. He appeared to relax now that he had the gun and eyed her with dawning recognition. “Hey, aren’t you the one who sells gingerbread? I saw you last week, when we came off the steamer in Beaufort. Your helper ran out before I got to the head of the line.”
“Sho am, sah,” Harriet said, sliding into her deepest Maryland drawl to humor his expectations. She had always known how to stir men’s interest or pass beneath notice, depending on need. When to look them in the eye, when to study her bootlaces. A generous smile cut dimples in her high cheeks and turned a plain face into an attractive one, despite the gap where she’d fixed a troublesome tooth with the butt of her pistol. Harriet had an unexpected, animated beauty. “Fine looking,” said the advertisement offering a reward for her capture. With her lithe movements, minute waistline, and musical voice, no man would guess Harriet Tubman was close to forty. When she wanted to disappear, she simply let her inner light wink out.
Harriet’s expression warmed. She lifted her small, pointed chin. “You partial to gingerbread, lieutenant? I add orange peel. Folk say mine the finest on Port Royal.”
“Partial I am, indeed,” the sentry said. “And I haven’t tasted anything edible since we sailed from Boston two weeks ago.” His nose wrinkled like he’d gotten a whiff of vinegar. “Hominy, peas, and salt pork is about it.”
“You like some, sah?”
The youth’s lips parted. Harriet pictured him at one of the pastry shops on Boston Common where students mobbed the counters and lady abolitionists had taken her for tea and apple cake. The boy was a long way from home.
“Why, I got some right here. Made mo’ this morning,” Harriet said sympathetically and lifted down the leather satchel she carried over one shoulder. She hitched up her dusty hem and bent over to search the heavy bag. She prayed he didn’t have a hair trigger. The Rebels had taken down their artillery. Lucky breaks wouldn’t hold still. The thought made her fingers clumsy, and she fumbled with the buckle before flipping it open.
Harriet dug around a small package wrapped in sailcloth, a leather pouch of gunpowder, a filigreed but practical pair of sewing scissors received as a parting gift from the Anti-Slavery Society when she’d sailed for South Carolina, and the button that had belonged to Linah. Harriet hesitated. Fear washed over her. Then she slipped her hand around the wooden butt and her finger through the cool brass loop.
“Here you go,” Harriet said as she drew out the Colt revolver, straightened swiftly, and aimed it at the boy’s chest. “Now let me in. I need to see General Hunter.”