The Gorgon's Blood Solution (23 page)

The dolphin did not respond, nor did Marco notice at first that a shadow followed him out onto the pier.

“Who’s there?” Marco asked when he detected movement.  The moon had not yet risen, and the city lights were darkened by the plague’s suffering, that had frightened or sickened many of those charged with lighting torches and lanterns around the city.

“It’s me, Marco,” Mirra’s voice called as she walked up to him.

“Did you want to go swimming?” he asked, his heart gladdened by her presence.

“I came to find you.  It’s urgent,” Mirra said in a tense voice.  “My brother, Glaze – he has the plague,” she told Marco.  He felt the muscles of his stomach contract and tighten in fear.

“Come with me,” he said immediately.  He walked past her and grabbed her hand to take her with him as he walked rapidly back to Gabrielle’s shop.

The shop was locked up as it was every night, and Marco led Mirra up the back way he climbed to the roof, up on a trellis, then across the top of a wall, and a final scramble over a sloped set of tiles to reach the flat space in front of his window.

“Phew!” Mirra said as they climbed in through the window.  “I need to catch my breath!  You do this every night?”

Marco could hear her breathing heavily as they sat on his bed, and he thought back to the morning so recently when they had stared at one another on that very bed, just before the first inkling of the plague came upon them.  “Almost every night,” he agreed.

“Come down stairs to the workshop when you’re ready,” he told her, and he walked quickly down the stairs to the tidy workshop that he thought of as his own.  He fumbled with a flint to light an oil lamp, and when he had the lamp glowing and the glass chimney back in place, he looked up to see Mirra standing in the doorway, watching him.

“Can you do anything, Marco?” she asked in an anguished tone.

“Have hope Mirra.  I think I know how to treat the plague.  I’ve been thinking for days about this,” he told her.  “Just sit there and wait a few minutes,” he directed, pointing to a stool near his work bench.

He gathered up the items that he thought could create the solution that would heal the symptoms of the plague.  He had finally relied on Algornia’s teachings, and gone for a search for purity in the body.  He had listened to the descriptions of the various symptoms that struck the ill, and he had scrolled through every medicinal formulae in his head, as well as those in Marches’ books, looking for the similar symptoms.

His first experimental efforts had all the right elements for a cure he was sure, but the items had reacted poorly with one another, an indication that such a complex cure for such a complex illness could not work.  Finally, while on the dock, he had reached the conclusion that he could administer the cure in two separate doses, so that the ingredients that did not react well with one another had no interactions.

“Here,” he said ten minutes later, pressing a bowl of dry powder towards Mirra.  “Hold on to this.”  He resumed working, mixing the second set of ingredients together, working intently under Mirra’s hopeful gaze.

After half an hour he was ready to decant the results of the second part of the cure, a liquid that had steeped a number of elements together, from which remnants had to be removed before the potion could be served.  Marco quickly measured out a dose of the liquid into a small jar, then spooned a dose of the powder into a separate cup.

“Here, take these,” he directed as he ushered Mirra to the front door of the shop.  “Wait here for me.  I’ll go out the window and be right back,” he told her when she stood outside, as he re-latched the door behind her, then sprinted upstairs.  He grabbed his sword for the journey through Mirra’s neighborhood, then scrambled down and around a half block to find the girl waiting for him.

“Now I’m the one out of breath,” he grinned at her as he huffed for a moment before they walked through the city to the doorway that led up to Mirra’s apartment, without interference or bother from anyone along the way.

Mirra silently led Marco to a door in a pitch black hallway on the third floor.  They entered a room, and the girl lit a candle within a few seconds, giving Marco a view of her living space.  It was a single room, one with drab, colorless walls, and a sheet attached to a rope across the middle to cordon off a separate space on one side.

Lying on a pile of bedding was an unconscious young man, one whose pale face reminded Marco of Mirra.  The smell near the man was fetid, but Marco only gagged once as he knelt by the man and lifted the lolling head with one hand.  “Here, pour this into his mouth, a few drops at a time,” he instructed Mirra with the liquid potion.  A minute later her small container was empty.

“Do you have some water we can mix the powder in?” Marco asked.  After waiting a few minutes, Marco held Glaze again, and Mirra poured the second part of the cure down his throat in small increments.

“How long will it take?” she asked Marco.

“He’ll start getting stronger immediately, but it will take two or three days to flush all the illness out, and a few more days for him to recover his strength,” Marco explained.

“Is there a cart we could use to move him?” Marco asked after they squatted silently to watch him.

“We can use the landlord’s cart,” Mirra promptly answered.  “Where do you want to take him?”

“Let’s take him and all his things down to the harbor and rinse it all there, then we can take him and Sybele back to Gabrielle’s house,” Marco proposed.

And so, over an hour later, the whole group was at the harbor, rinsing out the bedding and clothes of the unconscious victim of the plague, then they returned to Gabrielle’s shop. By the time the sun was starting to rise, Marco had prepared small doses of his plague cures for Sybele, who quietly sucked on the end of a wooden tube.  Then Marco made Mirra take the cure as well.

“Glaze had a better time of this than I did; at least he was unconscious and didn’t taste it!  This is terrible!” Mirra said as she yawned.

“Go upstairs and sleep in my bed,” Marco directed her.  “I’ll put some things away then come up,” he told her, and watched her take her sleeping baby out of the workshop.  He then straightened Glaze out on the workshop floor, and took all the wet bedding and clothing to the back of the house, where he stretched them all out to dry in the morning sun.

When he finally got to his room,  he saw through the window that there was a fine line on the horizon that hinted at the approach of dawn soon.  He saw Sybele still asleep in her basket on the floor, while Mirra was already soundly asleep on one side of the narrow mattress.  He lay down next to her and thought one last thought of exultation, joy that he had figured out a cure for the plague, and then he too fell asleep.

Chapter 16 – The Plague Breaks

Marco awoke late in the morning.  Mirra’s face was just inches from his, and their arms were around one another.  Sybele was gently squalling in her basket.  Marco carefully disengaged himself from Mirra, then picked up Sybele and padded barefoot down the stairs.  Gabrielle was in the kitchen.

“Well look at you!” she said as she spotted the bundle in his arms.  “Is this something new?”

Marco explained the set of circumstances that had unfolded overnight.  “So I think I have a cure for the plague,” he finished his tale.

“That’s marvelous, Marco,” Gabrielle said.  “Now sit down and have something to eat.  We’ll leave something for Mirra.”

After his hastily gobbled meal, Marco gave Sybele to Gabrielle’s care, while he went to check on Glaze.  The man was still unconscious on the floor, but his color had improved, and his breathing sounded much better. 

Satisfied that his cure was working, Marco sat down and began to prepare a large batch of the cure, so that he would be ready to distribute it to as many people as possible.  He ground the powdered portion together while he tried to calculate how many doses he could concoct with the supply of ingredients he had.  The number was large, far more than he had ever produced of anything else before, but still woefully inadequate for the need that he knew existed in the city streets.

He continued to ponder what his next steps would be as he began to steep a large vat of the second step in the cure.  By the time he finished, he looked up to see Mirra standing in the door.  His eyes widened at the sight of her, and he felt his heart skip a beat.

“You look beautiful,” he said softly.

“Thank you.  Gabrielle gave it to me to wear, so that I’d have something clean,” she said, as her hands moved along the lines of her torso, unconsciously drawing attention to the way a demure gown accented her curves with sophistication and allure.

Marco swallowed hard, captivated by the sight of Mirra wearing the fine clothing.

“Is he better?” she asked.

Marco gave his head a slight nod, and turned his eyes away from her as he knelt by Glaze.  “His color is improving, his breathing is quieter.  We’ll have to see if he passes any blood, but I think he’s getting better,” he affirmed.

“And you think we’re safe from the plague now because of what you gave us?” she asked.

“I can’t be sure,” Marco admitted.  “If you had a touch of it already, this will prevent the symptoms from taking place.  It’s meant to be a treatment for the disease, not a way to prevent it.  This drives out the impurity, so that your body and spirit can heal themselves.”

“You’ve got a lot there,” Mirra said as she came and knelt beside him to look at her brother.  Marco covertly examined her as she examined her brother, and he felt astonished once again by the transformation that had occurred in the girl.

“You smell nice,” he said abruptly, then felt himself blush from the admission.

Mirra turned a dazzling smile towards him.  “Gabrielle gave me a dab of perfume – something she said Marches made for her.”

Sybele gave a cry down the hallway.  “I better go feed her, now that I know Glaze is okay,” Mirra said as she stood and walked away, leaving Marco to momentarily stare after her, knowing that he had fallen into a deep infatuation with the girl just because he had seen her wearing the stunning gown.

Minutes later Marco was in the front of the shop, opening the door to the usual small crowd of desperate customers looking for any miraculous salvation from the plague.  Soon after he told them he had a cure, he was busily dispersing small portions of the two parts of the cure he had developed.  Within two hours word had spread of his reported cure, and a long line formed, one that was desperate and unruly, driven by the intense fear and emotions of the people who were seeking any hopeful answer to the plague that was killing the city.

Marco heard the sounds of conflict outside the shop, but he couldn’t take time to investigate.  Within a short time he heard the sound of horses’ hooves clattering on the paving stones of the square.  Horses rarely were ridden in that part of the city, making the hooves a noticeable sound; Marco looked up to see that a squad of the Duke’s patrol was in the square, tamping down the fights and scattering the mob that waited outside the shop.

“What’s the story here?” a large, loud officer with a florid face asked as he pressed his way in through the shop door.  “These people think you have a cure for the plague.  I ought to take you to the scaffold right now for duping them.”

“It’s not a trick.  This is a real cure.  I’ve got a man lying in the back who’s already starting to recover since I gave him the cure last night,” Marco replied heatedly.

“If that’s so, let me see this man,” the officer responded.   He motioned Marco to lead him through the door, as a pair of soldiers stood guard over the interior of the shop.

“Goodness, what’s this?” Gabrielle said as she saw Marco’s escort in the hall.

“This soldier wants to see Glaze,” Marco said.  “He wants to see a man recovering from the plague.”

They opened the door to the work room, where they found Mirra bent over her brother, tending to him.  “He’s getting better, Marco,” she said cheerily, then stood up hastily in surprise when she saw the officer enter the room with the apprentice alchemist.

“My lady,” he said smoothly, taking her hand and bowing over it to kiss it, “pardon my intrusion.  I’m here to verify that this boy has a treatment for the plague.”

“My brother was dying last night, when Marco gave him the new cure he created,” Mirra said proudly, not even aware that the officer still held her hand.  “And you can see how much better he’s gotten.  He stopped coughing, he’s not so pale, and he’s no longer passing any blood that we can see so far.  He’s resting comfortably now.”

“I’m sure your kind care is responsible for his fortune,” the officer told her.

“I will accept for now that your cure is real,” he turned to Marco as he finally released Mirra’s hand.  “I will take several doses of it with me to the Duke’s palace to give to our own ill folks.  Package them up for me,” he told Marco in a pre-emptory tone.

“I’ll be out front with my men waiting for the delivery,” he said.  “And I am at your service, my lady,” he told Mirra.  “If you need anything, tell the palace to send Captain Kilson.”  And with that he exited from the room.

Marco raised an eyebrow at Mirra, who blushed prettily.  “Excuse me while I package up these cures for the palace, my lady,” he told her with a grin, then went to the work bench and filled two jars with the mixed elements of the cure.

“This one has enough for six people,” Marco told the captain.  “Give each of the six an equal share,” he said as he handed over the liquid portion of the cure.

“Then add this one to a pint of water, and wait a couple of minutes after they swallow the first part, and give each of the six an equal portion of this.  Don’t mix the two together; serve them separately,” he emphasized to the officer.

The man curtly nodded his head.

“Captain, could you leave some men here to control the crowd outside?” Marco asked.  “I’m going to run out of this batch of the cure soon, and I’m afraid of what may happen,” he explained.

“Why will you run out?” Kilson asked.

“I can only make a batch that is so big,” Marco said.  “I’ll mix up another one, but it’ll take some time, and then I’ll be out of ingredients anyway.  By nightfall I won’t have any more.”

“We’ll make sure you have all the ingredients you need,” the captain said importantly as Mirra came into the room.  “Tell me what you need and I’ll send a squad out to pick it up.”

Marco hurriedly wrote down several items that he thought would be available in the warehouses along the harbor, and watched as Kilson left the shop, and the ordinary customers were allowed to come desperately flooding in once again.

As Marco had expected, he ran out of the cures that he had mixed up in the morning.  The crowd of those waiting to obtain the cure grew immediately unruly, as Marco tried to reassure them that more would be forthcoming.  The soldiers in the square were forced to disperse the milling mass of desperate people, though Marco told them that he would be able to start disbursing more within two hours.

He felt exhausted.  Though it was only late afternoon, he had spent the entire day working to give out the cure to the hundreds of people who had already passed through the front of the shop.  Additionally, he had slept very little the night before while preparing the cure for Glaze.

Despite his exhaustion, he went back to the work room and again sat down to use the last of the ingredients that Marches had in stock, hurrying through the process of grinding and mixing first one part of the cure, and then the other.  As he sat crouched over his workbench he heard a noise behind him, and he turned to see that Mirra’s brother Glaze was awake, and propped up on an elbow, looking around in confusion.

“Where am I?” the young man asked.

“Let me get Mirra for you,” Marco said hurriedly and he bolted out of the room calling for the girl to come quickly.

“Glaze is awake!” he told her excitedly in the hallway as she came running from the kitchen in response to his shout.

“Oh Marco!  That’s wonderful!” she said as she leapt at him and hugged him tightly, then followed him back to the work shop.

Marco listened to the two siblings talk as he resumed composing the important cure medication.  He sat and watched the liquid slowly flow through the filtration process, and suddenly realized a problem he was bumping into – he was almost out of jars and bottles to pour the cure into!

He hurried out into the square to explain to the guards who were there.  A cheer arose from the crowd when the shop door opened.  “Tell everyone they have to bring their own pots and jars for me to put the medicine in,” Marco instructed.  “I’m almost out of containers.”

“You better tell them yourself,” one of the guards advised.  “They’ll believe anything that comes from you.”

Marco stood back and looked around at the people who were watching him intently.  He looked at the guard, who nodded at him.

“Quiet, and listen!” the guard shouted out a command, and as the other guards took up the call, the crowd grew quieter.

“I will have more of the treatment ready in just a little while,” Marco shouted as loudly as he could, then stopped in surprise as the crowd erupted in an outburst of cheering.   He waited for the shouts to die down.  “I’m running out of jars to put the cure in.  Please bring your own – any two pots or pans or jars or cups.  Just bring two with you to the shop, and we’ll give you a dose,” he turned away from the crowd and walked back to the shop as cheers and applause followed him in.

“May I give Glaze something to eat, Marco?” Mirra asked when he came back to the work shop.  “He says he feels hungry.”

Marco looked at the man, who was now sitting up, and nodded his head.  He felt weariness starting to grind him down, though he knew he had much more to do.

He started distributing more of the plague cure a half hour later, and a supply of new materials to make more of the cure arrived an hour after that, personally delivered by Captain Kilson, who explained the search for the materials in detail to Mirra as Marco worked away.

The front doors to the shop closed long after dark that night.  Even though Marco had distributed hundreds of cures to the residents of the city, the square had grown even more crowded with new people flocking there as word of Marco’s miracle spread.   He had been forced to go out and address the crowd to promise more medicine before closing down, so that a riot did not break out among those disappointed to not have procured a treatment.

“Go upstairs and get some rest,” Mirra told him as he locked the door behind him.  “I’ll bring some food up to you in a bit.  Glaze is going to spend the night with us here.  Gabrielle has an extra bedroom on the second floor he can use.”

Marco trudged up the staircase and flopped down on his bed, then lay there in a semi-comatose state until he suddenly felt Mirra tugging his boots off of his feet.  “We’ll get you comfortable, and then get you fed, and then you can go to sleep,” she said affectionately, and she did just those things before Marco fell into a sound slumber.

He awoke the next morning with Mirra’s soft body pressed against his in the narrow bed, and he smiled a gentle smile of happiness.  Afterwards, he didn’t remember many other things about the next few days.  His life became a blurry process of making and distributing his cure for the plague.  At one point he stopped as an official from the Duke’s palace came to recognize him and the shop and to give him an honorary title, but other than that, for several days in a row Marco spend sixteen to twenty hours each day working to save the lives of the people of the city, relying on Mirra and Gabrielle to also work at the front counter distributing the doses of cures that he prepared continually.  And every morning he awoke to Mirra, either sleeping beside him in his bed or smiling at him to announce that breakfast was prepared and waiting.

The demand for his medicine began to decline after that, as fewer and fewer new cases of the plague occurred in Barcelon.  Five days later, after a fortnight of Marco’s heroic efforts, he was able to close the doors to the shop at a reasonable hour, and still had some of the curative medicine unclaimed in the workroom, ready to be handed out the next morning.