“Most unlikely.”
“Apparently,” I said with even greater bitterness.
Something in my voice must have alerted him. He scrutinized me shrewdly. “Miss Doyle, why are you calling me Mister Zachariah?”
“For the same reason you are calling me Miss Doyle.”
He cocked his head to one side. I could feel his gaze upon me. For a moment I had the courage to return it, but quickly glanced away.
He said, “Charlotte . . . you have grown suspicious of me. Am I correct?”
I nodded.
“Look at me.” I did.
He sighed again. “Is it truly possible you think I murdered Mr. Hollybrass?”
After a moment I admitted, “Yes.”
“And why?”
“Zachariah,” I cried out, “you were there on deck. You had every reason to want him dead. And since I’d told you, you knew where I’d left the dirk. I suppose you would have preferred to kill the captain, but thought the first mate would do. And no one would know, would they? Least of all Jaggery.
“I’m certain it’s what the rest of the crew believes,” I rushed on. “And that’s why they wouldn’t speak for me! It’s to protect you, Zachariah, just as they’ve done all along. I can hardly blame them!”
I sank onto the floor, sobbing.
For quite a time Zachariah didn’t speak. And the longer he remained silent the more certain I was that I’d uttered the truth.
“Charlotte,” he said at last, “if you believed all that, why did you not say so before?”
“Because you’re the only one—you told me so yourself, and I believe you—the only one who can get off the Seahawk when we reach Providence and go to the authorities about Captain Jaggery!”
“And that’s why you said nothing?”
“Yes.”
“It does you honor,” he said very quietly.
“I don’t care about honor,” I declared. “I’d much rather live! But the least you could do is be honest with me.”
He hesitated, then said, “Charlotte, you do not have it correct.”
“I don’t suppose I know everything . . .”
“Charlotte,” he said with the utmost solemnity, “I did not kill Mr. Hollybrass.”
I eyed him suspiciously.
“Charlotte,” he continued, “we shall either live by believing one another, or, by not believing, die.”
“I want to believe you,” I told him. “I do.” I sank back down on the stool. For a long while neither of us spoke. There seemed nothing to say. Then, in despair, I said, “Zachariah, sometimes I think Jaggery has worked all this out so you and I should blame one another. But you said he doesn’t know you are alive.”
He started. “Repeat what you said.”
“What?”
“The last thing.”
“About his not knowing you’re alive?”
“Yes.” He moved from the brig then and sat down, his mood completely changed. After a while he murmured, “Charlotte!”
“What?”
“When I was on the deck during the storm—Jaggery saw me.”
His words sank in slowly. “Zachariah, are you telling me that the captain knows you are alive and has done nothing?”
“Yes.”
“When did he see you?” I demanded.
“As I say, during the storm. I was on deck, trying to reach the mainmast.”
“Before or after you helped me?”
He thought a moment. “Before. Yes, I was bent into the wind, doubled over, when I heard voices arguing. I couldn’t make them out at first, then I saw Captain Jaggery and Mr. Hollybrass. It was they who were arguing. Furiously. I heard Mr. Hollybrass accuse the captain of deliberately taking the Seahawk into the storm. Jaggery was enraged. I thought he was about to strike the man. Then the first mate took himself off while the captain turned toward me. At first he didn’t recognize me. Only swore . . . as I did. But then—”
“What did he do?”
“Nothing. Just stared in a wild sort of way. Mind, the storm was growing worse. But before he could do or say anything I headed for the foremast where I chanced to be where you needed me.”
“Didn’t you wonder when after the storm he did nothing?”
“Charlotte, you yourself told me that when I helped you on the mast you thought me a ghost, an angel perhaps. Think of Jaggery. If ever a man had guilty deeds locked in his thoughts, deeds enough to raise the dead from seven seas, he would be the one.
“When—after the storm—he did nothing, I decided that was exactly what he thought: that I was an apparition. His leaving me here was proof enough. How else to explain it? And therefore I was safe.”
I gazed at him through the bars, trying to grasp the full import of what he was saying. “Zachariah ...” I said slowly, trying to sort out my tumbling thoughts, “during the trial he made a point of asking me what happened to you.”
“And you answered . . . ?”
“To make sure he didn’t know, I said that you had died. But Zachariah, if he did know you to be alive, he might also guess we all knew it. And might think—exactly as I did—that you killed Mr. Hollybrass. But he wouldn’t say.”
“So as to condemn you.”
“Only with me gone, could he turn on you. He could not do it the other way around, for fear of my going to the authorities—as I threatened to do. Do you think he knows who really killed Mr. Hollybrass?”
“He might.”
“But who?”
Zachariah grew thoughtful. “To kill a hand, during such a storm, when everyone is desperately needed, takes a kind of . . . madness,” he said finally.
“Well then,” I said. “Who does that leave?”
We looked at one another. And knew.
“The captain,” I said. “It must have been he who killed Mr. Hollybrass.”
“Charlotte,” Zachariah protested, “Mr. Hollybrass was Jaggery’s only friend ...”
“Yes, people would think them friends. No one would believe it could be Captain Jaggery. But you told me they had never sailed together before. And I never saw much friendship between them. Did you?”
“No . . .”
“You said they argued,” I continued. “I saw some of that too. In the storm, you even thought Captain Jaggery lifted a hand to strike him after Mr. Hollybrass made an accusation.”
“Of deliberately sailing into the storm.”
“Is that a serious charge?”
“The owners would be greatly alarmed. But to kill him . . .”
“Zachariah, he sees you. He knows you’re alive. The crew, he realizes, must know it too. I’m a threat to him. So are you. And now, here’s Mr. Hollybrass, another threat. But, let him murder Mr. Hollybrass and everyone will think you did the crime.”
“But then, he accuses you,” Zachariah said.
“And see how much he’s managed!” I cried.
Zachariah stared into the dark. Then slowly he said, “The crew keeps silent to protect me, even as he hangs you.”
To which I added, “And once I am gone, Zachariah, then . . . he’ll deal with you.”
Zachariah grew thoughtful. Finally I heard him whisper, “May the gods protect us . . .”
The excitement of our discovery ebbed. We sat in silence. In time the candle went out.
“What,” I asked ruefully, “can we do about any of this?”
“Charlotte, we must force him to confess.”
“He’s too powerful.”
“True, you’ll not get any man to confess when he holds a gun and you’ve got none.”
“What do you mean?”
“Charlotte, see what happened when we rose against him before. You’ve been in his quarters, haven’t you? You must have seen that iron safe of his that’s full of muskets. You’re not likely to get into that. No one knows where he keeps the key.”