How the Stars did Fall (2 page)

Daniel lay awake thinking about these things for so long Faraday fell asleep and the fire began to wane, so Daniel got up. Taking some kindling from a pile, he placed it in the fire, renewing it. And as he contemplated the flames, he remembered something the Good Man had said to him a long time ago—that in every man, a fire burns, and like a real fire it cannot last forever but will be snuffed out eventually. The whole labor of life is an effort to keep one’s fire burning brightly and through that apparent selfishness others might come to find light and warmth, a guiding beacon upon this nebulous sphere.

Chapter Two

The way to the Tuttle estate was simple enough. The roads were well kept and they got to the place just as the sun’s last rays retreated above them. They took a moment to ride the full circumference of the estate at a safe distance, glassing it all the while, making a note of where the guards were stationed and what sort of patrols they took. As it happened, the place was a good deal less guarded than they had expected. There were three armed men that they could see and one of them seemed to divide his attention between keeping a lookout and overseeing the slaves. Once they completed a full circle around the estate, the two brothers set down their camp about a half mile away in some deep brush, which Daniel cleared away with a bowie knife so they could gather some kindling and make a fire while Faraday tied the horses down. They cooked up some beans in the heat of the fire and ate. They did not sleep.

Instead they waited. Every now and again Faraday brought out his timepiece from the pocket of his coat and examined it by the light of the fire. The fifth time he looked at his timepiece it read about fifteen minutes past midnight.

“It’s time,” Faraday said.

They walked to the estate, stopping just as soon as they came upon the first open field, on which Tuttle grew barley and wheat. Faraday scoped the full length of the estate, searching for a lantern or any other visible sign of human life. He paid careful attention to the big house in the northeastern corner of the plot, but it lay shrouded in darkness.

“I reckon Tuttle’s men are sound asleep now,” Daniel said.

Just then they heard the unlatching of a lock and, following it, a bobbing torch carried by the arm of a man. The light appeared some two hundred feet from the house to the east, where Faraday knew from the map there was an outhouse, and it stopped halfway on its way back to the house as the figure appeared to wrestle with his own trousers. The man holding the torch moved with quickness as if he feared the dark and the things it might hide in the folds of its blackness. But once the man reached the house, he did not enter it. Instead, he stopped just outside and sat down on a chair up against the eastern-side wall.

“He is sitting next to the cellar door,” Faraday said.

Like some chthonic guardian, his torch notched onto the side of the house, the man sat with a book in his hands, reading. Faraday could see a revolver hanging from the man’s belt. Daniel suggested they approach the man from the north so that they did not have to cross the open fields. That way their approach would be camouflaged by the brush and the trees and they would only have to traverse a few hundred feet of open ground before reaching the house.

They did all of that in silence, but by the time they had the cellar within sight, the chair the guard had occupied was empty. So they waited awhile, figuring the guard would return soon. They waited ten minutes, twenty, thirty.

“Let’s get moving. We can’t wait here all night,” Daniel said.

So they left their cover in the brush and scuttled their way to the house, their revolvers unholstered and cocked. Once they were within fifty feet of the cellar they broke out into a run, and Daniel took the torch from the wall, bringing it close to the cellar door. The way into that subterranean vault was chained and locked and there was no way of knowing where the key was kept. The brothers exchanged glances— no words needed for them to agree on what had to be done. They rounded to the front of the house and, finding the door unlocked, entered into the Tuttle residence.

The wooden floor creaked under their weight. They walked slowly, deliberately, Daniel slightly ahead of Faraday, both of his revolvers now drawn, black as ash, like the forward-pointing horns of some underworld daemon. They passed first the living room and the library to their right, where the moonlight passed through the drawn curtains, casting a penumbral web over the sofas and ottomans and bookshelves. Upon looking over this scene, Faraday had a strong sense that he had done this before and that he would do it again. Perhaps not in the same place, nor even as the same person, but the same action and with the same moon looking over him, marking his transgressions upon the tablets of eternity. And together with this sense came a feeling that ahead of him was death, whether for himself or the Tuttles he could not say, and that he could do nothing to avert it for the point of no return was somewhere behind him.

They continued forward, checking each part of the house for inhabitants, until they caught a glint of light escaping from behind one of the doors leading into the kitchen. Daniel sidled up to this door and very slowly nudged it open. Faraday was first struck by the size of the circular room they had entered and the contrast between it and what they had seen before. For here the floor was not wooden but marble, and etched onto it was a map of the world, and the ceiling was high as a church’s pinnacle and its apex featured a windowed dome the likes of which belonged more to some French palace than a rugged plantation house tucked away in a far corner of California. The light came from a hearth that had been constructed to the side of the circle, just off the eastern coast of Japan, and as they entered the room they saw a man sleeping in front of the fire, two opened bottles of wine and one revolver sitting on the floor next to him. It was the guard.

Daniel took the revolver from the floor but his movement jarred the guard, and as he blinked awake, his hand instinctually reached out to the spot where he had left his weapon. Not finding it, the guard could do nothing but stare at the barrels of Daniel’s revolvers.

“Where’s the key?” Faraday asked.

The guard did not speak. He was on his knees and he swayed to and fro, his intoxication evident in his manner. Daniel holstered one of his revolvers and, taking the butt of the other one, slammed the guard as hard as he could in the face. The guard fell on his hands, blood erupting from his lips. He turned to the thieves and spat at them a mixture of blood and saliva which fell short of reaching either Faraday or Daniel. Then he mumbled something incoherent, took a deep breath, concentrated hard and tried to speak again.

“I’d rather die,” the guard said.

The men looked at each other in silence for a moment. Then Daniel holstered his other revolver and began to retrieve his bowie knife when the guard struggled up and tried to run away, all the while yelling at the top of his lungs. Struggling to keep his balance, the guard did not make it far. Daniel soon fell on him with precision and force, burying the bowie knife in the guard’s back and then hacking at the man’s flesh over and over again until the blood had splattered all over Daniel’s face and clothes.

Once the guard had finished gurgling up his own blood, silence reigned over the Tuttle mansion again. Faraday searched the dead man’s body hoping to find the key but the guard did not have it. So they moved on, passing through to a foyer and up a staircase to the second floor, where the bedrooms were. Immediately upon reaching the top of the staircase they knew which room to enter by the wide and well-ornamented set of double doors that had to be the entrance to the master bedroom.

Inside, they found another hearth lit and an imposing bed of gothic proportions with thick mahogany bedposts. Two black slave women with leashes on their necks were tied to the bedposts like dogs, their backs hideously scarred. Downtrodden eyes and faces without hope. Tuttle was nowhere to be seen. The brothers split to up to search for him, but before they even started, one of the slave women pointed towards an armoire next to the bed. Their master’s hiding place.

Approaching the armoire, Daniel crouched to reduce his size, a precaution in case Tuttle was armed. Then in one swift motion he pulled the door open and found the old man cowering in the dark, a little golden key hanging from his neck. Rather than kill him, Daniel brought Tuttle out and told him to give over the key. He did. Then a sudden stench of urine began to emanate from the old man and he began to quiver and shake and murmur and beg for his life.

“What do you think?” Daniel asked Faraday.

“Let him live if he will not interfere.”

“You hear that? Will you interfere?”

“No, no, no. Have at it.”

With the key in hand, they left the room. The doors to the other bedrooms were open and within them Faraday saw little points of light. Candles lit. In front of the lights peeking through the doorway were the faces of children, black and white and Oriental and even Indian, boys and girls alike. Two or three in each room. And they were manacled like prisoners, chains running from hand to hand and down to each foot. Faraday kept moving despite the horror before him but Daniel stopped and entered into one of the rooms. He came out with both revolvers in hand and walked directly back into Tuttle’s room. The old man was on the floor, tipping back a bottle of whiskey. Faraday turned his back to the scene then and only heard the two shots, two flat cracks upon the bedrock of consciousness, and old man Tuttle was no more.

Chapter Three

Inside the cellar, the brothers found far more gold than anticipated. Upwards of two hundred pounds was their estimation. Just about the limit of what they could carry with only two horses. It took them the rest of the night and much of the morning just to carry it all out of that hole in the ground and place it atop the rustic carts they had brought, no more than a couple boards of wood stuck together atop a pair of wheels. The horses were tied to these carts, and by the look of where the sun hung high above them Faraday thought it was about one hour before noon when they were ready to go. He began to mount one of the horses when Daniel intervened.

“We ought to eat before we leave. Pantry’s full in there. We ought to take as much food as we can carry on our way out.”

Daniel had worried that the gunshots were going to attract attention. Perhaps that of the other two guards they had seen— perhaps of authorities of some kind or even bandits. All through the night he insisted they take the gold out in shifts so that one of them could always be watching their backs, ready if someone were to come. And even now with the sun at its pinnacle he insisted only one of them go into the house at a time while the other waited with the horses and the gold, now covered up by cowhides.

Faraday went in first. In the kitchen he found fresh water, which he drank, and milk, which he smelled first, finding it ripe and putting it aside. On the countertop he found some hard bread and butter and in the stove, still a little warm, the remnants of a lamb pie. While he ate he considered the fate of the women and children on the second floor of the house. They had not released them after killing Tuttle, agreeing that it would be in their interest to leave them chained, believing that someone would show up the next day to free them. But it was now close to midday and no one had shown up. Perhaps the old man and his servant were it and no other soul even knew of the existence of these women and children and if they were to be left in their present condition they would die of thirst before the end of the week. One thing Faraday knew with absolute certainty: he could not leave those people to die, slaves or not. He could not be responsible. So he chewed as fast as he could and while he chewed he took the rest of the bread and stuffed it into the pack he had slung over his shoulder. He found canned pork and beans and soup and he took these, too. The rest of the pie he ate, disposing of the receptacle by hiding it inside one of the cupboards and chasing his last bite with a long gulp of water.

Then he went back outside and showed Daniel all of the food he had gathered and Daniel took some of it and began eating right there.

“There’s plenty of water. You ought to refill our skins,” Faraday said.

“Aye,” Daniel said in between bites of bread.

“And we have to unchain the people up there.”

“Why do we have to do that? They’re not our charge.”

“They are, since we killed the man that gave them food and water. We leave them chained and we will be their murderers as much as Tuttle’s.”

“And? Do you think it good that they live? What great work will those children accomplish on the earth now that Tuttle has ruined them? More likely that they will repeat the offenses of their master if given the chance. Besides, they should rejoice at their impending doom. They have been freed of the burden of living. Now they can rest and await the end of their time.”

“Is that what your Good Man believes? Is that what he teaches?”

“That and other things.”

“Well, it ain’t what I believe and if you ask those people I promise they’ll tell you all they want is to live, doesn’t matter how hard their days may yet be. I’ll do it myself.”

The first thing they had figured out once Tuttle had died was that the golden key he had given them was a master key to the estate. It opened every lock they had tried it upon, including those keeping the women chained in the second floor. Faraday had tested it to make sure and it had worked, then he had chained them up again. But now he made his way back to them.

Together the women had moved Tuttle’s body off to the side as much as they could given their condition and presently they were lying on the bed, already feeling fatigued and dehydrated. They stood up as soon as Faraday entered.

“I’m freeing you,” he said to them, enunciating every syllable slowly, unsure whether they could understand him at all. After he had unchained them, one of the women spoke.

“Thank you,” she said. “This one does not speak your language.” She meant the other woman.