When we entered where she [Harriet Tubman] was at work ironing some clothes . . . she no sooner saw me than she recognized me at once and instantly threw her arms around me and gave me quite an affectionate embrace.
Lt. George Garrison, son of William Lloyd Garrison, in South Carolina
“GENERAL HUNTER ISN’T IN,” THE SANDY-HAIRED clerk said, squinting up from his cluttered desk. Numbers crowded the pages of an open ledger, and the knife edge of his hand was blue with ink. The man blinked twice.
Louvered shutters cast stripes across the soldier’s freckled face. The afternoon sun appeared to hit him in the eyes. Harriet stepped nearer to give him the benefit of her shadow and the lines around his eyes eased, though his dry manner didn’t become any more welcoming.
“When he coming back?” she said.
“Who’s asking?” the man said, as if he wasn’t authorized to utter a whole sentence.
“I am,” she said crossly. “That’s who.”
Harriet didn’t feel like arm wrestling another Yankee at the moment. It had taken much of the day to get to Hilton Head, following a long night in the dugout with Walter and Samuel and a meeting with Simmons and Chisholm, who’d come up empty-handed on the lower Combahee. She had been awake most of the past twenty-four hours and was entirely out of patience. What was wrong with white soldiers? When would they realize what the war was about? That people like her had done more than their share to build the infernal country, taking all of its punishments and enjoying none of its rewards? The only thing whites had given blacks was a hard time. She felt like slapping the man’s face.
He squinted again. Harriet saw the gesture was habitual. Perhaps he had myopia. Needed glasses.
“And you are?”
“Moses.”
The man stood up behind his desk and gave a bow out of character in a soldier. He smiled. “I thought you might be. If I had a hat, I’d tip it, ma’am. I heard you were in these parts. I hail from Boston, Missus Tubman. It’s a real honor.”
Harriet pressed her lips in a hard line to keep them from trembling—and suddenly realized how frayed her nerves were. It was so easy for people to treat one another as human beings, but at low moments, it caught her off guard when a stranger actually did so. She stuck out her hand. The man shook it.
“I’m pleased to meet you, Moses,” he said in words that now crowded together. “My Aunt Zilfa—that’s Zilfa Bodfish, she’s married to Thankful Bodfish of Concord—perhaps you know them—told me if I ever saw you down here, I was to remind you of your abolitionist friends in Massachusetts.”
“Thank you, sir,” she said. “I don’t recall your people, but there’s a host of righteous folk up north. Right now I’m scouting General Hunter. You know when he’s coming back?”
The man glanced down at his desk and shoved aside the ledger to reveal a diary underneath. He flipped open the pages. “I wasn’t here when he left—my shift started an hour ago—but it says he’s headed to Lady’s Island for the day—a meeting, I suppose. He probably won’t return ’til tomorrow.” He looked up. “May I give him a message?”
“No,” Harriet said emphatically. “No, thank you, sir,” she repeated more quietly. “I’ll stop on by tomorrow.”
“Yes, ma’am. And may I write my Aunt Zilfa that you send your regards? Her congregation in Concord prays for your safe return. She thinks of you as a hero—her hero, truth be told.”
“A course. Please thank her for her prayers.”
The man nodded eagerly, and Harriet took her leave. When she stepped back into the dirt lane that bordered headquarters, she glanced in both directions, unsure where to turn. With General Hunter on Lady’s Island and Colonels Montgomery and Higginson on Port Royal, Harriet felt the strange slump that sometimes came upon her when thwarted. Septima must have started the blackberry hand pies, Doctor Durant would have assigned another nurse to wash patients, and Harriet’s scouts were circulating in the refugee camps. She could undertake any of these tasks, but none held a candle to seeing David Hunter.
Harriet idly wondered if Septima had set out milk for the cat.
A wagon loaded with wooden casks clattered up the road, its wheels spitting sand. The driver pulled up his reins. It was John Webster. She wondered if he knew his assistant was missing, though she couldn’t report where she’d seen the man. A flash of impatience made her grip the strap of her satchel. She just had to see Hunter.
“Tubman,” Private Webster said as he rolled to a stop in front of Hunter’s headquarters. The commissary clerk shifted the reins to one hand and pushed his wire spectacles higher on his nose. “How are ye for sugar?”
“Don’t think I need any right yet,” she said.
“An extra shipment just came in. I can let it go at a special price since it’s the end o’ the month.”
Harriet thought it over. Root beer required large quantities of sugar to cut the bitterness of the sassafras, and hand pies were popular. Soldiers liked to hold the turnovers by the rippled crust Harriet had learned at the Philly hotel where she once earned money for raids south. Pies fetched a higher price than gingerbread—and Margaret was growing into a young lady in the Sewards’ Auburn household. Distinguished guests frequently came to the home of Lincoln’s new secretary of state, and the girl might need a dress. Harriet and Septima weren’t out of sugar, but extra supplies wouldn’t hurt.
“I’ll take it,” she said. “Sixty pounds.”
Webster glanced down the road. He nodded and lifted the reins. “I’ll mark ye down when I get back. One of my fellows will deliver it on the morrow.”
“The man I saw at your office a few days ago?”
“Which one? Contraband come and go. Shiftless, they are.”
Harriet held a hand a few inches above her head. “Not real tall. Funny ears.”
Webster shrugged. “Cudjo, likely. I’ll send him if he’s around. Don’t worry. The sugar will get there.” He clucked at his mules, which pulled toward the port.
So Cudjo was the man’s name. Shading her eyes with her hand, Harriet watched Webster’s cart roll away. Would he even care if he knew what had happened? Harriet drew a breath to calm her nerves. She must get Hunter to agree to go upriver—for Cudjo, Kizzy, Jacob, and countless others.
Webster’s cart turned right at the next corner, where a gang of young contrabands in patched dungarees filled ruts in the harbor road. Beyond that, a smaller gunship sailed out of the port while another took on supplies at the army wharf. Admiral Du Pont’s flagship, pockmarked from the failed assault on Charleston, underwent repairs alongside the smaller boats.
The Union’s blockading squadron was such a pitiful force, considering all it had to do. Keep the devil from the door. Patrol a coast a thousand miles long. Carry the assault against Charleston. Harriet recalled the men’s smoke-stained faces when they came down the gangplank after their defeat the month before. Many had been wounded. A white man with a crushed leg writhed on a stretcher. He’d died that evening. Of the nine ironclads that had sailed out of Port Royal to attack the Rebel stronghold, five came back disabled. Broken masts, torn sails, and holes near the waterline. Word around town was that some had taken as many as ninety hits. Admiral Du Pont had been forced to scuttle the new USS Keokuk.
The memory depressed her. How would she persuade Hunter to risk more ships? Torpedoes at Charleston had thwarted their entire force. Was there some key to Hunter’s thinking she had yet to discover? She must find it before the Secesh restored their artillery. Give us time, dear Lord, she thought.
At last, the heat drove Harriet from the porch to a bench under a massive oak draped with Spanish moss. She felt tempted to camp there until Hunter returned the next day, but that was nonsense. She would rest a moment, and then she would head for the dock and the next packet to Port Royal.
Harriet tucked her feet under the seat in the deep shade. She sighed, steeling herself to ignore the troublesome feelings she’d been suppressing since the night before. When people told her she was a hero, they didn’t think of her as a woman. Yet she was one. Not a stone statue or a rag doll stuffed with straw. Despite John Tubman’s failings as a husband, the yearnings he had awakened in her had never died away, even though she tried not to think on them. Alone at night, or during quiet hours when nothing else vied for attention, desire still sometimes tugged. And why not? Her body kept living. She had the same heartbeat, as Samuel’s warm breath on her neck had reminded her the night before on the Combahee.
The waterman’s determination to rescue his family prompted her respect. His forcefulness intrigued her, and she admired his ingenuity. But the supple muscles that worked in his round forearms when he rowed were a distraction that reminded her of old pleasures that had no place in her new life. She was on a mission. God’s mission.
Harriet smiled as she recalled how daintily Samuel’s big hands had cut the dried pork. Then she frowned and shook her head. She didn’t need any man. Her husband had been good with his hands, too. Harriet poked at the smoldering ashes in her heart and waited for the anger that reliably protected her against sentimental mistakes. Yet the fire was cold. Instead, she felt a different kind of warmth that began in her thighs and spread seductively upwards.
No, she thought. Harriet bit her lower lip against the traitorous impulses. Plumb tired, she closed her eyes.
Time abruptly stopped.
Someone placed a hand on her shoulder. She shrugged it off. Someone shook her shoulder again.
“General Tubman. May I get you some water?” said a distant voice.
Wake up, Harriet thought, yet she was tired, and a weight as tenacious as pluff mud seemed to have hold of her, tugging her down.
“You all right, Moses?” someone said.
The weight grew lighter. Harriet opened her eyes to the puzzled face of Robert Smalls. The young naval hero sat next to her on the bench with a hand on her shoulder.
“Oh. Howdy, Robert,” she said, relieved it was not a white person or one of her scouts. She wondered how long she’d been asleep. Then she recollected what she’d been dreaming about and felt awkward anyway.
“You was so still,” he said. “I thought something happened.”
“Bless you,” she replied. “Jest resting my eyes and getting some shade. Today’s a hot one.”
He shifted back on the bench and took off his felt derby. Harriet noted that he wasn’t in uniform. She yawned and sat up straighter.
“It’s a beatdown, for true,” he said.
Harriet saw that he hadn’t shaved in a day or so. He had a red rash on his jaw, as if the razor had irritated his skin. “How you find yourself this afternoon, Robert?”
Robert fanned his face with the hat. “Enjoying every day a freedom. Plotting tomorrow’s insurrection.”
Harriet smiled. “Good rules.”
“What brings you to Hilton Head?” he asked.
“General Hunter. Pity is, he ain’t around.”
The sailor leaned closer. “Got something for us?” He clearly expected an interesting answer from the renowned Harriet Tubman. “Something to bring down the bastards?”
She examined his face. The fewer who knew any secret, the better. Yet Robert was quick and might be of help. A slave at the start of the war, he had nicked the Confederate gunship CSS Planter from the Charleston dock and run it past Fort Sumter, stealing the gunship and six contraband. Afterward, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton had pumped Robert’s hand personally. Since then, the twenty-four-year-old war hero had piloted ships for the Sea Islands squadron. He’d been at the recently failed assault on Charleston.
“We looking at the Cum’bee,” she said. “I got information on the artillery there.”
Robert placed his palms on his knees and glanced up and down the road. Seeing only the men filling ruts, he said, “What you find?”
“Secesh took down their guns at Fields Point. Tar Bluff, too,” she said.
Robert’s eyebrows shot up. “No artillery? That’s a sight different from what we found last month in Charleston.”
“Which ship was you on?”
“The Keokuk. A crack vessel, she was, too, fore we had to scuttle her.”
Surprised, Harriet clasped her hands around one knee and leaned forward. “Not the Keokuk. How’d she take so many hits?”
“Commander told me to steer within nine hundred yards a Sumter to avoid the torpedoes. Damn fort erupted like a volcano.”
Harriet shook her head with wonder. “Praise God you still alive. But the Cum’bee’s a different story. No artillery there.”
Robert rubbed a hand over his pimply jaw. “What bout the torpedoes?”
“There’s only five, and we can chart four of em.”
Robert whistled softly. “Damn. You got someone working on the fifth?”
Harriet sighed and spread her empty hands. “That’s where we weak.”
Robert looked thoughtful. He scratched the part in his hair, then bent over and took a twig from the ground. He traced two squiggly parallel lines in the dirt. Harriet recognized the oxbow curves of the Combahee. “Where are the ones you found?” he said.
Harriet pictured the map she had hidden in her bodice. She took Robert’s twig and made scratches at the four spots Jacob had indicated, including the one Samuel originally located.
Robert studied the marks on the road. A long moment passed. The heat was stifling even in the shade. Harriet forced her eyes to stay open. A scattered rain started to fall just beyond the tree’s dense canopy. It sparkled in the sunshine. The perfume of wet dirt bloomed on the dry road, and Harriet drew a full breath, expanding her lungs to take in the good smell.
Robert pointed to the drawing. “There,” he said. “The upper reaches a the river. You said they put a torpedo near the ferry. I bet they put another one opposite. They aiming to protect the ferry and the rail line to Savannah. That’s the most important spot on the river. We done that on the Stono, too.”
The warm air became thicker. Harriet wiped her brow with her sleeve. “You laid torpedoes on the Stono?”
“Yep.”
“How you anchor em?”
“Waited til dead low tide to fasten the chains,” he said. “That way, you see what you’re doing better.”
“We won’t be there at low tide. We gone be upriver at full flood,” she said.
Robert nodded. “Can’t breach the bar unless the tide rising. Too shallow.”
“So how do we spot mines at high tide?” Harriet hoped he had a good answer. Hunter wouldn’t go forward without one.
“Make a damn good guess?”
She exhaled, disappointed. “That all?”
The young sailor shrugged. “Take it slow. Look for snags. The Cum’bee flows steady near the ferry. No rocks or sandbars. You see a ripple out a the ordinary, it gone be a torpedo. Either that, a gator.”
Harriet recalled the ripples in the water from the night before. In view of the swarming wildlife on the Combahee, Robert’s advice wasn’t especially useful. The thought of submerged alligators gave her the shivers. Of all God’s creatures, why this one? Still, she noted his advice. Look for snags.
The boat pilot pushed his hands against his thighs and stood. “I best mosey along. My missus gone be waiting. Always glad to see you, Moses.”
“You taking the packet to Beaufort?”
“Yes’m. You, too?”
Harriet felt as if her shoes had taken root under the bench. “I planned on heading back, but I’m worried about missing Hunter.”
“Why don’t you talk with Colonel Montgomery? See what he thinks?”
Harriet straightened. “He around?”
“I jest saw him at the quartermaster’s—”
Robert Smalls hadn’t finished his sentence before Harriet was on her feet. She would catch a later packet or find a corner in the refugee camp overnight, if necessary. Montgomery could help her with Hunter.
Robert clapped his hat on his head. “Should I save you a seat on the packet?”
“No, and don’t you tarry none,” Harriet said. She leaned forward to hug the lithe young sailor, and then she reached for her satchel. “Get on home to your missus. I got an insurrection to plan. You understand.”
Robert smiled. “Yes, ma’am. That I do.”
The thought of Robert’s family gave Harriet pause. She had never asked him, but she wondered now how he’d done it. Why he’d done it. Whisking six slaves and a gunship past Fort Sumter. Most people couldn’t muster the nerve to fight back. Even when opportunity banged on the door, they were too scared to open it.
“Robert, tell me. How you get the gumption to steal the Planter? They might a blown you sky high, sailing right under their noses.”
He laughed and slapped his hands together. “I tell you, Moses, I saw my chance right off.”
She smiled. “Just like that?”
“Yes, ma’am. The captain took his officers to the grog shop. ’Round midnight. The rest a the crew was conked out below decks, half of em drunk, the other half enjoying a night off. Nobody noticed a thing til we fired up the boiler, and by then, it was too late. We’d locked the hatch. Nobody could hear em hollering over the engine.”
“You come on the idea then?”
“No, ma’am. I been figgering on it for months. Every time the Planter made port, I told my Hannah to be ready. When I saw the opportunity, I got her and the chil’ren aboard.”
“How y’all get past Sumter?” Harriet asked. “Don’t they stop every ship?”
Robert rubbed his hands. He clearly relished the story. “That they do, that they do,” he said.
“So how you trick em?”
“Well, first I got me a fine-looking uniform from the captain’s chest.” Robert tugged at his lapels and sleeves, as if to smarten them. “Then,” he said as he adjusted the tilt of his old derby, “I fetched up his favorite straw boater. You see, most captains wear navy headgear, but not Captain Relay. He got a particular fondness for his old straw hat. The Confederate lookouts all knew that, you see.”
“So the hat got you past Sumter?” Harriet asked admiringly. She loved a good disguise.
“Oh, Sumter wasn’t half the problem. I had to get us past five lookouts. Charleston’s a door with five bolts. Locked tight.”
“Nobody recognized you that whole time?”
“If you believe a man’s a man, why then, he is. Nobody sees color in the dark. They spotted that old straw boater and the brass buttons, and I give the right signal at each lookout. So the batteries waved us on. Any a them could a sunk us with a couple a rounds.”
Harriet shook her head with amazement. “Most folks would be scared stiff. No amount a praying would set them on that road.”
Robert paused. His expression went vacant, and he rubbed the irritated skin of his jaw. At last, he said, “I believe it was Charlotte. She asked if she could call me daddy. Poor little mite so scared, she hardly got the question out.” His eyes cleared. “Yep. That was it.”
Harriet recalled Robert’s stepdaughter, who had recently lost her two front teeth. From the child’s coloring, Harriet guessed her natural father might have been white. “Why’s that?” she asked.
“I knew a real daddy had to get her safe if he could. Charlotte couldn’t help not having none.” He smiled and scratched the part in his hair again. “It worked on me. Made me feel I had to try. Every chile needs a daddy.”
Reminded of her own daughter boarded out to the Sewards while she was away, Harriet reached out to squeeze Robert’s hands. “Charlotte sure is lucky. The good Lord looking down on you both.”