Apothecary Melchior and the Ghost of Rataskaevu Street (23 page)

‘You talk then, and I'll see whether I throw you out or not,' said Goswin. ‘But I don't take anything for free. If you don't want money then I'll have a bottle of Nuremberg malmsey that I just got off the ship sent to you.'

‘You're too kind, sir,' replied Melchior, bowing, ‘and I shan't say no to a good wine. And if we've agreed on a trade of that nature then I'll come straight to the point. I wanted to ask you about the Rataskaevu Street Ghost. You live right next to the Unterrainer
house, which is where there are supposed to have been hauntings.'

‘And why do you want to know that?' Was Goswin slightly alarmed, or did it just seem so to the Apothecary?

Melchior told him why. Three people who had said they had seen the ghost had swiftly died in unfortunate ways. One whore, who had previously been a housekeeper for Master Bruys, one Flemish painter, who had painted Master Goswin's own portrait, and, most recently, Grote the Master of the Quad Dack Tower, who before his death had wished to speak to Master Bruys about something.

‘And I am perplexed,' declared Melchior. ‘This sort of coincidence is hard to regard as just a matter of chance. It seems to me that there's some link between them, and since I myself live on this street, my wife lives here and my children play on this street, I started to wonder what people remember and know about the haunting of the house next door to you. I hear various stories, but one thing seems certain, seventy years ago a terrible sin and a murder were committed at the Unterrainer house, and the shadows of that horror still pursue people today. So, that was my other motive. Do you know anything? Do you remember the Flemish painter de Zwarte mentioning anything about a ghost? Can you raise the veil of secrecy on any of this? And – and I know this is a difficult question – can you guess how this ghost might be connected with Master Bruys?'

Goswin was silent for a long time, looking thoughtfully at Melchior. His face was doleful, and it was as if a shadow of anger passed over it.

‘You have many questions, Wakenstede,' he said finally.

‘And if you don't wish to answer them, sir, I'll leave immediately with my apologies.'

‘No, no, sit down,' demanded Goswin. ‘Maybe I can help you, maybe not, but you have many questions, and I don't know where to begin.'

‘The house next door,' offered Melchior cautiously, ‘which is said to be haunted. Have you perhaps seen or heard something at some
time? They say that a woman who had been immured alive was found in the cellar. She had committed a sin with a monk. The monk died among the Dominicans, but the spirit of that woman is supposed to be haunting it to this day.'

‘Yes, those stories,' said Goswin slowly. ‘Some say that that monk was left to die with the woman … some that he had something chopped off him.'

Melchior nodded. ‘Yes, there are various stories – but that monk rests in the Dominican cemetery.'

‘Ah, so,' whispered Goswin. He sank into thought and considered for a while then shook his head, saying, ‘No, Apothecary, I've never seen any ghost at the house next door. Yes, I've heard talk of it, but … I haven't seen it. I've lived in this house for over forty years, and I don't believe those stories. Maybe a terrible bloodbath did take place there, and people talk of it perhaps, but it's not worth seeing connections where there aren't any.'

‘You don't believe in ghosts, sir?' asked Melchior. ‘That the spirit of a person who died in horrible agony can stay in a place to haunt it? Men of the Church also say that after death the soul goes either to Heaven or to purgatory, and yet there are cases known where after death … something is seen or heard.'

‘That is memory,' said Goswin rapidly and very testily. ‘It's the memory of a person, his spirit, which does not leave his home. It's not some evil ghost cursing others to death; it's a happy spirit. It's an angel which watches over its nearest and dearest and whispers at night in their ears that it loves them and praises everything they've taken as advice. The saints also appear to people but not an ordinary person of flesh and blood whom God has called to Himself.'

‘I can only agree with you, sir,' nodded Melchior. ‘So you do still believe that after death a person can come back to his loved ones? You have witnessed that?'

‘I have buried four children and a wife, Wakenstede, and I believe quite firmly that when they have gone on from the threshold to Paradise they have come to look at their father and husband,
whispered into his ear in the night that all is now well, Christ the Lord has saved them from earthly travails. But if you want to tell me that that is one and the same thing as the ghost of some whore who can find no peace after death and leads people to their deaths then …' He was agitated. His sad, canine face had become fiery. Foam sprayed from his mouth, and his eyes had turned fierce.

‘No, I didn't mean anything like that,' Melchior hurried to assure him. ‘And I beg your pardon if my talk has aroused painful memories for you. Magistrate Dorn has told me what happened to your daughter, and I have heard what pain you have had to live through. Perhaps you know, Mr Goswin, that I have children, too, and my heart is torn with anguish when I have to imagine …' He fell silent. He looked meaningfully at Master Goswin's face and saw rage turning to sadness there.

‘Yes, you have children,' whispered Goswin. ‘Yes, I know.' Then he was silent. His doleful eyes filled with tears.

‘Agatha and Melchior,' added Melchior. ‘In our family it has been that way for centuries; the eldest son takes the name Melchior from his father. And perhaps you also remember my father, whose name was also Melchior? He was the apothecary here in this town, and he must have been so at the time when …' Melchior ended the sentence abruptly, as if he wanted to say something more but had to stop at the last moment. Those were painful times and things that he wanted to hear about.

‘Yes, I remember,' said Arend Goswin very quietly. ‘I remember him very well. I bought a medicine from him for Dorothea's fever when she was very small. She was extremely hot and rambling, and she couldn't sleep. The fever was burning the life out of her. It had been a very warm autumn. There was a fetid smell all around, and everyone was sick because the air was thick with disease –'

‘That would certainly have been a mixture of bay cooked in wine, aloe juice and liquorice,' interjected Melchior. ‘My father taught me that recipe, and nothing works better against fever. A little horehound herb mixed in, and it is bound to help. So my father treated … Dorothea?'

The merchant raised his gaze. There was only pain and sorrow to be seen there.

‘Dorothea,' he whispered.
‘She is still here.
She has never left here.
This
is her home and not the unmarked grave far away at the back edge of St Barbara's Cemetery where they allowed her be buried. And no priest came to her funeral to speak. She was buried like a …'

Like a suicide, thought Melchior. A suicide who has taken from herself her immortal soul which the Lord has granted to her. Having taken her hand to the divine gift and therefore deserving of contempt, even in death. Oh, of course.

‘I appreciate that it still troubles you deeply,' said Melchior quietly and with compassion. ‘Who wouldn't feel that way? I would, too, and I would also believe that my daughter visits her own home at night, and I wouldn't believe either that earthly death can be what permanently separates a young soul from the body.'

‘If you believe that then you know that what appears in angelic form cannot make anyone ill,' said Goswin. ‘She was sacred, you understand. My Dorothea was sacred. She was chosen by Heaven; she was one of the elect. Many people thought she was insane …' His sad eyes bored into Melchior's face, and his voice was suddenly louder. ‘But I,
I
knew. I brought her up. I knew, and I believed, and I saw that the material world was a mystery to her, but she understood holy things, and she yearned to be near them. And when she spoke to me, and she
spoke,
oh, angels, she spoke with her own father because she only dared to speak with those people whom she trusted and believed in. She was not insane, you understand. She was simply different and marked out by Heaven. She was waiting for St Michael to appear to her and give her a message, and she told me about it clearly, beseeched me to believe her and not regard her as mad … And she is still here in this house because this is the place where she was happy and where she wanted to return to after her death, and she reassures me that consecrated ground is only a human invention. She is in Heaven with the angels …'

‘I believe that,' said Melchior very quietly. He felt awkward at
having steered the conversation in such a painful direction. But people do talk most about what they want to discuss, and about what they don't want to discuss they are mostly silent.

‘And then', continued Goswin in a broken voice, ‘one day she changed. She told me that she was now unclean. She was filthy and could no longer be a bride of Christ the Lord … She went, and I never saw her again until word was brought that …'

Goswin fell silent and wiped away a tear. Melchior sighed deeply. It was painful, it was moving, and yet the image of Goswin's daughter's visitation to her home in spirit form was not what he wanted to hear about.

Goswin, too, seemed to realize this. He was silent with his gaze for a moment on the ceiling, and then he remarked, ‘But you didn't come to ask about my departed daughter. Forgive me. My story didn't concern you.'

‘On the contrary, it is I who should be begging your pardon. My questions awakened painful memories for you. I have no right to pry into these agonizing things.'

‘Agonizing?' repeated Goswin in a low voice. ‘Yes, you're right, it does still … and yet it doesn't. A man learns to be reconciled to his fate and learns to forgive. But you were asking something about Master Bruys?'

‘I suppose I was. I was telling you that three people had seen a ghost on Rataskaevu Street and met their deaths. At least two of them were somehow connected to Master Bruys, and you and Master Bruys were …' Melchior left the sentence hanging in the air.

‘Master Bruys and I …' said Goswin meditatively. ‘Do you want to hear that story? Do you want to hear about two friends who became enemies and regretted it for decades but could not find the words or the acts to reconcile their differences? Well, it was that story you came to hear, so listen.'

He fell silent again and then said so suddenly that Melchior was quite taken aback, ‘Thyl Bruys dishonoured my beloved child. Thyl Bruys, that bastard, drove her mad, led her into temptation. Thyl Bruys took her down from Heaven and from me and from herself
only to laugh about it and boast about his sinful act around town. Don't tell me that you know what that means to a father, and don't tell me you understand my pain. I didn't understand it myself, and I suppose I still don't understand it. Ten years had to pass to understand that fathers are not answerable for the sins of their sons, that I had no right to hate the innocent and that everything an innocent man can do to punish himself had already been done, and neither I nor God has any right to demand more.'

Goswin's gaze was aimed straight at Melchior's face. His sorrowful eyes begged the whole world for forgiveness, and suddenly he grasped Melchior's hand.

‘But I did demand it,' he cried. ‘Oh, may the saints bless me. I did demand it. I said words to him that I can never take back. I demanded more of him than one can ask of a man who is himself innocent. He abandoned his son, his only child; he disowned him, left him without an inheritance and sent him packing, as his name had been shamed. And then he asked me, tearfully, what more he could do to put his guilt right. But I? I was so haughty and full of hatred that that was not enough for me. I cursed him – him
and
his family. And then came the time for me to regret it, for God took from him an innocent child who was burned to death. I went to him. I asked forgiveness for the words I had said. I offered him my repentance. I begged his forgiveness. But he? He said that in people's eyes we may be reconciled, but in God's eyes never. I had called down damnation on his family, and I had got it, and now there was nothing left for him but to ask God for the sins of his children to be heaped upon his own neck manifold and that the Lord would find for him a penitent's cell where he could lament for ever in his agony. Those were his words, which he uttered twelve years ago, and since that time we are reconciled in people's eyes, and our old enmity should not have troubled us, but in his own heart he carried a poisonous grudge against me. And I, Wakenstede, have been searching in myself for twelve years for the right words with which to face him and beg forgiveness. For I still clearly remember that moment when the two of us together, two young
apprentice merchants, stood in Tallinn harbour and looked at the ship that had brought us here and prayed to the Virgin Mary for a blessing on our enterprise. We swore to each other that, no matter what happened, a friend would help a friend. That ship, Wakenstede, disappeared from Tallinn harbour for ever, and until Laurentz Bruys's last breath I never had the opportunity to dare to recall to him that moment and kneel before him and ask forgiveness for the injustice I had caused. It remains to trouble my old soul, and for that sin I will burn in hell.'

‘Sir, you shouldn't be so harsh on yourself,' replied Melchior awkwardly after a long pause. He had not expected such an outpouring. Yet this did explain Goswin's tears and despairing appearance at St Nicholas's Churchyard.

Goswin silently let go of Melchior's hand.

‘Yes,' he whispered, ‘I'll burn in hell, and I'm happy about that. But you came to ask about a ghost. No, Wakenstede, I haven't seen that ghost, and I haven't heard it. You think that Master Bruys and this ghost are somehow connected?'