The negroes, men and women, were rushing to the boat with their children, now and then greeting someone whom they recognized among the uniformed negroes . . . The negroes seemed to be utterly transformed, drunk with excitement, and capable of the wildest excesses. The roaring of the flames, the barbarous howls of the negroes . . . and the towering columns of smoke from every quarter, made an impression on my mind that can never be effaced. . . . My pleasant and comfortable house was in ashes.
Joshua Nichols, Combahee Planter
WHEN THE TUPELOS FINALLY DISAPPEARED, HARRIET turned her gaze downstream, looking for the two tenders they’d launched earlier. Not spying them, she surveyed the damage they’d wreaked. Brown lakes squatted in place of green rice fields wherever the floodgates had been destroyed. Harriet counted seven broken rice trunks on the north bank. Birds circled and dove for fish where slaves had weeded at daybreak. Fresh water now sluiced through the openings, too late to undo the damage wreaked by the brackish tide.
And Rome salted the Earth, she recalled Thomas Wentworth Higginson saying from the pulpit of his church. An unexpected sorrow swelled within her at the sight of the destruction. Africa’s children had dug and planted and tended these fields with such pain and care. Would white and black both go hungry now? On the Middleton side of the river, where many of the water gates remained intact, groups of slaves from distant fields still hurried down the long causeways. Harriet’s gut twisted as the Adams steamed past at least a hundred men, women, and children at one turn in the river. “Stop, brudduhs! Save us!” she heard again and again. Even if they had time to stop, there was no more room, accounting for the advance troops they had yet to retrieve.
Samuel stumped up the ladder behind Montgomery.
“—won’t leave him, Colonel,” he said. His furious tone suggested a threat rather than a promise.
“No one’s got special call,” Montgomery stated without looking around as they gained the deck. “We’ve freed at least four hundred already. We’re over our capacity.”
“There’s room for one more.”
“And we’re bringing more aboard. The tenders might already have your brother.”
“Might ain’t good enough,” Samuel said. “He’s injured.”
“We’re not stopping for one man.”
“Jacob showed us the torpedoes,” Samuel argued. The men faced one another in the doorway of the pilothouse. Both were smoke-stained. Samuel’s collar was open, and his face looked like a fist. He seemed a different person, remote and implacable.
“We’ve got to get downriver before the Secesh bring their guns to Fields Point,” Montgomery said. “We’ll pick up the tenders from the Lowndes raid on the way. Your brother will either be on them—or he won’t.”
“I won’t leave him behind,” Samuel said between gritted teeth.
Montgomery’s lips blanched. “You’ll do what you’re told, soldier.”
Samuel’s hands balled. “I wear no uniform.”
Harriet suddenly understood that Colonel Montgomery had ordered the tenders to take a run at the Lowndes estate. That must be why they hadn’t yet reappeared. Perhaps the colonel hadn’t mentioned his plan in order to focus Harriet and Samuel on getting past the final torpedoes. Samuel must suspect so. “Never met a reliable white man,” he’d once said.
But they still had one tender left—and the troops who’d returned from the Heyward and Middleton estates.
Harriet stepped forward.
“This ain’t jest bout Jacob, Colonel,” she told Montgomery. “Our troops missed some a them rice trunks. Break every one and you stagger two counties.” Her voice strengthened. “And that ain’t all.”
It took the last ounce of forbearance, but Harriet waited for Montgomery’s question. They must get Jacob and Kizzy, but she wouldn’t say that. She didn’t want Montgomery to think it was personal.
Colonel Montgomery studied her face. Then he turned his back, ignoring the bait.
Samuel’s dark eyes looked ready to swallow the Earth whole as the colonel disappeared into the pilothouse. Harriet tugged his sleeve. He stared through her. She tugged harder. He nodded, struggling for self-control, and they followed Montgomery through the doorway.
“We could spare only a handful a men earlier. Send that third tender now, and we won’t miss a single water gate,” Harriet promised the colonel.
“Lowndes is the cruelest plantation on the river,” Samuel said. “It’s hard to see from the river, sir, but there ain’t no richer target. Bring it down, and every planter in Dixie gone get the message.”
Captain Vaught watched the river over the shoulder of the colored pilot. He stroked his long gray beard and glanced toward the colonel. “We have a little time, sir. Not much, but some. You need to tell me now if you want the last tender.”
Montgomery frowned. “How much time?”
The grizzled captain checked his watch. “It depends,” he said. “The river is going to work with us. Though we’ll reach the Sound quicker if we don’t send another boat, of course.”
“How much time exactly?” the colonel asked.
“Thirty minutes,” the captain replied. “After that, we’ll be fighting the tide to stay in place—and maybe the Rebs.” He ducked his head to get a better view of the mottled sky. “I don’t like the look of the clouds neither.”
Montgomery turned to Harriet. He finally asked the question she’d anticipated. “What will it gain us?”
She launched into her answer. “Flood them fields and even Charleston won’t have rice for supper, sir.” The hated name bore repeating. “Charleston.”
Montgomery paused, and then leaned onto the balls of his feet. He addressed Samuel. “Go along if you wish—but I won’t hold up the ship for you or your brother. We’re not stopping a second longer than necessary to destroy the rice trunks, and I’m not taking on more people than we can carry.”
“Thank you, sir,” Samuel replied. “Moses and I will fly like the wind.”
“Just you,” the commander said. “I need Moses on board to steady the contraband.”
“I don’t—” Samuel started.
Harriet spoke quickly. “Colonel Montgomery, with respect, sir, the folk on board ain’t the ones needing help. I know every step a the way, sir, and I can do more good ashore in case the contraband grab the tenders again. On the Adams, I’ll be out a sight.”
Captain Vaught tapped the pilot on the shoulder. “Slow up some.” The older man looked again at Montgomery. “We’ll anchor here to rendezvous with the tenders. If you want to send the last one up Jack’s Creek, now’s the time, Colonel.”
Montgomery drew out his pocket watch and glanced at it. “Follow me,” he said abruptly and led the way down the ladder.
Minutes later, Harriet sat with Samuel behind a band of soldiers in the smallest of the tenders, headed up the short tributary. It wasn’t long before she heard gunfire and smelled fresh smoke. As they approached, Harriet saw that rice trunks still held back the river from at least four large fields, although the gate on which she had waited for Walter stood broken and ajar. Green rectangles stood gap-toothed between dirty brown ones. Flames shot up from the rice mill she’d passed the night Kizzy took her to find Jacob.
A tender loaded with refugees had cast off from the small landing. The second boat was filling. Half-sheltered behind an overturned wagon, three colored soldiers pointed their weapons in the direction of the mansion while Union troops ran toward the boat. One fleeing soldier turned to fire into the trees, though Harriet couldn’t see his target. Slaves ran down the path toward the creek. A storehouse burned out of control. Sparks jumped and twirled in the hot air. The world seemed on fire. Harriet’s tender sailed toward the one that was headed downriver. Twenty to thirty people crowded atop full sacks of rice. She searched for Kizzy and Jacob among the joyful but anxious faces.
“You got a Jacob on board?” Samuel shouted at an officer stationed in the bow of the craft.
“There a Jacob here?” the officer cried as they came abreast.
No one answered. Instead, people shook their heads as the boats crossed paths. Harriet didn’t see Kizzy. A man in the stern turned around to stare. He looked like he was trying to work out a puzzle.
“You de brudduh?” the contraband finally shouted across the widening gap. “Samuel?”
“Yes!” Samuel called back.
“Look jest like ’im. He too sick ta—”
The man’s words were lost. A deafening blast rocked the plantation. The chimney of the steam mill exploded in a cascade of bricks. A wave of pressure numbed Harriet’s ears, and smoke roiled up in a vast, expanding column. The mill’s boilers had burst, Harriet thought as she felt—but didn’t hear—the tender bump the dock. The shock obliterated every other sound.
Harriet stood up in the back of the boat. Troops wielding sledgehammers jumped off and ran in opposing directions to attack the remaining dikes hundreds of yards distant on either side of the tributary. She reached for the wooden piling, felt a splinter pierce her palm, and climbed up on the landing. She ran up the causeway, knowing Samuel was behind her. An instant later, he caught up.
They made it onto the path below the Big House. The wind vane shifted atop the mansion’s copper cupola, high on the hill and safe thus far. The overseer had not been as lucky. His house on the neighboring rise roared with flames. The blue sash windows were no more. Two pillars holding a doorframe collided and collapsed in a red shower as Harriet and Samuel passed the ruins. The slave quarters stood directly ahead. The wooden tinderboxes remained untouched by the federal assault. They appeared abandoned. Harriet and Samuel ducked behind the shabby row. As they passed one of the cabins, she heard a voice urging someone to hurry.
Galloping suddenly thundered from the direction of the jail. Lord God, Harriet thought. Fear shot through her as she dropped to the ground behind a tiny shack that stood on blocks above the dank earth. Samuel crouched beside her, and they wriggled underneath, side by side. The thrum of hooves seemed to fill her head. A beetle scuttled over Harriet’s hand. She shook it off and pressed closer to the dirt. Let them pass quickly, she prayed.
But the posse halted. Dust flew under the house. “We’ll make a stand here,” someone in authority said. “They won’t be able to advance any farther.”
“Lay an ambush, suh?” asked a man whose bass voice suggested someone of size.
“Yes. I want you in this cabin, McAfee. Southerland and I will take the other. Aim out the window. We’ll set up a crossfire.”
“Where do you want the horses?”
“Stake them ’round back. I don’t want them seen.”
Harriet felt a vise close. She looked at Samuel, who cocked his thumb toward the rear. She put up a hand to signal patience. If they inched backward now, the soldiers might spy them. Better to wait for the men to dismount and cobble their horses, then shimmy out as the men took cover inside. It was Samuel and Harriet’s only hope of making it back to the boat. With Rebels staking out the slave quarters, their chances of getting Jacob were gone.
Samuel shook his head angrily.
“You making a stand here, Sergeant?” someone jeered.
Harriet couldn’t forget that voice. It was Pipkin. A sweat broke out across her whole body, and she pressed closer to the dirt. The splinter from the wooden piling burned in her palm.
“Yes. Any closer and they’ll blow our heads off,” the officer said.
“We can at least grab the niggers,” Pipkin said. “Yankees ain’t stealing my stock.”
“They’re too well-armed,” the sergeant insisted.
“Too well-armed? Maybe your troops are just too yellow. What took y’all so long? And where are the eight riders we started with?”
“I’ll discipline them later,” the sergeant said. “But if you insist on getting closer, we can’t go with you.”
“Are you all ready to turn tail at nigger soldiers?” Pipkin said.
Harriet heard the creak of a saddle. She could hardly believe the overseer might help them.
A man spoke in a low rumble. “Upon my honor, suh, no nigger soldier is driving me back.”
“Reinforcements are right behind us,” the sergeant said. “We’re better off waiting here.”
“All the same, suh, I’ll take my chances with Pipkin,” said the man with the bass voice. “With your permission.”
“Go if you want,” the officer said.
“This way,” Pipkin said.
A whip cracked. Horses galloped down the lane in the direction of the causeway. A moment later, Harriet heard a lone mount canter back up the road. She wondered how close reinforcements actually were. The way was now open, but she and Samuel should retreat anyway. Harriet had a bad feeling about what lay ahead.
“Now!” Samuel hissed. He sounded more determined than ever.
As they wiggled out, she told herself they would give it one more try. Harriet arrived first. Breathing in gulps, with a stitch in her side, she stopped behind Jacob’s cabin to peer around the corner. If she saw anyone in the road, she was absolutely turning back. This was her rule. Live to fight another day. But the path between the last two cabins—and the yard beyond—was empty. She ran to the front and pushed open the creaky door.
A pregnant woman sat on the hearth with her head slumped on folded arms. Her shoulders shook with sobs. Jacob lay motionless on the pallet. His face seemed smaller than before. Harriet ran to the bed. Samuel was right behind her. She went down on her knees and put two fingers on the side of the man’s neck. Samuel pushed her aside.
“No,” he said. He shoved an arm under his brother’s shoulders and propped him up. “Jacob,” he said. “Come on, brother.”
Jacob’s head fell sideways. He made no effort to sit. The dull skin of his eyelids was grayish. Harriet turned to Jacob’s wife, who had the swollen face of the last months of pregnancy.
“Help me,” the woman said and put out her hands. “My baby—”
Harriet pulled the woman to her feet and hooked an arm under her left elbow. She was Harriet’s height but at least thirty pounds heavier. “Baby gone be fine,” Harriet said.
Cradling Jacob’s shoulders, Samuel shook his brother. The slats of the bed creaked under his brother’s uncaring weight. “Come on,” Samuel said. “Don’t leave, brother.”
Mayline looked down at her husband. “He gone already. I seen him go,” she said and sagged against Harriet.
“Samuel, we have to get back to the ship,” Harriet said. “We can’t miss it.”
Samuel rubbed Jacob’s cheeks and shook him harder. “Not now,” he said as if explaining facts to a stubborn younger sibling. “We almost free.”
“Samuel,” Harriet said. She tamped down her growing panic. “We got to go.”
Samuel lowered Jacob’s body onto the pallet and stared at the dead man’s face. Then he reached over the bottom of the bed where the blanket had slipped to the floor and drew the shroud over Jacob’s head. He bent and touched his forehead to his brother’s.
Samuel straightened a moment later. He took the pregnant woman’s other arm without a word. Soon they were out the door and maneuvering down the steps.
Harriet stopped at the bottom. “Hold up.”
She glanced at Samuel to make sure he had a firm grip on Mayline, and then Harriet took the steps of the neighboring shack. The door hung open. A gourd spilled water across a crude table, but no one was inside. Kizzy and her family had made it to the dock.
Harriet ran out. Samuel was already down the path between the cabins, guiding Jacob’s wife. Harriet caught up. Ash filled the air of the besieged plantation. They began to run. The cry of a horse followed a burst of gunfire. The trio passed the overseer’s smoking foundations. A briar snagged Harriet’s dress, and her shoe caught the hem of her long skirt. The old fabric ripped along the bottom. Harriet kicked the sagging fringe out of her way.
They were almost at the causeway when shots rang out. Ahead, black faces scattered, some running downriver, some for the trees. Harriet spotted the overturned wagon. Behind it, a colored soldier with a Springfield rifle took aim. Another ducked out of sight to reload. Just out of range, a man in a dented bowler on the far side of the clearing held a smoking pistol skyward. He gripped a woman around the neck with his other hand. Pipkin’s fleshy face was red with rage. The woman looked paralyzed with fear. He marched her by the throat toward a group that clutched odd household belongings next to a mounted Confederate.
Closer to the overturned wagon, but sheltered behind the torso of a dead horse sprawled on the ground, a Rebel soldier exchanged fire with the colored sharpshooters near the water. Tethered to the dock, the last tender was nearly full. The other had disappeared. The shiny current pulled strongly toward the sea.
The Rebel soldier on the ground rolled over to yank ammunition from his cartridge box as Harriet, Samuel, and Mayline entered the clearing. The fallen horse lay directly in their path. The Rebel looked up at them, startled, his blue eyes strangely bright in his dirty face.
Harriet jumped over the outstretched leg of the dead animal as they ran past, holding tight to Mayline’s arm. Then they were beyond the overturned wagon, down the causeway, and onto the landing. A white officer waved them onto the boat. Samuel and Harriet helped the pregnant woman down and climbed in behind her.
The officer spoke to the two oarsmen. “Ready?” Harriet looked around for Kizzy but couldn’t see her. Faces and bodies were crammed together. An infant wailed in an old man’s palsied arms. Sweaty troops holding sledgehammers crowded close.
Harriet’s throat tightened. Gunfire sounded again across the causeway. She looked up. Running down the path from the collapsed rice mill, a handful of slaves appeared out of nowhere. A colored soldier stepped from the broken wagon, exposing himself to fire to draw attention away from the fleeing men and women, and he opened on the Rebel sheltered behind the dead horse. The Secesh ducked, and a puff of dust flew up from the animal’s hide. The small band kept coming.
“Retreat! Double-quick!” the captain on the dock yelled to the men behind the cart. The soldier who had discharged his rifle ran for the boat. The last two followed.
The small band of runaways neared the Confederate on the ground. A girl ran in front. She pulled the hand of an old man.
Pipkin charged forward, heedless of the Yankees. “Stop, niggers. Stop, or I’ll shoot!”
The Rebel behind the dead horse pivoted to face the renegades, and then he fired. The old man spun sideways. His hands flew up, and he fell to earth. Blood gushed from his chest. Others halted in shock. The girl in front sprinted forward without her companions. Braids that had come loose swung free. Her bare feet pounded the hard ground. A shell necklace bounced on her chest. It was Kizzy.
Harriet stood in the boat. “Run!”
Just then, numerous armed horsemen galloped over the rise behind the mansion. They dove their mounts down the path. Reinforcements had arrived.
“Stop, you goddamn nigger!” Pipkin shouted. He picked up speed, though age and bulk disadvantaged him against the girl. His derby tumbled behind him on the ground.
Kizzy soared over the fallen horse like a hare. She was on the causeway.
With the last troops aboard, the blue-uniformed captain jumped into the tender. A slip of water opened between the boat and the landing. “Wait!” Harriet cried to the oarsmen.
Kizzy’s feet hit the landing. She was almost there. Pipkin stopped a dozen yards behind. He threw down his pistol and grabbed the shotgun off his back.
Harriet heard nothing. The world went silent as she reached out her hands to will the girl to safety. Kizzy pelted down the dock toward the tender, devouring distance.
A boom filled the air, and instead of flying forward, the girl collapsed, hands flat out. Her fingers fumbled on the rough surface of the landing, as if picking shelled peas.
The tender pulled swiftly into the river.
The overseer hauled Kizzy up by the collar. She wasn’t dead, but a red stain spread across her right shoulder. He spun her around, and the wounded girl hobbled back toward the plantation.
Rebel horsemen jumped from their mounts, charged past Pipkin onto the landing, took aim, and shot. The guns blared loudly, but their bullets disappeared into the black water with barely a ripple as Harriet sank onto the bench and covered her face as the powerful current sucked the tender downriver.