Tower of the Five Orders

by Deron R. Hicks

  Uncle Portis stood and addressed the family. He agreed that Treemont’s father had been a very loyal employee. He insisted, however, that change was not needed—the manuscripts would be proven authentic. Everyone simply needed to be patient.

  “Patience will not repair the reputation of this company,” replied Brantley. “It is time for action.”

  Mull looked around the table. Clearly the decision had been made long before he entered the room. A quick vote was taken among the family members. Drained of any desire to fight, Mull simply nodded his assent.

  Chapter Four

  Hint

  Hint—A slight indication or intimation.

  Manchester, Georgia

  Friday, June 1

  9:35 a.m.

  Colophon put the ancient inkwell up to her left eye and stared through the dark glass at the morning sun. Her father had given her the inkwell as a memento of her efforts in discovering the Shakespeare manuscripts.

  “Truth be told,” Mull had said, “this should be in a museum somewhere. After all, it may very well have belonged to Shakespeare himself.”

  He had paused.

  “But there is no one on this planet who deserves this more than you.”

  He had placed the inkwell in her hand and lightly kissed her forehead. It had been a sign of trust and love.

  Colophon flopped back onto her bed and cradled the inkwell against her chest.

  Treemont! She just knew he was behind all this.

  Worst of all, Treemont would now be sitting in Atlanta overlooking and interfering with everything her father did. It was all so frustrating and infuriating. And she felt powerless to help.

  She rolled over in bed and stared at the inkwell.

  Too bad it didn’t say “Property of William Shakespeare”—that would prove the manuscripts were real.

  She turned the inkwell over in her hands. The bottle was rather unremarkable: dark glass with a black metal cap.

  Certainly doesn’t look fancy enough for the world’s most famous author, she thought.

  Just then the morning light briefly glinted across the cap. As it did, a strange pattern emerged—and just as quickly disappeared.

  She pulled over her bedside lamp, turned it on, and shoved the cap under the bright light. She slowly rotated it under the light until . . .

  Words. There were words on the cap!

  Colophon rubbed the cap with her shirt in an effort to remove some of the dark tarnish. It didn’t work. Whatever was there remained faint and illegible.

  She popped out of her bed, raced down the stairs, and headed straight to the kitchen. She threw open the cabinet under the sink and sifted through the various cleaners.

  It’s here somewhere.

  “Gotcha!” she exclaimed. In her hand, Colophon held a small bottle of Archa-Nu Silver Polish. She grabbed a dry washcloth from the linen closet and applied a small dab of polish to the cap. She allowed it to dry, then carefully rubbed out the hazy coating. The first cleaning removed a great deal of tarnish, but the cap remained impossible to read. She applied another dab of polish and waited, then rubbed it off.

  She gasped.

  It wasn’t just words. There was more—an engraving of some sort. But the cap was still too dark to determine exactly what the engraving was.

  She quickly applied another dab of polish and rubbed it off.

  And another.

  And another.

  And then finally, there it was.

  On the top of the cap was a coat of arms—faint but distinct. It consisted of a shield divided into four sections. In the top-left and bottom-right sections was what appeared to be. . . . a bird of some sort.

  In the top-right and bottom-left sections were three flowers.

  And directly below the shield were five words: QVOD ME NVTRIT ME DESTRVIT.

  Colophon sat on the kitchen floor and stared at the cap. Was this the evidence that would prove that the manuscripts were really written by Shakespeare?

  She bolted to her feet, grabbed her phone, and started to dial her father’s cell phone number.

  And then it hit her.

  If she gave this information to her father, he would turn it over to the commission investigating the manuscripts. That would, after all, be the right thing to do. And her father always did the right thing.

  But we can’t wait two years.

  Treemont won’t wait two years.

  Colophon put the phone down.

  No, she concluded, it was up to her to figure this out. Again.

  Case sat on the edge of his bed and studied the cap of the inkwell intently. He turned it over several times in his hands, held it up to the light, and ran his index finger across the engraving. “You have no idea what this means,” he finally said.

  “It’s Latin,” replied Colophon. “It means ‘that which nourishes me destroys me.’ I looked it up.”

  He rolled his eyes. “That’s not what I meant,” he said. “I know it’s Latin.” He held up the inkwell. “You know what it says, but you don’t know what it really means.”

  He was right, and Colophon hated it when he was right.

  Case handed the inkwell to his sister. “You know you can’t do this alone.”

  “Maybe I can,” she replied.

  “No, maybe you can’t. You’re barely thirteen years old. You can’t even leave the house without permission. And I don’t know anything about Latin inscriptions on ancient inkwells. We need help.”

  Colophon sighed. He was right. Again.

  Chapter Five

  Perusal

  Perusal—Reading or examining,

  typically with great care.

  Hay-on-Wye

  Wales, United Kingdom

  Friday, June 1

  2:52 p.m.

  Two small hazy windows and a narrow wooden door adorned the first story of the building that stood unimpressively at the bottom of Castle Street. The sign hanging above the door read simply BOOKS.

  It would have been easy to pass by the store with little notice, and several months ago Julian had almost done just that. Hay-on-Wye, after all, was filled with any number of large and impressive bookstores, with rooms and rooms of ancient books and manuscripts. And it was those very bookstores that had drawn Julian to this small Welsh town on the border with England. The town boasted more than forty bookstores—almost one for every fifty residents.

  He was looking for a book that might help him uncover the secret to the symbol he was researching—the symbol that he believed held the key to the real Letterford family treasure. But what book? Julian wasn’t entirely sure. He had searched high and low in bookstores and libraries throughout the United Kingdom. He just knew the answer was out there somewhere. And this little bookstore on Castle Street? It hardly seemed worth the effort.

  And then he hesitated.

  It might be worth a few minutes of his time to look around inside.

  And so three months ago Julian had walked into the little bookstore at the bottom of Castle Street.

  The simple little bookstore, it turned out, occupied two stories, a full basement and a deep subbasement—all filled from floor to ceiling with books. The store itself occupied almost the entire block. It was cavernous, dark, dusty, and dim. It did not offer coffee, lattes, scones, Wi-Fi, comfy chairs, magazines, or any other amenity. It simply had books—and a lot of them.

  As Julian quickly learned, however, the proprietor of this particular bookstore—a small hunched woman by the name of Adda Craddock—was far more adept at acquiring books than she was at maintaining them in any semblance of order. Although she had shelved the books under general categories such as history, religion, and travel, the sheer volume on any particular subject rendered those categories useless. History books occupied an entire floor and were not otherwise divided into themes, periods, or subcategories. As far as Ms. Craddock was concerned, history was simply history.

  She roamed among her books constantly, claiming to have some notion as to where cert
ain books might or might not be. In his first trip to the bookstore, Julian had requested her assistance in locating books on symbols, particularly volumes from the sixteenth or seventeenth century. He had explained that he was looking for anything that might help him understand the significance of the symbol for the Greek letter sigma—∑.

  Julian had been obsessing over the subject of symbols ever since the discovery of the Shakespeare manuscripts the previous Christmas. In particular, he obsessed over the symbol for sigma engraved on the box in which the manuscripts had been found. No one else—not even Colophon—had seemed to notice the symbol. Others had simply taken it for granted. The family had been far too excited about the manuscripts. But the symbol concerned Julian. It was clear that it represented more than just ownership of the family business.

  The manuscripts, he was convinced, were not the true treasure. They were simply another step in the quest. The symbol, he hoped, would provide the answer.

  Ms. Craddock had assured Julian that she had at least three books on symbology and, true to her word, located them within a few minutes. He was impressed. Unfortunately, the books did not contain the information he was seeking. Ms. Craddock, however, promised to keep an eye out for any more books and to let Julian know if she found anything.

  And find books she had.

  Three times over the course of the next three months, Julian had traveled to Ms. Craddock’s shop to review large stacks of dusty books that were related in some way to symbols. However, notwithstanding the bookstore proprietor’s diligent efforts, this had proven to be a time-consuming approach. Hay-on-Wye was not the easiest place to reach. And the volumes had failed to provide any new insights into the symbol on the box. Julian had given up hope of finding anything of value in Ms. Craddock’s store—when he received a letter from her informing him that she had located another book in which he might be interested. It was not a book on symbols, she warned. But the trip, she assured him, would be worth the effort.

  And so there Julian stood—one last time—at the front of the store, as Ms. Craddock pulled a small brown book from beneath her counter and handed it to him.

  “It was part of a large estate my late husband purchased many, many years ago,” she explained. “A French family, I believe.”

  Julian looked at the book and gasped.

  On the cover—directly beneath the book’s title—was the Greek letter sigma—∑.

  He carefully opened the book.

  On the frontispiece—the page opposite the title page—was an engraving of a hawk holding a spear.

  He thumbed quickly through the rest of the book until he reached the last page. There, at the bottom of the page and following the last line of the text, was the printer’s mark—the stamp used to identify the book’s publisher. Julian recognized it instantly: a crescent moon over crossed quills. It was the Letterford family crest.

  Chapter Six

  Luggage

  Luggage—Containers for a traveler’s belongings.

  Manchester, Georgia

  Saturday, June 2

  The letter sat on the far corner of her desk. It was postmarked Abergavenny, Wales. Colophon hadn’t thought about it for months. But today she slipped the handwritten letter out of the envelope.

  Colophon:

  There is no time for small talk. In our quest, we followed one clue to another, which led us to the Shakespeare manuscripts. We all assumed the manuscripts were, in fact, Miles Letterford’s great treasure.

  We were wrong.

  The manuscripts were simply another clue.

  I will write further.

  Julian

  The words now jumped off the page: The manuscripts were simply another clue.

  Her brother was right. They needed help. They needed Julian.

  It wasn’t that she was opposed to asking Julian to help. Asking was easy. Julian was a great guy—and very smart. He would help in any way he could. The problem was that she was scheduled to spend the next four weeks at the dreadful camp in the middle of the woods in North Carolina. And she didn’t have four weeks to waste.

  There was only one thing to do.

  Tell the truth.

  She found her mother sitting at the kitchen table reading the newspaper and sipping coffee.

  “Mom?” Colophon asked.

  Meg Letterford looked up from the paper. “Yes, dear?”

  Colophon braced herself. “I . . . don’t want to go to camp this summer.”

  She was prepared for the inevitable. She knew how much the camp meant to her father. She knew that her parents had already paid for her stay at the camp and that it was probably too late to receive a refund. She knew that there were lots of reasons—good reasons—that she should go. And she knew that her mother would calmly explain all of those reasons to her.

  But she didn’t.

  “You don’t have to go to camp this summer if you don’t want to,” her mother said.

  Colophon was stunned. “What?”

  Meg motioned for her to sit down at the table. “I know you don’t want to go to camp. And you don’t have to go.”

  “But what about Dad? Won’t he be disappointed?”

  “It was his idea,” her mother replied. “He knows you don’t love camp the way we did. And he understands that this has been a rough week for everybody.”

  Colophon nodded.

  Meg put the newspaper down on the table and took off her reading glasses. “There’s more, isn’t there?”

  “Yes,” Colophon said. “I need to go to London.”

  “London?”

  “I have to see Julian.”

  Meg took a long sip from her coffee. “You’re up to something, aren’t you?” she finally replied.

  Colophon didn’t know what to say. A million thoughts raced through her mind.

  Fortunately, Meg spared her daughter any further worry. “Your father is returning to London soon. I wasn’t planning on going with him, but if you’re going, I will too. I don’t think he’ll mind a little company on the trip.”

  “Great!” Colophon exclaimed. “But what about Case? If he goes with us, he’ll miss summer baseball.”

  “Case can stay with the Parker family until baseball is over. I can’t ask him to miss the rest of the season. And besides, his teammates are counting on him.”

  Colophon noticed that her mother did not seem particularly happy about leaving her older child with another family while they jetted off across the ocean. “I don’t like splitting us up like this,” Meg added.

  Colophon grabbed her mother’s hand and squeezed it tight. “We’ll all be together soon,” she said. “And everything will be okay. Just wait and see.”

  The Waterside Inn

  Cardiff, Wales

  Sunday, June 3, 10:32 a.m.

  Julian stared down at the text from Colophon. She was going to be in London on Tuesday. She needed to meet with him immediately. She said it was urgent.

  He checked the train schedules on his laptop. It was a two-and-a-half-hour ride from Cardiff to Charing Cross Station in London. He purchased a ticket for Tuesday morning.

  He texted her back: “Arriving Tuesday around lunch. See you then.”

  Julian sat back in his chair. Several newspapers were scattered across his bed. For most of the prior week he had been out of touch with the rest of the world. He had a tendency to do that—to hole up in some remote location and pore over old books and manuscripts for days on end. Cell phones, computers, the Internet, television, and newspapers were distractions—and he simply ignored them. He had just learned this morning about the controversy over the Shakespeare manuscripts when he glimpsed the name “Letterford” on the front page of a newspaper in the café down the street. And that made his discovery in Hay-on-Wye—that dusty old long-forgotten book—even more troubling.

  Queensgate Mews

  London, England

  Monday, June 4

  2:30 p.m.

  Sir Hedley Penrose shuffled into the front parlor
of his house. The years had not been kind to him. What hair remained on his head seemed to grow directly from his ears. His thick, cloudy glasses hung far down on the end of his large nose. He was a heavy man with thick jowls and deep bags under his eyes. Every step he took seemed to require great effort.

  “Mr. Treemont?” His voice was stern. Clearly he was not pleased at dealing with an unexpected visitor—particularly this visitor.

  Treemont extended his right hand. “A pleasure.”

  Sir Penrose ignored Treemont’s hand and gestured toward a chair by the fireplace. “Sit,” he instructed.

  Although it was almost seventy-five degrees outside, a fire roared in the fireplace. Treemont settled into one of the large cane chairs near the hearth. “I want to thank you for taking the time to meet with me on such short notice.”

  Penrose grunted. “I can’t say that I’m particularly pleased.” He grabbed a poker and stirred the fire. Sparks shot into the room.

  “I presume you wish to discuss the manuscripts?” he finally said. The question carried a heavy tone of disapproval.

  Treemont knew that Sir Penrose prided himself on his independence and objectivity. He would meet any efforts to influence the outcome of his investigation with fierce opposition. Treemont was counting on that.

  “No,” replied Treemont.

  The answer caught Sir Penrose off guard. “Excuse me?”

  “It would not be appropriate to discuss the manuscripts,” said Treemont.