I nodded. “I am, thanks to you and Silas.”
Silas moved up next to me, eyeing Ambrose closely. “A deal’s a deal, Ambrose.”
“Aye, it is,” Ambrose said, and he held out the sword sideways to me so I could take it. Then he turned, clasping his hands behind his back. Silas tied Ambrose’s hands tightly, and Ambrose said not a word, even held still until Silas was finished. Then he sat down on the pile of crates I had left him on only a few long minutes ago, Bosun nibbling affectionately at his ear.
Chapter Fourteen
Inthemorninglight,the three of us dug a large grave to put the bodies of the fallen pirates in and marked it with a stone with their initials. Silas said it wouldn’t be proper to not give them a Christian burial, seeing as how he and Ambrose were responsible for their deaths. I was sure he was thinking about the other dead men who had been tossed into the ocean like waste, but he did not say anything. The two pirates that had fled into the darkness of the jungle in the early hours, Clark and Franklin, did not reappear, and if the ferocity of Ambrose’s dispatch of Roderick or the efficiency of Silas’s dagger skills were any indication, they were much better off hiding in the trees.
We disassembled the tent and packed it into the longboats. The boats were tied together with a length of rope between each one, so we could take all four of them, piled with the chests of treasure, to the ship at once. Ambrose and I rowed us back to the MORAY while Silas steered. Though he made no motions against him, I was sure Silas was carefully watching every muscle of Ambrose’s movement to ensure the man was not about to do something untoward. But Miles Ambrose was the model of civility and gentlemanliness, even making jokes and ensuring that everything Silas and I needed was attended to.
When we reached the ship, with its three other members still stationed aboard, Ambrose announced very loudly and confidently that he was stepping down as the captain of the MORAY and that Silas was going to take the lead to bring us home. Grant seemed skeptical, and I assumed him to be one of Ambrose’s men, but Jacks and Goode were hardly fazed, more concerned with bringing aboard the treasure and supplies from the jollyboats, and we had no trouble amongst any of them. When asked what happened to the rest of the crew, the look from Ambrose was so dark and murderous that not another question was asked to him for the remainder of our berth.
Clark and Franklin, having escaped the massacre in the tent, were not seen again as we set sail away from that cursed island. To take them home for the gibbet would have been a cruel sort of kindness in any right. We left them a crate of supplies, and Silas said a prayer for them as the island retreated from view on the distant horizon.
After a thorough search of his cabin for any hidden weapons, Ambrose was restricted to his quarters, and a padlock and length of chain ensured that he could not slip out. For the first two days at sea, Silas delivered meals to Ambrose himself, but after that, he allowed me to bring him his bread and water.
The first time I came with it, he only took the meal with polite thanks before closing the door again. This repeated for nearly a week until we were far out to sea. I brought him his dinner, unlocking the door and setting the chain aside. Ambrose met me politely before asking, “Won’t you join me for a few minutes, Jamie? It gets a power lonesome in here.”
I gazed back at him, and he smiled. Not his usual silver smile, but something genuine and hopeful. “I promised you, no funny business. Just to talk, and I am unarmed.”
I wanted to say no, and thought it might be wiser to do so, but I had not had a moment alone with Ambrose since he had rescued me from Roderick on the beach, and before that had been the trip into the jungle to retrieve the map. Despite the villainy he had wrought, my heart still fluttered at a look from him, and I found myself entering his familiar, warm quarters.
He sat in a chair, the same chair he had bent me over the first time on the ship we had joined together, and I knew I blushed as I sat down opposite him.
Ambrose smiled gently at me. “He’s a good man, that Cross,” he said. “Was always lookin’ out for you, Jamie.”
“He’s a good friend,” I said softly.
Ambrose nodded slowly, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, his head bowed for a moment, before he said, “I will keep his secret about the men he killed.”
“What?” I asked, after much too long of a pause.
Ambrose lifted his head and gave me a small smile. “You know he killed Madsen and Miller and Humbolt, don’t pretend you don’t.”
I gazed back at him for a moment before asking, “But not that first night? Thatch and Vanders?”
Ambrose chuckled softly in his throat. “No. He was only adding fuel to the fire I set.”
I gaped at him, my mouth hanging open. “You killed them?”
Ambrose nodded slowly. “I did. I intended to kill them all by the time we returned to England.”
“Why?” I demanded, suddenly wondering if I had made a horrible mistake in sitting down with Captain Ambrose.
“Treasure does terrible things to people, Jamie. I’m sure you know that now as well as I.” Ambrose rubbed thoughtfully at the scruff on his cheek. “It weren’t rightly theirs anyway, and every last one of them scoundrels and rats of the sea. I curated them carefully.” He chuckled softly. “Well, most of them. Obviously, I vastly underestimated your friend, Mister Cross.”
Silas would probably be pleased with that assessment.
“From the day I brought him ashore, he was prepared that there might be a mutiny,” Ambrose continued. “You were always his first priority, especially once he found out the squire and Kearns were dead.”
“You used him to manipulate me,” I pointed out.
“I did,” Ambrose said softly. “It was a wretched thing for me to do, Jamie, I admit to that. But that Cross, he was brave, and no mistake. He knew I was the one killed Vanders and Thatch, and he could have ratted me out to the rest of the crew. But he also knew he could instead turn the crew against me while reducing their numbers, so that is what he did. And when he knew that there was talk of throwing me off, he made a bargain with me. To protect you.”
I swallowed hard at this revelation. Silas had slain those men in the dead of night so he could make a deal with Ambrose, knowing that the man held me in his affections. All of those men were dead because of me. But yet, they still would have been dead before we returned to England if Ambrose’s original plot had gone as planned. “So you changed sides again,” said I.
“And make no mistake, I’ll hang for it when we get back to port,” Ambrose said softly. “I won’t tell anyone what your friend did to save you.” His dark eyes met mine, and I saw in them the man he had once been. A young man, perhaps just a bit naïve, looking for adventure, to carve out his own X in the world, to live and love and die. Things could have been so very different if he had not betrayed the squire or tried to bring harm to Silas.
