Tower of the Five Orders Read online

  A couple of students pored over a book near the middle of the room. They mumbled to each other as Colophon passed but never looked up.

  Colophon reached the far end of the room and passed through a narrow doorway into a much smaller room full of equally modern desks and bookshelves. The room branched off to Colophon’s left. At the far end of that room was a small set of stone steps leading to an arched wooden door. She glanced through a window to her left. She could see the entrance to the Bodleian Library on the opposite side of the quadrangle. She knew that the room directly above the entrance was Duke Humfrey’s Library, and that the Tower of the Five Orders was directly across the quadrangle from the library. If she was right, then the wooden door directly in front of her must lead to the tower.

  She made her way quickly across the room and to the top of the steps. She grabbed the ornate brass handle on the door and turned it. The door opened easily. She slipped inside and closed the door behind her.

  Manchester, Georgia

  Friday, June 15

  9:00 a.m.

  Treemont was the first person to enter the room. Case watched as he turned on the lights in the library and walked over to a white bulletin board in the middle of the room. When Treemont touched the side of the bulletin board, it flickered and then glowed. This wasn’t any ordinary bulletin board, Case realized—it was a Smart Board, just like the ones they used at school.

  Treemont touched the corner of the board. A series of photographs materialized across the top.

  He touched one of the photographs, and it expanded until it filled almost the entire board. It was a picture of a long, slender silver object. It appeared to be sitting in a box. Case had no idea what it was.

  He tapped the screen on his iPhone and captured a photo of the Smart Board with Treemont standing beside it.

  Smile, Case thought.

  Tower of the Five Orders

  Oxford, England

  Friday, June 15

  2:00 p.m.

  Colophon closed the door behind her and stepped into the tower. The tower room was much larger than it had appeared from the outside. It was lined with bookshelves, and a large wooden table surrounded by chairs sat askew in one corner. The lights were off, and it did not appear as if the room had been used recently. To her left another large window overlooked the quadrangle. In the room’s far corner was an open doorway, through which she could see circular stairs leading to the rooms above and the ground floor below. She made her way over to the window and peeked outside. Several tourists milled around in the quadrangle. Across the quadrangle, she could see Duke Humfrey’s Library. She knew that she could not chance being seen in the tower, so she dropped to her hands and knees and crawled under the window to the far side of the room.

  Colophon stepped into the stairwell and stared up at the narrow circular staircase that spiraled above her. A small rectangular window, high on the thick stone wall, offered a faint light. Even though it was the middle of June, the stairway was cool. A well-worn iron handrail curled around the exterior wall and out of view. Colophon started up the staircase. After several turns she reached a small landing, with a room almost identical to the one she had just left. Based on what Ms. Flynn had told the group, this should be the Upper Reading Room. The next floor up would be the room with the words BEATI PACIFICI carved into the exterior wall.

  She continued up the stairs.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Ode

  Ode—A lyric poem of some length, usually

  of a serious or meditative nature.

  Tower of the Five Orders

  Oxford, England

  Friday, June 15

  2:03 p.m.

  Dark clouds drifted over the City of Oxford and obscured the afternoon sun. A misty rain started to fall. What little light had drifted into the tower stairwell was now gone. Everything was a deep flat gray. The air was still and cool. Colophon considered whether she should turn around and rejoin the tour group. She had, after all, found the next clue. She could always come back here with Julian. It wasn’t as if the tower was going anywhere.

  No, she decided. She had to keep going.

  Colophon continued up the staircase until she reached the next landing, where she found a narrow wooden door. Above the door was a small hand-painted enamel sign that read ARCHIVES. The door had a large keyhole but no knob or handle. She placed her head against it and listened for any sound from within. She heard nothing.

  She leaned against the door and gave it a slight push. It swung open immediately. Losing her balance, she tumbled into the room, hit the floor hard, and rolled over on her side, facing back at the door.

  Ouch.

  She sat up and rubbed her side.

  “Well, that was stupid,” she said to no one in particular.

  “It happens,” a voice behind her said.

  Manchester, Georgia

  Friday, June 15

  9:05 a.m.

  Case took a bite of his peanut butter and jelly sandwich. The man and woman he had seen the previous day had just entered the room and were standing next to Treemont. Case recognized the man instantly. It was Brantley Letterford—short, nearly bald, and dressed in a tweed jacket that appeared to be two sizes too big. Brantley nervously cleaned and recleaned his glasses as he stood back and examined the image on the Smart Board. The woman seemed familiar to Case—she was tall and lanky with curly brown hair. He was sure he had seen her at some family function. She held a book in her hand and seemed to be comparing something in it to the image on the screen.

  “We’ve examined this from every angle,” Brantley insisted. “We don’t even know for certain that it’s a clue.”

  Treemont glared at them. “It’s a clue. You’d better have some answers—and soon.” He stomped out of the room and slammed the library door behind him.

  Brantley stared at the door as if he expected Treemont to reappear at any moment and continue his tirade. He did not. Brantley then retrieved a book from a small side table, sat down, and flipped nervously through the pages. The tall woman stood in front of the Smart Board. With her right index finger, she traced the outline of the silver object on the screen.

  Case took another bite of his sandwich. Treemont had said the silver object was a clue. But a clue to what?

  This had Colophon written all over it.

  Tower of the Five Orders

  Oxford, England

  Friday, June 15

  2:05 p.m.

  Colophon shot up off the floor in an instant. Standing in the middle of the room next to a tall desk was a middle-aged man with sandy hair. A pair of glasses hung from a chain around his neck. In his hands was a large wooden box. He placed the box on the desk.

  “Welcome, Ms. Letterford,” the man said in a calm and welcoming tone. “I’ve been expecting you.”

  “Excuse me?” She stood and dusted herself off. “You’ve been expecting me? But how?”

  The man walked over to her and offered his hand. “My name is Patrick Addison. I am the Keeper of the Archives for Oxford University.”

  “The archives?”

  “Yes. This floor of the tower has served as the archives for Oxford University for almost four hundred years.”

  “But why were you expecting me?” she asked. “And how did you know who I am?”

  Addison laughed. “Well, as to knowing who you are, you’ve become quite famous in certain academic circles, haven’t you?”

  “I suppose,” she said. Her parents had tried desperately to keep her out of the spotlight. Even though the discovery of the Shakespeare manuscripts had become world news, Colophon was rarely—if ever—recognized.

  “There are a few of us around here who fancy the Bard’s work. You’re quite the celebrity among us.

  “And I might add,” he continued, “that my colleagues and I are firmly convinced that the Shakespeare manuscripts are real. Your father is a good man and very well respected.”

  Emotion welled up in Colophon. How much did Ad
dison know about her family? “He is a good man,” she finally said. “Thank you for saying that.”

  “You’re quite welcome.”

  She glanced at her watch. She was running out of time. “Not to be rude, Mr. Addison, but why did you say you were expecting me?”

  “A fair question.” He pointed up at the ceiling. “I simply assumed that you would eventually find your way here to look at that.”

  Colophon looked up. The ceiling was made up of small wooden panels—identical in size and shape to the panels on the ceiling in Duke Humfrey’s Library. They were all painted in a dazzling royal blue and were separated from one another by thick wooden beams. A word was printed in gold on each panel. Colophon moved to the center of the room and turned around until she could read the panels in proper order.

  TO HIS EXCELLENCY JAMES KING

  OF GREAT BRITAIN YS SIXTEEN

  DAY OF YE TENTH MONTH

  IN YE YEAR OF OVR

  LORD MDCXXII YS ROOM BE

  DEDICATED. THOVGH YE OXEN PLOW

  AND YE EARTH WROVGHT ITS

  NOBLE BOVNTY, TIS THY EMBRACE

  OS KNOWLEDGE THAT DOTH PERMIT

  YE FLOVRISHING OF THIS FERTILE

  SOIL NORTH OF YE THAMES.

  ALONG ITS BANKS YE RIVER

  HATH ENGRAVED UPON YS LAND

  YE FLEET BEQVEST OF THOV

  EXCELLENCY’S GREAT MERCIES. SVCH

  BE YE SIGN OF THY REGENCY

  THAT YS CHAMBER HATH PERMITTED

  GREAT ENDEAVORS. THVS SHALL THY

  HVMBLE SERVANT HEREBY LEAVE HIS

  MARK THIS DAY. MILES LETTERFORD

  “Miles Letterford!” Colophon exclaimed.

  Addison seemed surprised by her reaction. “Why, of course. I assumed you knew that your ancestor donated the funds for the furnishing of this room.”

  He pointed to the large, ornate wooden shelves that lined each wall and reached almost to the ceiling. Tall ladders attached to brass railings that ran across the walls provided access to the upper shelves. “Everything in the room was paid for by Miles Letterford. He was apparently quite generous in his donation.”

  “And the statue on the outside?” asked Colophon. “The one that says ‘Beati pacifici’?”

  “Miles Letterford’s contribution as well,” he said. “It was King James’s royal motto.”

  She stared at the ceiling. “Is there anything . . . strange about the dedication?”

  “The dedication? No, nothing particularly strange. I suspect that you’d find similar dedications throughout England. But there is something else that I discovered—something that lends a slightly different perspective to this particular dedication.”

  Addison moved to the center of the room and gestured for Colophon to do the same.

  “Do you see the wooden panels that run around the room, just below the ceiling?”

  Colophon nodded. They were hard to miss—the four carved wooden panels were magnificent, one just below the ceiling on each wall. Carved into each panel was a tree. The branches and leaves of each tree unfurled along the walls and just below the ceiling.

  “There’s a different tree carved on each wall—oak, maple, ash, and yew. I’ve looked at those panels for years and years and thought nothing of them. Mere decoration, I assumed.”

  “They’re not?”

  “I don’t believe so,” he replied. “I think there’s something else.” He pointed to a portion of a panel in the far corner. It was an image of an acorn. “What do you see?”

  “An acorn,” she said.

  “Exactly.” He rolled one of the ladders to the far corner. “Please take a closer look.”

  She climbed up the ladder until she was only a few feet from the carving of the acorn. The detail was incredible, but what was Addison talking about?

  And then she saw it. Carved into the detail of the acorn cap was the letter X.

  She looked down at him. “It’s the letter X.”

  “No,” he replied, “it’s the number ten—in Roman numerals. I noticed that very carving three years ago as I was returning a box to the upper shelf. And I noticed something else. Look at the rest of the tree.”

  She looked a couple of feet to her right. It took a second, but she found it. Carved into an oak leaf and hidden among the leaf’s veins was the Roman numeral V. Farther down she spied the Roman numeral III hidden in a branch of the tree.

  “It continues down the entire wall—all hidden within the leaves, branches, trunk, and acorns of the oak tree,” Addison said.

  Colophon scanned the length of the panel. The Roman numerals now jumped out at her. She also noticed that they were not in numerical order. “But what do they mean?”

  “There’s more. Look at the maple tree running across the wall to your left.”

  She turned and looked at a large maple leaf carved into the panel near the corner of the wall.

  “The letter A?” she said. “Is that the letter A carved into the leaf?”

  “Of a sorts,” Addison said, smiling. “Keep looking.”

  She looked a couple of feet down the panel and identified the letter B in the branch of the maple tree.

  “It’s the letter B,” she said.

  “Keep looking.”

  She stretched out as far as she could to get a closer look at a large maple leaf farther down the panel. There was clearly something carved into it, but she was confused. “Is that . . . an upside-down L?” she asked. “And isn’t it backwards?”

  Addison clapped his hands together in delight. “Excellent! It’s actually the Greek letter gamma—which looks like an upside-down and backwards L.”

  “So that isn’t an A and B in the first two carvings?”

  “No,” replied Addison. “Those are the Greek letters alpha and beta. And the carvings continue down the length of the panel—alpha, beta, gamma, delta, epsilon, zeta, eta, theta, iota, and kappa. The first ten letters in the Greek alphabet—all hidden within the leaves and branches of the maple tree.”

  Colophon stepped down from the ladder. “Are those coordinates?” She had learned in math class that coordinates could be used to identify a specific point on a flat surface. But coordinates usually came in pairs.

  “Close,” replied Addison. “There are exactly one hundred panels on the ceiling—ten across and ten down. There are ten Roman numerals and ten Greek letters. Each word in the dedication corresponds to a specific set of coordinates—a Greek letter and a Roman numeral. I am convinced that there’s a message hidden somewhere within the dedication.”

  A message!

  Colophon could barely contain herself. “So what is the message? Have you deciphered it?”

  He sat down in a chair near the desk and sighed. “I’m afraid that has escaped me. Without knowing the specific coordinates I’m looking for, I’d simply be guessing.”

  But Colophon did not have to guess. She knew in a flash exactly where the coordinates could be found.

  She pulled out her phone. “Do you mind if I take a photo of the ceiling?”

  “By all means.” He then scribbled down the sequence of Roman numerals and Greek letters on the back of one of his business cards and handed it to Colophon. “You won’t be able to see the letters and numbers in a photograph,” he said, “but this should help. And please do me the favor of letting me know if you ever decipher the code.”

  Colophon grinned. “You bet. But I’d better be going—I broke off from the tour group, and they’re probably looking for me by now. I don’t think I’m supposed to be up here.”

  “Our secret,” he replied. “And good luck.”

  Colophon thanked Mr. Addison for his help and stepped into the stairwell. The door closed behind her. She immediately pulled out her phone and texted the photo of the ceiling to Julian. “Next clue attached. We have work to do,” she typed.

  Colophon stuffed the phone back into her pocket and hurried down the stairs to catch up with the group.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

&n
bsp; Eyeball

  Eyeball—The eye itself.

  Blackwell’s Booksellers

  Broad Street

  Oxford, England

  Friday, June 15

  2:15 p.m.

  Trigue James sat in the bookstore’s café, sipped on his latte, and thumbed through a magazine. It had been a relatively boring day, but he wasn’t complaining. Young Ms. Letterford had yet to send or receive a text or an e-mail, and there had been no phone calls. In fact, James was not even convinced that the girl was looking for anything in particular. She had not been accompanied by her usual sidekick, and he didn’t think her mother was involved. But he was being paid to monitor her every move—so here he sat sipping his latte, which was just fine by him.

  Ping.

  James looked down at his phone. The girl had just sent a text.

  He opened it.

  The words next clue were all he needed to see.

  He forwarded the message to Treemont, then returned to reading the magazine and sipping his latte.

  Manchester, Georgia

  Friday, June 15

  9:16 a.m.