I'd done it!
I'd found the Orlanis Star!
The false bottom clattered to the floor as I stared down into the trunk at what I had revealed.
The star resembled the pedals of a sunflower, but were broken apart into individual pieces laid out on a strip of blue velvet with the center array stone in the middle that looked to be made of pure crystal surrounded by a shiny alloy of metal infused along its edges. The pedals and the outer rim of metal surrounding the crystal were studded with what appeared to be gems of priceless value.
The star was beautiful, but it wasn't what I had been expecting at all.
I had thought to find a cleverly designed mechanism to help me find where the wealth of the South had been stored offshore during the Civil War awaiting a British convoy, but what I was looking at was a piece of art crafted into a form that hinted at a symbolic use, of which I could only speculate.
The pieces of the star at the bottom of the trunk looked nothing like what I had imagined the American Civil War era device to appear as, instead it seemed like I was looking at something that dated far older than the Civil War. The level of craftsmanship and the gemlike crystals bore no relation to a piece that would have been crafted as a mechanical map to find a treasure offshore without the use of charts. This had to be the Orlanis Star though.
This house was one of the twelve places known of that Captain Roger Jamison, the sole survivor of the mission to enlist Britain's aid to coming in on the side of the Confederate South, had stayed at during the remaining years of his life. This trunk had to have been his and if it had been his, than this must be the fabled Orlanis Star.
I got a feeling as if someone had walked across my grave as I stared at the curiously designed petals and its center stone of pure crystal at the bottom of the trunk. There had to be more to the story than even I had known, but what it could be I didn't know.
In 1864 the Confederate South desperate for British aid in their struggle for survival against the North's advances had enacted a desperate strategy that little was known of. Before and during the Civil War the South had tried to enlist the aid of the British to join in on the war against the North, but the British continually refused because they did not support slavery. There were many though, that wished to aid the South, because England was the main buyer of the South's cash crop, cotton.