The Royal Secret

Introduction

Following the death of an American bio-billionaire a thrilling exposé of mystery and intrigue links the conspiracy politics of today directly to the seamy spy rings of Queen Elizabeth I. Through the eyes of a woman seeking to uncover the truth about the death of the man she loves, The Royal Secret reveals the story of one of the world’s best known men: a great writer, philosopher and prince, whose real identity and rightful claim to the thrones of England and America has been concealed until this day.

From Washington to London, Paris and the castles of the Templars, Mrs. G has only weeks in which to decrypt clues from the distant past of the Kabbalah and the bloodline of Christ himself. As she delves into a world of mysticism she exposes modern day science to criticism in its suppression of an occult intelligence sought by those who have ruled the world over past centuries, as they still do today.

PROLOGUE

The Royal Secret

"Ancient code of order stand

Beneath the souls of lesser grand

Secret hold that bound their world

To guard their chance of second hurl.

Dormant want to those that deem,

That reap the chance to end their beam.

Silent men, women and child,

Forever lost in centuries wild."

Secret Code of Order. Chevaliers de Sangral.

A great part of Europe, to say nothing of other countries, is covered with a network of secret societies. The world is governed by very different people from what is imagined by those not behind the scenes.

Benjamin Disraeli. 19th Century British Prime Minister.

And nothing, not God, is greater to one than ones self is,

Walt Whitman. 19th Century American Humanist, Transcendentalist and Poet.

We are such stuff as dreams are made on.

William Shakespeare. The Tempest

It’s not what we know, but what we don’t know that divides the majority of us from those few who do. Not just of access to knowledge by which we might succeed, but also of the misdeeds and malefactions by which others prosper.

From the beginning of time the peoples of the world have sought to govern their own destinies. A multitude of cults and creeds have risen and fallen, destroyed by the corruption and greed of those in power. The circle of bondage, to faith and courage and from liberty to complacency, to dependence, to dictatorship continues without end. Dynasties and dictators have come and gone, all consigned to the dustbin of history.

Great names down the ages have contrived to bring every art and science to question mankind’s place and purpose in the world, and to achieve peaceful co-existence. Among them philosophers and prophets, scientists and spiritualists, artists and artificers, mathematicians and monks; and those of the anti-Christ; the shamans magicians and witchdoctors.

Some wrestle with equations of the Universe, of protons and neutrons, and others with the spiritual positives and negatives of good and evil, as to what and who we are, and where we go. It is only too easy to forget what we have already learned, and so to repeat the same mistakes. Incurable plagues, starvation and wars that have ravaged the world throughout its history can return to threaten our existence at any moment.

Without knowledge of the past we cannot truly understand the present or even guess at the future. Yet one long-forgotten genius provides the vital missing link to the saga of humanity from its beginning to the present, and perhaps to its end. Rediscovered today, above all, this story is his.

President Thomas Jefferson called him one of the three greatest men in the world. A founder of America and the origin of its Constitution; a man who rose to the heights of his day as Regent of England. Prolific writer, scientist, chemist, politician, pacifist, poet, philosopher and mystic. A half-bastard descendant of the most famous of English Royal lines. Nietzsche, the German philosopher, condemned to perdition all those who would not recognize his genius. Yet, apart from a few occult societies, he is virtually unknown today. His reputation destroyed by his enemies and his name dragged in the dirt and dust of decades, condemned by his critics as corrupt, disloyal, and as a homosexual. To all intents and purposes he died bankrupt and disgraced taking his secrets with him to an unmarked grave.

It took a brilliant American woman in the 19th century and a determined English lawyer in the early 20th century, the best part of their lifetimes to investigate the real identity of this seemingly supernatural Elizabethan. By decrypting codes devised four hundred years ago, they uncovered a veil of silence long drawn over conspiracies of the past. Of murder and mayhem, of disguised identities, of incest and ignominy, to be finally exposed only now by a woman of the 21st century.

In The Royal Secret Mrs G is a fictional character in her role as a botanist, but her modern day story revolves around present day events and those from a hidden past. From Jesus and Mary Magdalene, to the turbulent reign of the Tudors, to big business of today. From the torture of the Dark Ages to the licentiousness of the Renaissance. Of phantom writers, of revolutionaries, and of covert societies conspiring to regain prestige, in a world where the passions of men and women to scramble tooth and nail to the zenith of power never ceases.

On her husband’s death Mrs G sets out on her quest to discover the truth of her own existence, her personal Holy Grail. In this she finds herself on the same path as an Elizabethan living four hundred years before her.  As his true persona is unmasked, he becomes her hero and guide, and she finds herself unwittingly in the shadowy sphere of a cabal whose members intrigue to shape and control the modern world, as their forbears had done in the past. She finds herself torn between the powers of good and evil and discovers that, as with her Elizabethan counterpart, those she trusts are not all they may seem.

Her trail leads her through a labyrinth of history from the pyramids of Egypt to the Temple of Solomon, to the Washington Monument to London’s Temple Inns, to Paris and further south in France in the chapels and castles of the Templars, and finally in the Carpathian mountains of a past Transylvania. In her adventure she takes strength from the heroines of womanhood’s past.

It is the tale of humankind itself, illuminating the essential missing truths that unite the ancient and the modern worlds. Can the clever, but unworldly Mrs G find her answer in her own race against time running parallel to her hero, their enemies threatening their existence at every turn? On her travels Mrs G finds herself accompanied by a shadowy figure in whom she puts her trust, as she seeks to unravel clues to finally join the man she loves, and so that the two teenage children of whom she is the guardian and stepmother may be sure of their heritage and exist in a better future.

Cast of Principal Characters

(In alphabetical order)

Abe, geneticist and cryptographer

Ahriman, a devil

Bacon, Francis writer, philosopher and politician

Bacon, Anthony adoptive brother of Francis Bacon and spy

Boleyn, Anne: 2nd wife of Henry VIII and mother of Elizabeth I queen of England

Buckingham, née George Villiers courtier to King James: later Duke of Buckingham

Buonarroti, Phillip CEO of Washington Order and descendant of Michelangelo

Cecil, Robert later 1st earl of Salisbury, courtier and state official

Coke, Sir Edward lawyer, parliamentarian and husband of Elizabeth Hatton

Compton, (Lady Mary) mother of Buckingham

Crick, Francis scientist, Nobel Prize winner and co-discoverer of DNA.

Crowley, Aleister adventurer, occultist and mystic

Dee, John magician, occultist, writer, philosopher, entrepreneur and spy

Dudley, Robert later Earl of Leicester, epicurean supporter of arts and theater

Mrs G. cryptographer and second wife of Abe (née Jane Fenn Gallup)

Edward, 6th son of Henry VIII and briefly king of England before death at fourteen

Elizabeth, Queen of England daughter of King Henry VIII and Queen Anne Boleyn

Essex, Robert Devereux 2nd Earl of Essex, adopted son of 1st Earl & Lettice Knollys

Ethan, a priest

Esther, housekeeper to Abe

Gerry, grandson of Abe and Marilyn, and brother of Marianne

Hatton, Lady Elizabeth wife of Edward Coke and mother of Frances Coke

James I, King of England and Scotland

Jonson, Ben playwright and friend of Francis Bacon

Marianne, grand-daughter of Abe and Marilyn, and sister of Gerry

Marguerite, Queen of Navarre and later of France. Wife of King Henry of Navarre and France

Marilyn, Merovingian descendant and first wife of Abe

Mary Magdalene, companion of Jesus Christ

Matthew, Toby lawyer, priest and epicurean

Merovech, first Merovingian king

Pallas Athene mythical Greek goddess of knowledge

Popper, Karl philosopher and professor of economics

Raleigh, Sir Walter, adventurer, entrepreneur and advisor to Queen Elizabeth I

Robsart, Amy first wife of Robert Dudley

Shakespeare, William Actor and mask. Later known as the Bard of Avon

St Germain, Compte occultist and Ráckóczi heir

Tudor, Mary Queen of England and daughter of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon

Wriothesely, Henry Earl of Southampton

Chapter 1

(PART ONE)

London, England. 1554 

The grey roughhewn stone walls of the Tower were barely reflected in the swirling waters of the Thames hastening by, as if the river had no desire to take heed of the day’s events inside the grim guardian on its northern bank. For the Tower of London had history. Not just of defending the entrance to London by river from the sea for the previous five hundred years as a fortress that had never succumbed to attack, but one of a terrible past. Of the two boy Princes gruesomely murdered in it only half a century before to deny them their rights to the throne of England. Of the thousands tortured and imprisoned within its prison cells for life, never to leave, and of the beheadings and executions by the axe and sword of the mighty that had fallen, as well as the flighty.

Among the latter were two of the wives of Henry VIII, or Henry the Great as he was known in his day. One, Anne Boleyn, his young second wife, had been accused by a jealous Henry of flirtations with Harry Percy, the youthful and handsome heir to the great Northumberland family castle at Alnwyck, whose fortunes stemmed from their defense of the English border against bloody Scottish raids for over half a millennium.

But on this day in 1554 it was not one of Henry’s adulterous wives who faced the black wooden block of execution that stood in the fifty-foot-high walled yard of the Tower Green. It was Elizabeth, Henry’s own daughter by Anne Boleyn, accused by her half-sister Mary Tudor, now Queen, of treachery to the crown and of being a Protestant heretic. Mary was a Catholic, married to King Philip of Spain, and her pursuit and execution by sword and fire of those who did not support her Catholic regime had earned her the label of Bloody Mary.

The then Princess Elizabeth had been brought to the Tower by boat, entering under protest through the massive portcullis bars of the dreaded Traitors Gate from which there was said to be no return. Aged twenty-one, Elizabeth now looked through a tiny slit of a window high up in the Bell Tower out onto a patch of grass where the execution block stood.  The flag of the English red cross of St George hung drably in a slight breeze and drizzling rain. Several carpenters were finishing the wooden scaffolding to seat visitors, since executions of those of rank were required to be witnessed for the record by selected officials of status. There were near to one hundred prisoners in the Tower and which one of them was to have their life ended that day was known only to the Queen and a chosen few court officials.

In amongst the scaffolding two jet black ravens fought, bilious yellow in beak and claw, tearing apart the entrails of a rodent, screeching raucously as flesh and fur flew. The ravens were considered as much part of the Tower as were its famed Beefeaters, the Yeomen of the Guard. The latter, present in number this day some fifty strong and armed with their halberds, pikes equipped with razor-sharp axes, had long held their position as the Tower’s guardians in their impressive uniforms of red and gold. Should the ravens leave, it was fabled, the Tower would fall and with it the British monarchy and its peoples.

As Elizabeth looked on the scene below from her cell-like room, a ray of sunshine broke through the low grey clouds. It fell across the lawn onto the block on which the Queen intended the young princess to have her head severed from her body that very day.  Elizabeth’s own mother, as Queen, had knelt there only eighteen years before to be beheaded by the sword.  Anne had not given her husband the son he so desperately wanted as an heir, and had accused the King of a flirtation with the sour-faced girl Jane Seymour whom he married just days after Anne’s execution.  

Elizabeth’s heart was beating fast and she made the sign of the cross on her small freckled bosom, praying that the good Lord might somehow realize she was not guilty of anything in this world; apart, that was, from being a threat to her half-sister as a replacement Queen. Under English law Henry’s daughter Mary by his first wife, the Spanish Catharine of Aragon, ranked ahead of Elizabeth in the succession. Their half-brother Edward VI, born of Jane Seymour, having died, aged fifteen, in 1553.

I am innocent, Elizabeth kept repeating to herself over and over, guilty only of birth, as she felt tears of anger and despair welling in her blue-grey eyes. Thoughts tumbled furiously through her mind.  My life finished before even started, and yet with every advantage of a noble birth. Damn Mary Tudor, and her Catholic mother. May she perish of the plague in a slow death worse than mine, Elizabeth swore to herself.

What possible request could save her now? Many supplications had been made to her cold-hearted sister, and not one had been considered as far as was known. If deliverance was at hand, it had to be now or never. The heavy wooden door to her cell opened on its iron hinges. She turned to face three men. One the Lord Warden of the Tower, and the others two armed halberdier guards, who approached her grim-faced.  They were there to do their job for queen and country, and Elizabeth was not the Queen. The Lord Warden was attired in a long red velvet tunic over dark brown breeches with black patent knee-high boots and a tall crown hat, one brim fixed by a blood red garnet jewel, as befitted the occasion and his standing. His facial expression was impassive as he unrolled a small scroll of parchment. Elizabeth bit her lower lip. Small beads of perspiration ran down her neck into her cleavage. She clenched her fists, so much so her nails cut into the palms of her hands, as if to hang on to the world and life as though it were a precipice down which she was unstoppably sliding to her doom.

I am here, pronounced the Warden in stern tones, to decree your fate, Madam.  By a High Order I am commanded there is to be a stay of execution.  With a slight bow of his head he turned to go, added I beg your leave, Ma’am, and departed with the two guards.  Elizabeth gasped.  

Could this be true, was she to be spared, and if so who had intervened on her behalf? By the Devil or by a guardian angel? – what salvation! she exclaimed. By whose order, she wondered. Higher than the Queen? If so, who? What had happened she did not know, but she felt as if she were flying. Released from death as if an angel on wings. She felt sure that after such a reprieve God was on her side and now England’s throne would be hers. It was her birthright. Her father Henry would have turned in his grave to see the Catholics returned to power in his kingdom. She would extract her revenge on her bitch of a sister. 

Come quick, Beth, said a voice, as through the door came a body in a long dark cloak out of which a hand took hers. Let’s celebrate our good fortune. We are to be freed soon, but must stay in the Tower until our release. I have it on good authority! Hush! He held his finger to her lips. Don’t speak; there is no need for words now. We have time enough. Your end is not yet to be.

Elizabeth knew the voice and as the cloak fell from his face a pair of laughing eyes caught hers. Those of Robert, her second lover.  Her first, when she was but fourteen, had been executed for impregnating her. He had been an older man, some twenty years her senior, who had taken advantage of her youth to seduce her. Robert was her own age, young, virile and handsome, and Elizabeth was in love with him. Deeply and passionately so. Cupid’s dart had struck at her heart at the first sight of his fierce good looks in the dark recesses of the Tower.

Elizabeth took Robert’s hand as he quickly led her through a narrow winding passage to the adjoining Beauchamp Tower where he too had been imprisoned. In it was a small anteroom, a chamber with leather-bound chairs and a low couch covered in drapes over which he laid her body. Shutting the door behind them, he quickly lifted her long gown waist high to her short linen bodice, and as quickly he undid his own doublet and his breeches to hold his firm flesh against hers. She was ready for him and put up no resistance nor felt shame, since it was not for the first time in these last few weeks of waiting their bodies had come together in hot embrace. What else had been their prospect but to take pleasure while they could with only death awaiting them?

But now that was behind her. The double excitement of her imminent release and the sight of Robert, who only minutes before she had thought she would never see again, aroused all her senses and the blood coursed through her heart and veins. They fell onto the couch as one, heaving and panting in a mad flurry of kisses and embraces until the union of their young bodies could be satisfied no more. In her dreams she was Queen, and Robert Dudley was to be hers.  He would be the father of her offspring. That her resolve would reward her with joy she felt sure, but the grief it was later to cause her was to remain concealed from the public gaze until the 21st Century, over four hundred years later, and it would change the course of history forever.

Chapter 2

Brookline, Boston. Fall, 2014

It was early fall in Boston and the low rays of a late afternoon sun slanted through the amber and scarlet foliage of the maple trees gently rustling in the light breeze. On a wide avenue in the Brookline district a large New England house of early 20th century design stood set back in its garden, protected by a ten-foot-high brick wall and electric, double wrought iron gates. Specimen trees of various types, shapes and sizes shaded a large, even and manicured green lawn, well-watered by a sprinkler system in a garden of immaculate order. Great care had been taken of the many species of vegetation brought there from the world over by its owner. A range of glass hothouses stood against a far wall, filled with rare plants and herbs. Not just of decorative intent, but ones that had purpose. The owner of the house had been a man who had built a great fortune from a lifetime of botanical study.

French doors opened wide from the house onto the lawn, and it was through them that two teenagers in shorts and T-shirts ran laughing through spurting water sprinklers and into the house.  A boy of seventeen and a girl of fifteen; brother and sister. Hi, Mrs G, they both called out to an attractive woman of small to medium build seemingly in her mid-50s seated at a large 18th Century oak desk.  Sharing the highly polished desktop with two multi-colored glass Tiffany lamps and a pair of simple early American silver candlesticks, stood a large smart-internet TV at whose screen Mrs G had been staring intently.

As the two came in she sat back in a deep red leather Chesterfield chair and clapped her hands.  Come and see my new toy, she said. It’s mind-blowing to me that I can sit at home and find information which would have taken me a lifetime not long ago. Wonderful! You kids take it for granted, but it’s an extension of intelligence you can’t now do without, just a click away on Google. Einstein believed once you had found an answer you needed to write it down to keep your mind clear for new thoughts. Now everything we know of the Universe is sitting there on the Cloud. Einstein would have loved it Technology’s answer to telepathy. Exo-Brain! came the reply from the boy, grinning. T.M.I. Too much information though

Mrs G smiled. Well we had to search books in my school days, so you are lucky to have it all at your fingertips. Soon it will probably be in a chip placed in your head. Your Grandpa was an inventor but if he hadn’t learned from history, he would have wasted his time proving what was already known. It’s why studying is important. Mrs G saw herself as the unofficial guardian of Gerry and his sister Marianne since their granddad had died.

Your Grandpa utilized the Fibonacci Code for his theories to grow plants for medicinal purposes. Without its discovery nine hundred years ago, he would have had to invent it. It’s a mixture of science and divination. Science is a progression of human thought, while true art is an irresistible creative urge, as Einstein explained it. It seems to me that art today is little more than fashion for the sake of fashion. It has no spirit. As for science, what is believed true one day is not the next. Nothing is absolute except death.

And I’m not entirely sure about that either, she voiced to herself.

This was a good opportunity for Mrs G to catch the children together and she wanted to make the most of it. She was leaving for Europe in two days and did not know exactly when she might be back.

Your Grandpa’s inventiveness revolutionized the decoding of plant genetics and made him the fortune that you’ll inherit one day, and, I hope, use for good purpose. The way things have turned out life has decreed I am to help you now he is dead, and your poor parents too. Fate has many twists and turns. But you must put the bad behind you. You have your lives ahead of you and it’s time you gave some thought to your future. You’ll soon need to make your own decisions. I can only help you so much.

Gerry grimaced. The memories of his Grandpa’s death, not so long after that of his parents and Grandma in a car crash, still greatly pained him. The events had hurt him deeply and made him introspective.  He was not at all sure yet what to make of life, but he listened to what Mrs G was telling him.  Both he and Marianne had respect for her, and for the time being she was the closest person they had in the world, apart from each other.

Grandpa was a code-buster? Gerry asked.

He was, said Mrs G, and I was too for many years in my work as his assistant while he was married to your Grandma. Codes have been used from the beginning of time to exchange concealed information. The internet today has two sides. The one most people see, and the Dark Web which most people don’t realize exists; where coded messages are used by terrorists and criminals to avoid discovery. Everything that exists in this world can be used for good or bad. Positive or negative in equal effect.  We have a choice. Let me show you what I mean, as this one is nearer home. 

Mrs G quickly Googled and pointed on the TV screen to a plant with dark red berries.

"See this, it’s Belladonna; it can be used to cure pain, or it can kill you. Some call it Deadly Nightshade, or the Devil’s Weed.  There’s one in the garden hothouse right now. Juice from its berries was once applied by girls to make their eyes dilate and look more beautiful, but it could kill them if they overused it. The same with most drugs which is why you need take care with them.

"Belladonna is used medicinally now for Parkinson’s disease and as a painkiller. It has a strange, dark beauty and it was a favorite of your Grandpa’s first wife, Marilyn. She had a good knowledge of herbal medicines and poisons, as all old families did, handed down from times past before the days of pills. The word medicine is associated with the Medici family in Italy who made their fortune using herbs and plants. Not just to cure people, but also by poisoning their enemies with secret potions.  Many of the species in your Grandpa’s greenhouses here can be deadly. You should never touch them until you know which is which; so stay clear of them until you do. Their leaves can be toxic and cause sickness, even death.

"There is a book known as The Poisoners Bible, or in its proper name as Dreisbach’s Handbook of Poisoning. It can be found on your Grandpa’s library shelves and makes interesting reading. There are many books there, including some on your mother’s family history. Try to use the time while I’m away to study them. It’s your history too. As you know, your mother’s Mom, Grandma Marilyn, was French - and descended from an ancient bloodline -The Merovingians, who claim they go back to King Merovech of Gaul, or France as it has now become and five hundred years before Merovech to Mary Magdalene.  Both your names have ancient origins. Gerry’s Christian name is Germain, which comes from Germanus, an ancient saint, and Marianne from Mary Magdalene who was known as Maryam. Your grandmother insisted on you having them. St. Germain is a popular area of Paris, once famous for its artists and bohemian lifestyle which I will be visiting this trip to research my new book. Next time I’ll take you for a tour of Europe to understand the great European Renaissance of art and literature and the beginnings of science.  It will give you a much better understanding of human progress than you can learn at school.  Only after the European Renaissance does America’s own history even start!"

While Mrs G was talking, a rotund lady of Afro-American origin had come into the room with a jug of coffee and biscuits.  Esther was five-foot-three tall and almost as round. She had a yellow and green bandana on her head and two large amber-flecked brown eyes which stood out like an owl’s from their whites. A flowing and colorful dress to near her ankles swayed as she walked.

 Hi, Mrs G, she said with a big grin on her face. How about some sust’nance? and placed the tray by the side of the TV.

What’ll the chill’n have? Or will they wait for mealtime? 

It’s okay, Esther, said Mrs G. It’s your day off. We can get some supper together easily if you’ll defrost some pizzas for us.

She turned to the children. While I’m away, Esther will cook for you. Ask her for anything you want, but be nice to her. She served your Grandpa well for many years at his laboratory in Georgia and knows a lot about plants, so she might just slip some Belladonna into your soup if you don’t behave.

No problem, Mrs G, they’ll be just fine with me," Esther happily assured her in her broad Southern accent.

When are you off, Mrs G? asked Gerry.

Soon now, Mrs G replied. I’m leaving for England to search for ancient codes to know more about the subject of the book I’m working on.

Will you see the Queen? joked Marianne.

Not on this trip. I expect she’s a mite too busy, but as it happens, the first Queen Elizabeth was a code-buster for real. She started England’s first spy network, the British Secret Service.

Oh cool, Marianne laughed.

Sub-zero!  Gerry retorted.

But first I’m stopping off in Washington to see a publisher whom I hope may help with my book. He’s an old friend of your Grandpa. Mrs G spoke her words sadly.

"He was interested in your Grandma’s heritage, which your Grandpa felt was best left alone. Grandpa was devastated when your parents both died with Grandma in that awful car crash.  He wanted to show many things to you as you got older, but with his own death soon after, it was not to be. When your Mom died your Grandpa asked me to help you both as best I could, so I do what I think he would have done. Your family has an interesting history on your mother’s side which your parents would have told you if they had lived. Its time you knew about it and I’ll do my best to tell you the story. It starts many years ago in a past that I helped re-discover with your Grandpa and which my book will be about.

Brill! exclaimed Marianne. When can we start? She jumped up and pointed at the TV. What are those drawings? They’re weird!

Mrs G laughed. They’re images of old codes.  If you’re finished in the garden for the day, I’ll tell you what I’m investigating for my book and then we’ll get some pizza and ice cream together for supper.  I hope when I come back from Europe I’ll have more clues sorted and I can tell you better where it’s all going. It’s an adventure into the past and maybe the future too.

Yo! exclaimed Gerry we’re up for it. We’ll be back - give us twenty minutes to shower and chill out. Gerry chased his sister upstairs laughing. It was good to know more about their ‘fam’.

Chapter 3

Mrs G settled herself in her high-backed chair and thought how best to begin her story. She would use video material she had assembled for her book. Images were a good way to show kids things, just as were the Egyptian hieroglyphics of the past. A picture really could be worth a thousand words. She would talk at the same time as clicking through the screen shots and answering any questions the kids had.

She hadn’t too much time as she needed to pack and be at Boston’s Logan Airport in thirty-eight hours on her way to Washington. Then on to London on the red-eye overnight flight to be there the following morning.  But there is a time for everything and this was as good as any to tell the kids more about the world of their past and how it might affect their future. They had the whole evening ahead of them.

The kids were bright enough intellectually and were quick at absorbing knowledge that was of interest to them. They had grown up fast this last year and had begun to think about life and death too, since the untimely ends of their parents and grandparents.  A gentle cough which had tickled the back of Mrs G’s throat for the last few months irritated her and reminded her that she needed to take care of her own health.  There were many things she had to do in the next few weeks before she could find time for the examination her doctor had recommended she have.  She would sort it out when she returned.

She caught a glance of herself in the Lalique Art-Deco mirror on the wall. Still looking good for sixty-two. A trim slight figure with a good complexion. Could easily pass for a few years less. Her brown hair had highlights to disguise her newly emerging gray roots. It was shoulder length but well cut and neat and easy to keep.  She was not good at chit chat with her hairdresser and preferred to avoid time spent there. Nor was she keen on too much artifice. Just some lipstick and a light foundation cream were as much as she could be bothered with, and some natural colored nail varnish. A touch of eye pencil to enhance her brown eyes completed the picture.

She looked at her hands. No liver spots yet, and still some tan from the spring break in Bermuda and a few days of sailing this summer on Nantucket Sound on the Ta Chiao 50 foot sailing ketch of Abe’s friends, a vacation she had shared with him before he had died.  Abe did not care for the glitzy, gin palace, motor yacht cruising of the Florida Keys and the blue rinse brigade of Palm Beach. 

She had dressed today in a knee length, plain, gray pleated skirt with a close-fit, duck-egg blue, cotton half-sleeved T-shirt, bare brown legs and sneakers.  She had played a couple of boisterous sets of American tennis with the kids earlier in the day and was pleased not to have been too puffed.

The kids needed more friends to come round, but it was the trouble with being super-rich. After their mother and father had died, Grandpa Abe had put a protective ring around them. He had set aside a large amount of money into a foundation whose purpose was to benefit them one day along with charities and projects in which Abe was involved.  Aware of his advancing age, Abe had asked Mrs G to be a trustee of the foundation in the children’s interests, which she had accepted so as to please him.  Although sociable within her small circle of friends, she was not a naturally social person of the type found in Boston’s classy society. That task she had left to Abe’s former wife Marilyn. It was from the foundation that Mrs G was supplied with any funds she required for herself and the children since Abe’s death in her role of unofficial guardian. She had only to call Abe’s lawyer in Boston and funds would arrive.

In a way it was her fault, she thought, that the children did not get out and about more; but she was too old now to mix with the mothers of other kids of the same age.  A stand-in mother who wasn’t really cut out for the job, but as much as she could, she made it her job nevertheless. Abe would have wanted it that way. Why else would he have married her if not to give his grandchildren the protection they needed with their parents both dead? He had always trusted her as she trusted him.

Yes, they were good friends and had spent much time together, interested in the same intriguing subjects and how to find the answers. Two sleuths together, but ultimately she had been his assistant and was in awe of his knowledge. As a student at the old Boston University School of Medicine, she had seen his rise in importance and had known he would one day become famous in his chosen profession.

She had joined his pharmaceutical research company as a junior botanist soon after leaving college and had become an assistant to him at twenty-seven. Abe had liked her quiet and responsible manner and her enthusiasm for working at all hours.  That was well over thirty years ago now. She had always respected his close family life and his clever, but eccentric, aristocratic wife Marilyn.  Abe had enough on his hands with his work, and with the excesses of his wife and daughter, both of whom enjoyed travel and mixing in a world of high society to which they belonged by birthright. They were fortunate that Abe was able to support their lifestyles.

Mrs G enjoyed her professional work with Abe and had become almost one of the family by gradual adoption, known by them always as Mrs G. Marilyn was smart enough to know that Mrs G was important to Abe’s work and the trust it required. After Marilyn’s death, Abe had married Mrs G and they had slept together for shared comfort, but without carnal knowledge of each other. She loved him for his brilliant mind and had felt it transcended all else. Sex at her age, she told herself, was of no importance to her, but good companionship was.

Mrs G’s full name was Jane Fenn Gallup. Her background was that of a hard-working professional family. Her great-grandmother Elizabeth was a highly intelligent woman who had worked for the US government deciphering codes at the time of World War One. Elizabeth Gallup had been previously employed as a researcher for an Illinois textile millionaire whose interest was to discover more about the life of William Shakespeare.  In her time she had become famous in American literary and scientific circles, having written a four hundred page paper entitled The Shakespearean Ciphers. She had used her cryptology skills to examine hidden codes in the works of Shakespeare and her paper was the result of thirty years of painstaking investigation.

Mrs G’s parents had given birth to her in February 1953, under the star sign of Aquarius, and like her mother she had chosen to continue a tradition of the females in her family by carrying on the distinguished name of Gallup. Her own parents had both died from the gas fumes from a faulty motel water heater when she was eighteen, so she was more than sympathetic with Gerry and Marianne. Their parents had died in a car crash, together with Abe’s wife, Marilyn, on an icy road in Vermont not a year before Abe’s own death. None of those in the car had survived. There had been some local publicity at the time, but with no witnesses the coroner had returned a verdict of accidental death.

It was the first time the family as a whole had been exposed to the press who considered their wealth to be newsworthy, and Abe had asked Mrs G to tell the children the news before they heard it elsewhere. In the years in which Mrs G had become Abe’s close confidant, the children’s mother had travelled extensively in her occupation as a horse breeder. As a result, the children had frequently stayed in Abe’s Brookline house where Mrs G had got to know them well.

Abe had been head down in his efforts at home to complete a major experiment. The older he became the more withdrawn he had grown, his mind on his work and what he might best bequeath to the world from his billion-dollar fortune and his pharmacological discoveries, and what to his grandchildren.

It was not long after the car crash that Abe had proposed marriage to Mrs G and they had wed in a quiet, private ceremony at the local Boston synagogue, Abe being Jewish.  He was by then in his mid-seventies and had little left in the way of family. After the marriage, at Abe’s request, Mrs G had studied the Jewish religion, and its origins in the Kabbalah four thousand or more years ago whose teachings were handed down in complex numerical codes of the type Mrs G enjoyed interpreting.

Mrs G and her sister had attended Wellesley College near Boston for a short period before moving on to medical school.  Her sister, who was equally studious, had been employed by NASA for a time, before working for CERN in Geneva on the large Hadron Collider in the particle physics laboratory. She had become so absorbed in her work of splitting atoms to ever more minute proportions that she had found no time for marriage or a family. She had died of myeloid leukemia in middle age as a hazard of her occupation before the discovery of the Higgs Boson God Particle at CERN in 2014 which was now changing scientific perspectives. Mrs G’s own tendency was towards healing, both of the mind and body, believing in natural solutions from her understanding of plants. It was a territory in which she had assisted Abe in his lifelong dream to find a cure-all concoction to solve humanity’s ills.

Chapter 4

Brookline, Boston

Mrs G had got her presentation together just as the kids came back in and stretched themselves out on a giant-sized, floral, chintz-covered couch, the design of which was echoed in the voluminous curtains that hung on rings from mahogany rods across the tall windows. The chintz was to dress the room for the summer only and was due to be changed for warmer colors as the days of autumn drew to an end. The room’s polished parquet floor showed off the several luxurious antique oriental carpets of Persian and Indian origin that Abe had collected over the years.

Paintings by Norman Rockwell of an earlier America adorned the oak paneled walls along with a few European Impressionists, Gauguin and Chagall among them. Mrs G had chosen a Pop Art picture by Ed Ruscha of various amphetamine capsules floating in space on a red background as if planets encircling the globe; which it had amused her to buy for Abe long before Ruscha’s prices went sky high. Abe had kept it out of sight from visitors in his library room. His personal experiments with drugs were a secret he preferred to keep to himself.

Mrs G pointed at the large TV screen. Now pay attention. These are mystic Egyptian signs - hieroglyphics of symbolism and allegory. She clicked on her mouse. More signs appeared.

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