Tower of the Five Orders Read online

  Treemont glared at Meg. “You wouldn’t.”

  Meg glared back at Treemont. “It would be my great pleasure,” she replied.

  Colophon could see the uncertainty in his eyes. “This won’t stand,” he muttered as he started up the stairs.

  “Hold on,” said Mull. “Where are you going?”

  Treemont looked confused. “I’m leaving.”

  “I don’t know how you got in here,” Mull replied, “but you need to leave the same way.”

  Case pointed at the door leading back into the sewer. “I believe it’s that way.”

  “You can’t be serious,” said Treemont.

  “I am very serious,” said Mull.

  Treemont walked to the far end of the room and stood at the door to the sewer. “Just wait! The family will never stand for this!”

  But the battle was over, and Treemont knew it. No one had to respond. The Letterford family stood and stared at him. Treemont picked up his flashlight, turned, and reentered the tunnel without another word.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Unreal

  Unreal—So remarkable as to

  elicit disbelief; fantastic.

  London, England

  Saturday, June 16

  3:05 p.m.

  Mull Letterford looked at Colophon and Case. “Without you, I never would have believed that the treasures in this room existed.”

  “Don’t forget Julian,” said Colophon. “He always believed.”

  “Even when the rest of us did not,” said Mull. He walked over to Julian and shook his hand. “I know I’m in no position to ask this, but I was hoping that you could help me with the next task.”

  “Anything,” said Julian.

  “I need someone I trust to oversee the cataloging of this room,” Mull replied. “And I trust you.”

  For once Julian was at a loss for words.

  “Of course he will,” said Colophon. “He’s perfect for the job.”

  “It would be an honor,” Julian finally replied.

  Colophon and Julian sat on the stairs and watched Mull and Meg Letterford as they examined the table of treasures. There was an ornately decorated clock, a large jeweled saber, a glass ball filled with powder, a silver stamp, a tall hourglass, a stack of brightly colored manuscripts, a golden chalice, a broken dagger, a mummified hand under a glass dome, and numerous other oddities.

  It didn’t seem real. After all this time, they had finally discovered the true family treasure.

  She sighed.

  “You don’t look excited,” Julian said.

  “I am excited,” she replied. “It’s just . . . well . . . aren’t you kind of sad that it’s all over?”

  “I know what you mean. I’ve spent most of my life looking for this room, and now here it is.”

  “There’s one thing I can’t figure out,” said Colophon. “Why did Treemont do it? Why did he try to ruin my family?”

  Julian paused and collected his thoughts. “The stuff in this room is worth millions of dollars, but I don’t think it was really about money for Treemont. Shakespeare said it best—a ‘savage jealousy.’ Treemont always resented your father. It consumed him.”

  Colophon nodded. That made sense, knowing Treemont. Whatever his reasons, she hoped it was the last time she had to deal with him.

  She put her head on Julian’s shoulder. “Just remember to call me if you uncover any more mysteries,” she said. “You’re absolutely helpless without me.”

  Epilogue

  “Good evening,” Richard Brayson said directly to the camera, “and welcome to CNN’s Newsmakers. I’m coming to you live from London, England.”

  The camera panned to reveal Mull Letterford standing next to Brayson in the chamber beneath the Letterford home.

  “Tonight we are speaking with Mull Letterford, recently reinstalled as the owner of Letterford and Sons, about the discovery of a vast treasure trove of ancient artifacts, books, and manuscripts beneath his home in London.”

  Brayson turned to Mull. “Mr. Letterford, thank you for joining us this evening.”

  “My pleasure,” replied Mull.

  “If you would,” said Brayson, “tell us what it felt like the first time you entered this room.”

  “It was quite an experience,” replied Mull. “I imagine it was how Howard Carter must have felt when he discovered—”

  Click.

  “My pleasure,” replied Mull.

  “If you would,” said Brayson, “tell us what it felt like the first time you entered this room.”

  “It was quite an experience,” replied Mull. “I imagine—”

  Click.

  “It was quite an experience,” replied Mull. “I imagine—”

  Click.

  “It was quite an experience,” replied Mull. “I imagine—”

  Click.

  Hadley Musselman muted the video. He was tired of listening to Brayson and Letterford ramble on about the room. He had watched the video of Mull Letterford’s interview a hundred times or more. It didn’t matter what Brayson or Letterford said. It was simply background noise. The only thing that mattered was an object on the corner of the table behind Letterford. He had glimpsed it fleetingly—it had appeared for only a brief moment when Letterford turned ever so slightly, at the beginning of the interview. But that was enough.

  Musselman paused the video.

  There it was. There was no question.

  He picked up the phone and dialed his client’s number.

  “It exists,” he said into the phone, “and I’ve found it.”

  “Are you sure?” the voice on the other end replied. “You know, last time—”

  “To be present, but not seen,” Musselman said. “Is that enough proof for you?”

  There was a long pause on the other end of the line. Musselman grinned. This little discovery would pay a few bills—and then some.

  “Yes,” the voice finally said. “That’s enough.”

  FINI

  Author’s Note

  William Shakespeare did not simply use the English language—he twisted it, manipulated it, and bent it to his will. And when the perfect word was not to be found, he simply created one to suit his particular need or modified the meaning and use of an existing one. It seems remarkable (and incredibly audacious) that a writer would simply invent a word or change the way a word is used or understood. And yet Shakespeare did just that—time and time again.

  The chapter titles in this book are words that Shakespeare is believed to have invented—or for which his works represent the first known usage. A list of the chapter titles and the works in which these words first appeared are set forth in the appendix.

  The prologue to Part 2 is a brief quote from As You Like It, a comedy believed to have been written by William Shakespeare in approximately 1599. Some scholars believe that this quote is a direct reference by Shakespeare to the murder of Christopher Marlowe. Marlowe is believed to have died in a “little room”—Elanor Bull’s Public House—over the matter of a “reckoning”—that is, dividing up the bill for food and drink at the end of the day.

  Appendix

  CHAPTER1. Auspicious—Hamlet

  act 1, scene 2

  King Claudius:

  Have we, as ’twere with a defeated joy,

  With one auspicious and one dropping eye,

  With mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage,

  In equal scale weighing delight and dole,

  Taken to wife: nor have we herein barr’d

  Your better wisdoms, which have freely gone

  With this affair along.

  CHAPTER 2. Exposure—Troilus and Cressida

  act 1, scene 3

  Nestor:

  Makes factious feasts; rails on our state of war,

  Bold as an oracle, and sets Thersites—

  A slave whose gall coins slanders like a mint—

  To match us in comparison with dirt;

  To weaken and discredit our expos
ure,

  How rank soever rounded in with danger.

  CHAPTER 3. Pedant—The Taming of the Shrew

  act 3, scene 1

  Hortensio:

  But, wrangling pedant, this is

  The patroness of heavenly harmony:

  Then give me leave to have prerogative;

  And when in music we have spent an hour,

  Your lecture shall have leisure for as much.

  CHAPTER 4. Hint—Othello

  act 1, scene 3

  Othello:

  Wherein of antres vast and desarts idle,

  Rough quarries, rocks and hills

  whose heads touch heaven

  It was my hint to speak, such was the process.

  CHAPTER 5. Perusal—Hamlet

  act 2, scene 1

  Ophelia:

  He took me by the wrist and held me hard;

  Then goes he to the length of all his arm,

  And, with his other hand thus o’er his brow,

  He falls to such perusal of my face

  As he would draw it.

  CHAPTER 6. Luggage—King Henry IV, Part I

  act 5, scene 4

  Prince Henry:

  Come, bring your luggage nobly on your back:

  For my part, if a lie may do thee grace,

  I’ll gild it with the happiest terms I have.

  CHAPTER 7. Fitful—Macbeth

  act 3, scene 2

  Macbeth:

  Duncan is in his grave;

  After life’s fitful fever he sleeps well;

  Treason has done his worst: nor steel, nor poison,

  Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing

  Can touch him further.

  CHAPTER 8. Instinctively—The Tempest

  act 1, scene 2

  Prospero:

  In few, they hurried us aboard a bark,

  Bore us some leagues to sea; where they prepar’d

  A rotten carcass of a boat, not rigg’d,

  Nor tackle, sail, nor mast; the very rats

  Instinctively have quit it: there they hoist us,

  To cry to the sea that roar’d to us; to sigh

  To the winds whose pity, sighing back again,

  Did us but loving wrong.

  CHAPTER 9. Accused—King Henry VI, Part II

  act 1, scene 3

  Horner:

  God is my witness, I am

  falsely accused by the villain.

  CHAPTER 10. Amazement—The Tempest

  act 5, scene 1

  Gonzalo:

  All torment, trouble, wonder, and amazement

  Inhabits here: some heavenly power guide us

  Out of this fearful country!

  CHAPTER 11. Mimic—A Midsummer Night’s Dream

  act 3, scene 2

  Puck:

  Anon his Thisbe must be answered,

  And forth my mimic comes. When they him spy,

  As wild geese that the creeping fowler eye,

  Or russet-pated choughs, many in sort,

  Rising and cawing at the gun’s report,

  Sever themselves, and madly sweep the sky,

  So, at his sight, away his fellows fly;

  And, at our stamp, here o’er and o’er one falls;

  He murder cries, and help from Athens calls.

  CHAPTER 12. Gossip—The Comedy of Errors

  act 5, scene 1

  Duke Solinus:

  With all my heart, I’ll gossip at this feast.

  CHAPTER 13. Puke—King Henry IV, Part I

  act 2, scene 4

  Prince Henry:

  Wilt thou rob this leathernjerkin, crystal-button,

  knot-pated, agate-ring, puke-stocking, caddis-garter,

  smooth-tongue, Spanish-pouch,—

  CHAPTER 14. Questioning—As You Like It

  act 5, scene 4

  Hymen:

  Whiles a wedlock hymn we sing,

  Feed yourselves with questioning,

  That reason wonder may diminish,

  How thus we met, and these things finish.

  CHAPTER 15. Gnarled—Measure for Measure

  act 2, scene 2

  Isabella:

  Nothing but thunder. Merciful Heaven!

  Thou rather with thy sharp and sulphurous bolt

  Split’st the unwedgeable and gnarled oak

  Than the soft myrtle.

  CHAPTER 16. Nervy—Coriolanus

  act 1, scene 1

  Volumnia:

  Death, that dark spirit, in ’s nervy arm doth lie;

  Which, being advanc’d, declines, and then men die.

  CHAPTER 17. Rumination—As You Like It

  act 4, scene 1

  Jaques:

  I have neither the scholar’s melancholy, which is

  emulation; nor the musician’s, which is fantastical;

  nor the courtier’s, which is proud; nor the

  soldier’s, which is ambitious; nor the lawyer’s,

  which is politic; nor the lady’s, which is nice; nor

  the lover’s, which is all these: but it is a

  melancholy of mine own, compounded of many simples,

  extracted from many objects, and indeed the sundry

  contemplation of my travels, which, by often

  rumination, wraps me in a most humorous sadness.

  CHAPTER 18. Gloomy—King Henry VI, Part I

  act 5, scene 4

  Joan La Pucelle:

  May never glorious sun reflex his beams

  Upon the country where you make abode;

  But darkness and the gloomy shade of death

  Environ you, till mischief and despair

  Drive you to break your necks or hang yourselves!

  CHAPTER 19. Dishearten—King Henry V

  act 4, scene 1:

  King Henry V:

  Therefore when he sees reason of fears, as we

  do, his fears, out of doubt, be of the same relish

  as ours are: yet, in reason, no man should possess

  him with any appearance of fear, lest he, by showing

  it, should dishearten his army.

  CHAPTER 20. Vulnerable—Macbeth

  act 5, scene 8

  Macbeth:

  Let fall thy blade on vulnerable crests.

  CHAPTER 21. Discontent—King Henry VI, Part II

  act 3, scene 1

  King Henry VI:

  Ay, Margaret; my heart is drown’d with grief,

  Whose flood begins to flow within mine eyes,

  My body round engirt with misery,

  For what’s more miserable than discontent?

  CHAPTER 22. Viewless—Measure for Measure

  act 3, scene 1

  Claudio:

  To be imprison’d in the viewless winds,

  And blown with restless violence round about

  The pendant world.

  CHAPTER 23. Multitudinous—Macbeth

  act 2, scene 2

  Macbeth:

  Whence is that knocking?

  How is’t with me, when every noise appals me?

  What hands are here! Ha! they pluck out mine eyes.

  Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood

  Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather

  The multitudinous seas incarnadine,

  Making the green one red.

  CHAPTER 24. Dawn—King Henry V

  act 4, scene 1

  King Henry V:

  Not all these, laid in bed majestical,

  Can sleep so soundly as the wretched slave,

  Who with a body fill’d and vacant mind

  Gets him to rest, cramm’d with distressful bread;

  Never sees horrid night, the child of hell,

  But, like a lackey, from the rise to set

  Sweats in the eye of Phoebus and all night

  Sleeps in Elysium; next day after dawn,

  Doth rise and help Hyperion to his horse,

  And follows so the ever-running year,

 
With profitable labour, to his grave.

  CHAPTER 25. Denote—Romeo and Juliet

  act 3, scene 3

  Friar Laurence:

  Thy wild acts denote

  The unreasonable fury of a beast.

  CHAPTER 26. Dauntless—King Henry VI, Part III