Prophet

by Mark J Rose

  “Righteous, maddening people,” Franklin said. “I’ve done my penance with them.”

  “She’s beautiful—rides horses.”

  Franklin grinned and looked like he was going to say more, but Charity returned and they watched her set ceramic cups of water on the table. Matt pulled out two small waxed-parchment packets containing two tablets each. Despite not being able to synthesize aspirin in large enough quantities to support his business, he’d been able to come up with enough to try out a number of prototypes of his version of Alka-Seltzer, which he promptly named Miller Head and Stomach Tablets. Matt pulled the cups close and dropped two tablets into each. The water began fizzing vigorously.

  Franklin watched in amazement. “You certainly know how to put on a show.”

  “Wait for it to stop fizzing,” Matt instructed. “It makes you feel better even if you’re not in pain.” Matt doubted Franklin was listening. He’d been too busy watching the bubbles. Matt swirled his cup and gulped the liquid until it was gone. When he was finished, he said, “It doesn’t taste as good as I’d like.”

  Franklin stared at his glass. It was no longer fizzing. He picked it up, swirled it like Matt had, and drank. “Limes and mint,” Franklin said, puckering his mouth. “Now what?”

  “It doesn’t take long,” Matt said confidently. “Your bones will feel loose for the rest of the day.”

  “That gives us plenty of time to finish these other drinks, then,” Franklin said. “Where’re you living?”

  “South of Market. I’m renting a room from a candle maker by the name of Baker—”

  “I can feel the medicine working already,” Franklin interrupted. “It’s like having brandy, but keeping your wits.”

  “Now if I can only make enough to sell. I have two years to make my fortune and claim my bride.”

  “Two years?”

  Matt wasn’t sure whether that was long or short in Franklin’s mind. “Kind of. Her father actually said no,” Matt explained. “I agreed with her in secret.”

  “Business ventures are never guaranteed,” Franklin said.

  Matt nodded. “I’m already having trouble.”

  “Beautiful ladies are bewitching,” Franklin observed. He looked off into the distance, obviously thinking of someone in particular.

  Matt smiled as he remembered Franklin’s reputation as a womanizer, but also the fact that he had become somewhat less successful at it as he got on in years. Franklin’s libido had remained strong throughout his life.

  “I’ll sleep well tonight,” Franklin yawned. He looked over at the large clock in the center of the room. “It’s my bedtime.”

  Matt nodded. “I’d enjoy meeting with you again sometime.”

  Franklin raised his finger in reply. He stood up, walked to the bar, borrowed a quill that had been sitting there in a jar of ink, and wrote on a piece of parchment. He handed his written address to Matt as he came back to the table. Franklin remained standing as pulled on his jacket, then put money on the table, shook Matt’s hand, turned, and walked out the door.

  Matt sat there for a while, replaying his conversation with one of the most famous men in American history. He waved for Charity to bring him another ale and she came over smiling to set the drink down.

  “You spoke long with Dr. Franklin,” she observed.

  “And I owe it all to you,” Matt replied.

  “Remember me, then, when you’re famous for your philosophy,” she said, giving him a flirty smile. “Or tonight when you go back to your lonely room.” She turned with a swish of her dress to resume her place behind the bar. She glanced toward him only once more and then focused on her other customers. Matt sipped slowly at his ale, content to ponder the bubbles as they moved through the liquid.

  23

  The Thaw

  It took almost five days for the snow to melt enough to bring traffic back to the Philadelphia streets. Matt had spent the mornings away from the city riding Thunder, and the afternoons helping the Bakers remove candles from drying racks and pack them into slotted wooden crates for delivery. Matt considered the work a fair trade for the three meals they were feeding him and also the fact that they were giving him as many bayberry candles as he could carry. Mr. Baker handed him a box every time he left the factory.

  Matt carried one of these boxes with him to the laboratory when he finally was able to go. When he arrived, he pushed snow away from the door with the old shovel he kept on the porch. The laboratory was one block from Market Street and not what he considered a prime location, but for now it was functional and the rent was cheap. Despite being off the main drag, he was selling a number of items each week, which paid for rent and a little more besides. He had painted a large sign with “Grace Apothecary” in white and nailed it high up on the storefront. He thought it was clever. Each time he walked up to the building he was reminded of why he came to work, and everyone else thought it was just a good Christian name for a business.

  Matt set up a small retail store in front and used the two other rooms as laboratories. The storefront had an apothecary counter with medicines on the back shelf. He’d stocked the shelves with Benjamin Scott’s Richmond apothecary in mind, but only chose medicines he thought had some scientific basis for their healing properties. He kept an empty jar labeled “Leeches” to make everyone comfortable, but all inquiries yielded the same explanation: “I’ve just run out.” Strangely enough, he was making a living as an apothecary, though it wasn’t exactly what he considered Grace Taylor money. He’d need to be more than a store owner to impress her father.

  It took Matt almost two weeks to build a tablet press, and although he wasn’t able to synthesize the active ingredient in aspirin in sufficient quantities to sell, he was able to make fizzing antacid tablets, which he labeled “Dyspepsia Medicine.”

  Matt also sold dental supplies. He contracted with a local brush maker for wooden horsehair toothbrushes, and he concocted a mint-flavored toothpaste that he sold in round tins alongside the brushes. There was also a supply of toothpicks and silk dental floss. Matt thought the silk floss was much too expensive, but it still managed to sell to customers who were in distress from food caught in their teeth. The toothpaste was sweetened with a xylitol syrup extract he obtained by boiling cornhusks. From what he could remember from biochemistry class, the xylitol shouldn’t cause tooth decay. Both the antacids and the dental supplies came with instructions he ordered from a local printer.

  A bell on the front door alerted Matt when patrons came in. When there were no customers, he did experiments in the back. He was working on penicillin, the production of which was still a complete mystery. When Matt arrived in Philadelphia, he bought a couple crates of cantaloupes, which he’d allowed to mold in ten covered ceramic crocks. He collected and dried the mold on a weekly basis and used alcohol to extract from it a brown powder. At best, the powder was composed of four different compounds, one or two that he hoped were some form of penicillin. The mixture had antibiotic properties, but he wasn’t confident enough to ingest any to test its safety.

  Every modern chemist knew the story of penicillin. Its discovery was credited to Sir Alexander Fleming in 1928, but it wasn’t until World War II that it could be produced on a large scale. Fleming discovered penicillin when he noticed that bacteria cultures contaminated with mold had areas where the bacteria wouldn’t grow. Simple bread mold contained penicillin, but other molds gave a higher yield.

  Matt’s immediate concern with the “biotech” section of his operation was that the moldy cantaloupes smelled. The door had to remain shut or the odor would travel into the front room and chase customers away. Matt only went into the crock room after the shop was closed, and even then only to collect mold and leave as quickly as possible. He tried to keep it very clean, in part due to his guilt at the concern that he might be doing permanent structural damage to the building.

  Matt had been gone for days because of the snow, so he knew his harvest was overdue. The fermenting crocks
were warm despite the relatively cold temperature in this back room. He locked the front door, hoping not to be interrupted. He forced himself to be as patient as possible when customers entered his store, even though in most cases it was during some crucial step in his experiments.

  Matt went into the back room, opened the door quickly, and shut it behind him. He was confronted by the smell of fifty putrid and rotting cantaloupes. He scraped the mold from the crocks, capped them, and placed the brown spores on a drying tray. Once dry, ethanol would be used to extract the mold, and then the ethanol would be allowed to evaporate. The resulting brown powder was then transferred into a covered collection tin. Matt was always in some state of holding his breath in the cantaloupe room, so when he was finally able to get out, he inhaled deeply.

  The aspirin synthesis room was tidy by comparison and much easier on the nose. He was trying to convert a supply of willow bark into aspirin. In his own time, freshman chemistry majors routinely made aspirin in a simple lab experiment, but it was elusive for Matt because he had no eighteenth-century source of acetic anhydride. He had burned through a fortune in willow bark over the last four months trying to get the reaction right.

  Matt looked at all the chemistry glassware, thinking maybe he should try again today, but instead he went to the front room and started straightening the store. He was restocking the toothbrush display when a man rushed through the front door.

  “You Matthew Miller?”

  Matt stepped back, wondering if he was sent by Levi Payne, then quickly decided that this stranger didn’t have the persona of an assassin.

  “Dr. Franklin said you had medicine that would cure my daughter’s blood poisoning,” the man said, gazing out the window into the street. “Franklin said you were on Market. It took forever to find you.”

  “I’d have to see your daughter to know what she has,” Matt replied.

  The man returned his gaze to Matt. “She has a corruption,” he said. “They say she’ll be dead in days.” His eyes went glassy with tears.

  Matt wanted to help this man, but he wasn’t sure if he should. He had some untested brown powder that might or might not be penicillin, and that might work if the girl had a bacterial infection. The last thing he wanted to do was try it for the first time on a child. “There’s got to be someone else in the city that can help you.”

  “Are any of you worth your salt?” the man replied, suddenly very angry. He put his hand on the doorknob. “You’re all useless lunatics.”

  Matt found himself unexpectedly angry at the injustice of the man’s unfounded pronouncement, but then he remembered Benjamin Scott, who was thoroughly incompetent. The vision of that bumbling apothecary was enough to make Matt want to change this stranger’s opinion of science. The words came out before he even had a rational plan. “I already know this is a mistake,” he said, more to himself. “You better be prepared for the worst.”

  The man looked at his hand on the doorknob. “How much worse can it be?” he replied quietly. He took his hand off the door and used his thumb and forefinger to massage his swollen red eyes.

  “I’ll get my things,” Matt said. He hurried into the back room, pulled down the tin of brown powder he’d isolated from the cantaloupe mold, grabbed three doses of homemade Alka-Seltzer, and gathered containers for mixing and stirring. He packed them into a leather case and followed the man out. Matt turned the sign on the front door to “CLOSED” and locked it behind him. He stepped into a carriage that was warm inside.

  “I’m Phillip Ricken,” the man said. “The others proclaimed there was naught we could do but pray.”

  “I’d pray as well,” Matt replied.

  24

  Isabelle

  It was a ten-minute carriage ride to a large colonial mansion. Phillip Ricken leaped out as he motioned Matt to follow. Matt jumped to the ground and then turned around to pull his case from the carriage floor. Ricken was already waiting for him halfway to the house.

  “It’s this way,” he called, waving Matt forward.

  Matt took a deep breath and reminded himself of the man’s situation, and then he did his best to demonstrate that he, too, was hurrying.

  The mansion’s entry was as grand and dramatic as Matt expected from the outside. Two spacious rooms with richly colored furniture to the left and right were split by an elaborate multilevel staircase that led up to the second floor. Ricken motioned Matt to hurry upstairs. Two black servants in livery watched them as they climbed. Matt followed Ricken into the second bedroom on the top floor. The bed, located near an open window, seemed small amid the vast room and the other furniture. A well-dressed middle-aged woman with grey-brown hair stood over her sleeping daughter. It was too cold in the room to be comfortable.

  The woman moved to meet them as they entered. Her colorless face contrasted with her red-rimmed eyes. It looked like she’d been crying. “She’s slipping away.”

  Matt nodded. “It’s too cold in here.”

  “She’s has a fever and falling sickness,” Ricken replied. “The cold prevents the palpitations.” Ricken stepped to his daughter’s bedside and roused her gently with his hand. “I’ve brought a doctor who can cure you,” he said.

  “No more leeches,” she whispered hoarsely.

  “No more leeches,” he replied. “Mr. Miller, this is Isabelle.”

  “Good day, Mr. Miller,” Isabelle whispered. She smiled painfully. “I’m quite ill.”

  “I can see that,” Matt said. She was about fifteen, on the edge of being a young woman. Matt forced himself to put a warm expression on his face and then he turned to speak to her parents. “Tell me what’s wrong, exactly.”

  “She cut herself at the stable,” her father explained. “We thought naught of it, but then it became red and the redness grew.” He reached down to move the bedcovers and the nightgown away from his daughter’s leg. There was a scabbed-over cut surrounded by angry red splotches that traveled to her trunk.

  Matt briefly thought of a Hemingway story called “The Snows of Kilimanjaro,” about a man who is slowly dying from blood poisoning contracted from an untreated cut.

  “It’s a bacterial infection,” he said. “Small creatures are in the wound and have begun to grow inside her.”

  “Like worms?” Ricken asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Can you cure this disease?”

  “I’ve a medicine that might work,” Matt said, “but it could make her sicker.”

  “Will she get better without it?” Ricken asked.

  “I doubt it,” Matt replied. The red rash was moving up into her abdomen. Matt couldn’t remember if dying from blood poisoning had anything to do with the infection finally reaching the internal organs or the heart, or if that was just an urban legend. Matt motioned for the man and his wife to follow him out of the room. He shut the door behind them and spoke in a low voice.

  “I’m going to give her something that will reduce her fever,” he said. “Then I’ll give her a second medicine that may cure her disease. It might make her very sick at first and could even kill her. Franklin should never have told you about me.”

  The father looked at his wife and she nodded. “Give it to her,” he said. “I can’t—we can’t lose her.” His voice was cracking. The man crossed himself. “It’s in His hands.”

  “Have others died from this medicine?” the mother asked Matt.

  “Yes,” Matt lied. “But some have been cured.”

  “Then give it to her,” she said calmly.

  Her resolve pushed Matt past his doubts. “I need a cup of water for now, and another cup filled with apple cider as soon as you can get it.” He turned away from her and stepped back into the room to see Isabelle sleeping. Looking up, he silently prayed as he questioned both higher intelligence and his own conscience as to whether he was doing the right thing in testing an unknown drug mixture on a teenager.

  The mother returned with the glass of water and Isabelle struggled to open her eyes. Matt felt her f
orehead. She was burning up. He took the glass of water, set it on the side table, and pulled out the same tablets he had shared with Franklin. He dropped them into the water. The sound of fizzing echoed from the glass.

  “Is that medicine?” she asked.

  Matt nodded. “It’s the first one. You get the second one later. Your insides won’t feel very good either way. Can you be brave?”

  “I think,” she replied softly.

  Matt found himself starting to make deals with God. He’d even forgive Levi Payne. He realized what he was doing and shut the thoughts down. Not likely God makes these kind of deals. Better that he just asked for guidance. He knew the aspirin would work, but the crude brown mixture would probably make her sick, even if it did eventually cure her.

  Matt handed her the glass. “Drink this all down. I don’t want to hear about how bad it tastes.” The girl reached up and started drinking. She sipped it at first and then drank almost all of it on the second try. She paused and then finished what was left.

  “Better than leeches,” she muttered.

  “I’m going to step out for a moment,” Matt said. “You can talk to your mother about what you want to do when you’re healthy again.”

  “Fine,” she breathed.

  Matt turned around, grabbed his bag, went into the hall, and stood above the first step of the staircase. He set the dial on his watch for thirty minutes, which was about enough time for the aspirin to kick in. One of the servants brought a cup of cider, and Matt walked back downstairs with it, balancing it gently in his hand. He set the cup down on the kitchen table, grabbed another from a rack on the wall, and pulled out the can of brown powder he’d extracted from the cantaloupe mold.

  From the crude analysis he’d done, he knew it was composed mostly of four molecules, along with whatever made it brown. Pure drug was usually white, which meant that even if this mixture was composed of penicillin and related compounds, there was still some unknown toxic muck in there. He had to be prepared for the girl to have a strong reaction, maybe convulsions or vomiting, and for dealing with the parents when this happened.