Apothecary Melchior and the Ghost of Rataskaevu Street (12 page)

‘It happened there so long ago,' said Keterlyn. ‘Some people say a hundred, some say fifty years ago, but most of them agree that it happened since the Order's been in power.'

‘So it certainly can't have been a hundred years ago then,' said Melchior quietly. ‘And what do people say?'

‘Well, everybody's heard a slightly different version of the story, from their grandmother or some old town guard or whoever. But generally the tale is much the same, only differing in a few details.'

‘Every rumour has a grain of truth in it, they say – never mind that every bit of gossip and every gossiper distorts it slightly. But go on, woman.'

And Keterlyn told him. The house was said to have been built long ago by a rich merchant, Cristian Unterrainer by name. Some said that he was already an elderly man but some maintained that
he wasn't that old. He came to Tallinn accompanied by his wife. One version of the story is that she was a beautiful and virtuous woman, younger than her husband, a caring and fine wife who wanted to be loyal to him, love him truly and deeply and bear him many children. The husband, though, treated her badly. The man took his wife only occasionally, and from behind, not as a woman wants her husband to do. This man is said to have drunk a lot of ale, and that made him very cruel. He beat his wife with a whip and wanted sex with her only by force, standing up and beating her at the same time and making her sick, because that was the only way he could become aroused.

‘Bizarre tales,' remarked Melchior. ‘Do you know who witnessed these goings-on or who knew about them?'

‘Just people talking,' said Keterlyn with a smile. ‘And don't you know that there hasn't been a rumour unless there's been a witness?'

‘All right, tell me more.'

‘They go on to say that this virtuous woman was terribly unhappy and cried bitter tears when she thought no one was looking. They say she went to church and prayed to the saints and the Virgin Mary to change her husband's ways so that she wouldn't have to suffer. One monk, though, happened to overhear her prayers …'

‘A Dominican?' asked Melchior.

‘Just so, and a couple of older women even knew his name – it was Abelard or Adelbert or something like that. And this mendicant brother was a young – so some say – charming and handsome man, who had not joined the Dominicans of his own free will. He was the fifth son in his family, and he'd been given over to the Dominicans more or less by force to make a servant of God out of him. And when he heard this young lady's complaints and prayers he was overcome with pity, and he addressed her. So they started talking until they became friends, and from friends they became lovers.'

‘Oh, good heavens,' sighed Melchior. ‘I think I've heard this one. A bit differently, though.'

‘So when the young monk went around town with his alms-basket and he reached Rataskaevu Street he would always go to that nice woman's place, and – so people say – they'd take their clothes off in front of the inglenook and start making love under the crucifix on the wall, so that one was breaking his monk's vow and the other her holy sacrament of marriage.'

‘You often hear stories like that,' opined Melchior. ‘Which means that they happen often, too – not that I want to condemn anybody.'

‘This tale is a bit different,' Keterlyn went on, ‘although there are stories that are similar in some ways but different in others. But it's getting late, and I'd rather continue with this some other time.'

No matter how Melchior pleaded, Keterlyn remained firm. The children had to be washed and put to bed, Melchior had to close the pharmacy, so there was no time for chatting just then. Only hours later, as the tender dusk of an August evening descended over Tallinn and Melchior and Keterlyn were heading for bed, did his wife take up the story again.

‘Another version of the story is that the wife of Unterrainer the merchant wasn't so young and virtuous at all. Rather, she was a mature woman who hadn't borne her husband any children because that blessing had not been granted by God –'

‘At this point I would say, my dear,' remarked Melchior, ‘that people don't always know the facts about such matters. Quite a few physicians have written that it isn't always the woman's fault, but it might also depend on the man.'

‘Well, whatever, I'm only telling you the gossip. Anyway, Unterrainer didn't want to sleep with his wife any more, but the wife was of the age when she doesn't think of much else but getting together with a man because she feels a tickling between her legs and she's like a cat on heat … You understand, of course, dear husband, that I'm only telling you what –'

‘What the gossip says. Yes, of course. Carry on,' interrupted Melchior.

The twins were asleep in their cradle, and he lifted the candelabra and a jug of water on to a little table beside the marriage
bed. Keterlyn sat on the edge of the bed and shook her hair free from under its coif.

‘I heard that when the woman saw the young monk in the street with his alms-box she remembered some rumour about him being particularly well endowed …'

‘Oh, my dear, do women really talk about things like that among themselves?' said Melchior, suppressing laughter.

‘I told you yesterday you wouldn't want to know what women talk about in the
saun.
I was chatting in the bathhouse, and it doesn't take much to get women started on ghosts and suchlike – or anything a bit indecent.'

‘A bit
indecent,' exclaimed Melchior with a sigh. ‘But carry on, I won't interrupt you any more.'

‘It's better if you don't interrupt, otherwise I won't go on,' she replied and then continued. ‘So, young Abelard or Adelbert turned up with his alms-basket in Mäealune Street – as it was called before the well was dug – and our cunning and shameless Mrs Unterrainer had kindly invited him inside, because she had a very generous donation to make to the young monk, but all the while she was wondering whether young Abelard had as big a tool under his cassock as she'd heard. And so the woman poured the monk some sweet wine and opened up her dress a little in a suggestive way, like this …'

‘That was a very suggestive thing to do,' agreed Melchior.

Keterlyn loosened the ribbon that held her dress together at the breast, sat closer to her husband and pulled her dress up above the knees.

‘Very,' nodded his wife. ‘She drove that monk wild in every way, hoping that the rumour was true, that young Abelard hadn't gone into the monastery of his own free will and that he wouldn't hold tenaciously to his monkish vows. So then, to lure the monk, she casually let the hem of her dress ride up and shamelessly showed her legs, so the young man gasped for air. And then she said that what she wanted to donate to Abelard was the joy of sex because it wasn't a sin when a man and a woman both want it together and
they get pleasure from it. And then she said that while she might be older than the monk her womb was like a young virgin's, narrow and smooth, because as she hadn't borne any fruit she had never given birth. And when she'd enticed the monk in that way and revealed her body from under her clothes Abelard couldn't control himself any longer, and from beneath his habit the reason she had lured him inside in the first place appeared to be stirring. So then, they say, what the woman saw really pleased her because those tales about him all turned out to be true. Under the monk's habit a big strong tree was growing, and when she saw it the woman grabbed it in her hands, and Abelard couldn't find the strength to resist because the pleasures of love probably weren't unknown to him. And what do I see, Melchior? It seems that your resistance isn't any stronger than Abelard's was, not at all.' Keterlyn blew out the candle, and in the last glimmer of light Melchior saw her taking off her dress.

‘Something tells me that young Abelard started visiting that house,' he persisted.

‘Oh, they do say that. That lustful, disreputable woman caught him in her snare so that every day, when the merchant Unterrainer wasn't at home, Abelard just happened to come by with his alms-basket and into the house, and they did all sorts of immoral things, standing up and lying down, and got a lot of pleasure out of it. And something that is called love grew between them, for what else is it when a man and a woman get happiness from touching each other?'

‘You don't seem to condemn what they did.'

‘Who am I to have the right to do that?'

‘You have the right because this story didn't come to a good end, and God punished them for their sin,' opined Melchior.

‘They really do say that. Their immorality didn't go unnoticed by the townsfolk, and somebody must have whispered something to the husband, and so one day Unterrainer came home when his wife and Abelard were stark naked. Apparently she was in the monk's lap like a rider on a horse, and he was sitting on the chair where the merchant usually took his breakfast.'

Keterlyn turned her husband, who was also already undressed, on to his back and sat facing him to ride him.

‘Go on,' ordered Melchior.

‘If you really want me to,' responded his wife. ‘This story has a horrible ending. When the merchant saw what his wife was doing with the monk, they say he pulled the woman off the monk, grabbed a sword and chopped the monk's big dick off right there and then. And then he tied them both to the chair and stuffed the man's prick into the woman's mouth. Then he left them there to die, one to bleed to death and the other to waste away from hunger. And he went into town and carried on doing his business as if nothing had happened. If anyone asked, he'd say that his wife had gone on a pilgrimage to the lands of the Bishop of Riga, and he didn't have to say anything about the young monk because no one ever asked him. But he enjoyed every moment he was at home, watching his wife and the monk getting weaker and weaker every hour, every day, the life ebbing out of them. And when the time finally came, he walled them both in the cellar, sold his house and left Tallinn for good. But those souls who died in sin and who were buried alive stayed on to haunt the house.'

They didn't talk any more about ghosts that night.

And as Keterlyn moaned with ecstasy at her husband's touch her voice flew out the open window and on to Rataskaevu Street, passing from house to house and delicately drifting even into the Unterrainer house before finally dying away.

T
ODAY IS THE
funeral of Laurentz Bruys. Laurentz Bruys is dead. I did not have a chance to talk to him before he died. Those three sentences were the first and only ones to enter Arend Goswin's head on waking. He lay in bed under the covers and thought over those three statements and felt his soul filled with torment, pain and untameable anguish. Bruys's death had been a very painful blow to him. It had come too soon and should not have happened that way. Bruys should not have died like that. Good Lord, it wasn't fair.

He had not slept well – in fact, he had been tossed between dozing and a half-waking state the whole night, his dreams and his waking thoughts entangled. His spirit pained him and wouldn't let him rest.

The following winter Arend Goswin would be seventy years old, and the past few decades had been haunted by his relationship with Laurentz Bruys. All this time – and how time flies much faster when you're getting old – not a day had passed when Arend Goswin hadn't thought of Bruys and said prayers that the man would not die yet, that they would have time to talk face to face over old sins, that Goswin would be able to face his own death with a peaceful heart.

But, no, that time had not been granted to them.

In the eyes of the townspeople and the Great Guild they had been reconciled – oh, of course. At feasts, at Christmas and on
Council business they would exchange a couple of sentences; they were polite, and no one would say they were mortal enemies. But they were both stubborn old men; they had exchanged the gestures and statements that were publicly expected of them, but both knew that there had been no full reconciliation and there never would be if they did not sit and talk sincerely about what had happened twenty-five years before.

It felt like yesterday, thought Arend Goswin, stretching out in the bed, and his heart was tugged by a painful spasm. Dorothea. He was sure that Dorothea had never left, that the girl's soul was still hovering over the house, that she approved all her father's thoughts and deeds. And when he thought of his daughter he imagined her talking and watching what happened in the house. The girl had been seventeen then, and she did not grow older in death. Dorothea would be eternally seventeen, even though Annlin, who sometimes chatted with the old non-German women at the market and elsewhere, would say that if children die – and if they stay to haunt the house – then they, too, live through a human lifespan and grow old. No. Arend Goswin did not believe that. If Dorothea was still present in the house, then she was seventeen years old and no older.

These were painful thoughts, but Goswin had grown accustomed to them. He forced himself upright in the bed, fumbled for the wooden hammer beside the night-table and struck the wall hard with it a couple of times. He waited a moment until the faithful Annlin appeared at the door.

‘You called, sir?' she asked obediently.

‘Oh, woman, since when has my knocking meant anything else?' grumbled Goswin. ‘Did you go to the market?'

‘You want to hear the news, sir?' ventured the woman. ‘What people are saying about the killing?'

‘First of all, sir wants a warm foot bath. Did you buy oats? I have a long day today, a lot of walking and a lot of things to do.'

Annlin nodded. Yes, she knew. The funeral. For some years now her Master's feet had been hurting him, and, as Melchior had
recommended, they needed to be soaked in boiled oat water. Since cock-crow this morning she had been boiling the oats, and the warm water now awaited her Master.