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.”