“Yes! Yes, it is,” Jacob said. His hand trembling, using scissors to open the box.
Samuel Bronner, broad-shouldered with dark rimmed glasses, raised his thick eyebrows. “Perhaps the remaining pieces to the mystery, Jacob?”
“We shall see.” He lifted the old papers from the box. “They have the ancient bouquet of time. Written so many years ago.” He lowered the handwritten notes down to the table, pulled out a chair and sat. He read silently for half a minute, his index finger, knotted from arthritis, tracing the words as if he were following a treasure map. Then he looked up, over his bifocals, his pale eyes now bright and alive. “These are indeed from the hand of Sir Isaac Newton.”
“Do you think somewhere in there Newton found what no man has found before — the hidden prophecies of God?”
“If it is God’s will. He may have allowed Newton, perhaps the greatest mind ever, to find the cryptograms of our forefathers, and maybe the fate of our children, our world, too.”
“We have had many of Newton’s papers since Abraham Yahuda donated them to the library and university in 1969.” Samuel touched his mentor on the shoulder. “I hope we can find something new here. However, perhaps even Newton, as smart as he was, could never understand all that is woven through the earliest texts.”
Jacob glanced at the pages faded after centuries of storage, the dark ink from the quill pen legible as the day when Newton wrote the words. Jacob said nothing, his eyes shifting through the sentences, glancing in the margins at the rows of numbers. His lips pursed, and he made a low whistle.
“He wrote quickly,” said Jacob, his voice above a whisper. “The man who invented calculus filled the margins of each page to their maximum. He appears to have written the equations very fast. What if his mind outdistanced his own hand while he deciphered codes pouring over verses from the Bible? He thought there was truth, an ancient wisdom in the world, first delivered in scriptures, and that knowledge was lost.”
Samuel grunted, shifted his weight and looked at the papers. “It is believed Newton spent fifty years of his life trying to decode the Bible, and now we’re trying to make sense of his final papers. I don’t want to sound pessimistic, Jacob, but what if he never succeeded? How can we interpret Newton? Since Einstein, there probably has been no greater scientist than Newton. He figured the laws of gravity, but he may never have discovered hidden prophecies in the Bible, if they do exist.”
Jacob smiled and looked up at his friend. “Samuel, would you mind making us some tea? I want to look over these documents. I’m longing to get in front of the whiteboard with a marker. I hope there is reason in these notes to do so.”
Samuel pushed his glasses up on the bridge of his nose. “Tea sounds good.”
There were dozens of pages all handwritten in sentences of varying length. Some staccato. Disjointed. A few words were twice underlined. Some had exclamation points. Jacob read each word. He jotted down notes on a legal-sized paper. He murmured when he found something he recognized, his unkempt eyebrows lifting. He read aloud:
“Daniel, whose visions concern the things prefigured in the law, is bid to enclose the vision of the ram and goat. This again in his last vision where the angel comes to show him what is noted in the scripture of truth. He is to enclose the words and seal the book. This book of the scripture of truth sealed in the hand of God that is understood by him alone. It is written within and on the back side, within by hidden predictions of things to come, on the back side by open allusions to things past. The lamb now comes to receive and open when the prophecy is called the Revelation of Christ which God gave unto him, being a Revelation or opening of the scripture that has been sealed.”
Samuel returned with two cups of steaming tea. He set one down, careful not to get it too close to the old papers. “You look mesmerized. Find anything?”
Jacob was silent, reading the last few pages, his eyes locking on three words jotted in the margin, under a calculus equation. He sat back in his chair, his stare distant, and his thoughts far beyond the small study. “Newton went to his grave believing the Bible held truths beyond the obvious. Imagine if he’d had a computer. What would he have found or what did he find in the scriptures?”
“You are a great mathematician, Jacob, your colleagues are some excellent statisticians, and yet we only surmise Newton was on the verge of fully interpreting Bible prophecies. There is only a single box of papers here. Can they tell us what thousands of words before those have not revealed?”
“They already reveal something I have never before seen.”
“What is that?
“Look at this.” Jacob pointed to a name in a margin beneath the numbers:
Born 1972 A.D.
“Newton wrote a man’s name, and he jotted down the words prophet with a question mark after it. He wrote: ‘and in the year 2015, this man will accept a noble prize for healing the sick….’ I believe he meant the Nobel Prize for Medicine.”
“Nobel Prizes began in the early 1900’s. That would have been at least 175 years after Newton died.”
“Maybe this is the first Biblical prophecy Newton actually found.”
“Why?”
“Because I’ve read the list of winners for this year’s awards. The ceremonies are in December, but the winners are always announced this month, October. In medicine, it is an American, and he has the same name Newton wrote in the margin, Paul James Marcus.”
Samuel scratched above his left eyebrow, leaning closer. “May I see?”
Jacob pointed to the name in the margin of the final page, Newton’s handwriting is small, yet precise.
Samuel said, “It can’t be the same man. It’s impossible.”
“Perhaps. But something in my heart tells me it is the same man. My heart also tells me it may be difficult to speak with this Paul James Marcus.”
“Why would that be?”
“Because he is declining to accept the Nobel Prize for Medicine.”
SIX
Paul Marcus walked alone though the cemetery on the outskirts of Warrenton, Virginia. It was cool, the October skies a deep blue, a campfire scent in the distance, and autumn leaves ripening with colors of gold, orange and cherry. Some fluttered down as he walked. He didn’t bother to knock them off his shoulders. Marcus carried two bouquets of flowers.
It had been more than a month since he was last here. For Marcus, it felt like a lifetime. He remembered somehow fighting off shock, rising to his feet, stumbling to his car, and pushing his hand through shattered glass to unlock the doors. Jen had been shot once through the forehead, but Tiffany was still alive, barely, her body curled in the fetal position, moaning, hair matted with blood. He cradled her in his arms, “Daddy…it’s so dark. I’m cold, Daddy…. ”
“Hold on, baby…help’s coming, Tiff…. ” He kissed her pallid cheek, softly sobbing, the tears flowing down his unshaven face. Then his world went dark again.
Marcus pinched the bridge of his nose approaching the graves. He stood at the two gravestones, both side-by-side. The inscription on the left read:
Jennifer Marcus
Beloved Wife and Mother
1974 — 2012
Marcus looked at the headstone to his right.
Tiffany Marcus
You are forever missed
2001–2012
He placed one bouquet on his wife’s grave and the other flowers next to Tiffany’s headstone. Marcus stood there alone, lonely, in the stippled light that filtered through the oaks. The afternoon sun was radiant, like spun gold, as it spilled onto branches still heavy with autumn leaves.