Apothecary Melchior and the Ghost of Rataskaevu Street (33 page)

Simon Schoeff was quite tall for his age, with tough bony hands and rough fingers, which were quite hard to imagine undertaking the fine work of a goldsmith. Yet Melchior knew that Casendorpe regarded him as a talented apprentice, and these must have been among his last days in Tallinn.

‘Did you call for me, Apothecary?' asked Simon in a very low voice, which had none of the tone of the angelic voice that had once sung in St Nicholas's choir.

‘Yes, Simon, I did call for you. I need to ask you something – actually two things – and I ask you to answer me honestly and truthfully.'

‘If I can, I certainly shall,' answered Simon.

‘That's good then. My first question is this. Do you like cardamom-flavoured sweets which melt in the mouth when you suck them?' And, so saying, Melchior fetched a whole handful of them from his breast pocket, popped one in his mouth and looked slyly straight at the boy.

Simon swallowed. It was a rare treat to be offered this kind of gentleman's confectionery, and he acknowledged it. ‘Yes, very much, sir.'

‘That's good,' said Melchior. ‘This whole handful is yours if you answer my second question just as honestly. And the second question is, is it true that a few days ago you and the merchant's daughter Ursula Kogge heard a ghost on Rataskaevu Street?'

This was a harder question for Simon. He seemed to be a boy who would think carefully, but he wanted to answer the question too quickly and then bit his lip and gave it some thought.

‘Answer boldly and honestly,' Melchior urged. ‘I shan't say a word to Mr Kogge if you
were
out with his daughter that evening. Ha! It's not even worth mentioning. I simply want to know what happens on my street.'

‘So you already know, Mr Apothecary?' responded Simon.

‘I've been hearing women's market gossip, but I want to hear a
man's
story.'

Simon was still hesitating. He looked at the sweets, consulted with himself and scratched his armpit.

‘What's being said in the marketplace?' he asked at length.

‘In the market they are saying that Ursula heard a ghost – not a word is said about you. But I thought that Ursula would not have been out with anyone else that evening because you're the only person she likes to be with. That's obvious.'

Now Simon blushed, looked greedily once more at the sweets and said, ‘Something sort of crackled there, like a rusty door or something …'

‘Aha,' cried Melchior. ‘And which day was that?'

‘Monday of last week, the day after that terrible downpour.'

‘Yes, Simon, go on.'

And Simon told him. They had been in the backyard of the Unterrainer house behind a large bush, and then they had been talking about ghosts, or rather Ursula had been. Then there was a mouldy stink as from a freshly opened grave. And then there was a noise which could not be made by a living person – it had the sound of a ghost from beyond the grave, and they ran. And perhaps – Simon wasn't sure of this – perhaps, before they fled, they had seen a white shape flashing in the dim light, but he couldn't swear that he saw it. ‘Father has taught me that you may only speak the truth, that which you've seen with your own eyes. But if you don't know what you've seen, then it's better to be silent, I think,' he said.

‘You should keep your father's teaching very carefully in mind,'
said Melchior. ‘Your father is a goldsmith, and he knows. But then, Simon, you said that you ran. Where did you run to?'

‘We ran from in front of the old wall of the stables behind the houses and through the garden to the well and from there to St Nicholas's Churchyard.'

‘But did you see anyone on the street or by the well or maybe in the churchyard?'

‘No one. Only Ursula was with me.'

Oh, Melchior believed that. After such an escape the boy would hardly have eyes for anyone but Ursula. He pressed the sweets into Simon's palm and promised that if the boy had any dealings at the pharmacy before he left he could have anything required at half price.

After this Melchior had an errand in a part of town where he didn't venture every day. This was to the east of the Seppade Gate towards the Cattle Gate. There were still wooden shacks here, left over from earlier times, mixed with newer single-storey stone houses, and this was home to all kinds of poorer artisans, porters, ale- and water-carriers, sack-makers, joiners, rope-makers and other lower-class people. This was where tenant farmers escaped to from their estate landlords, and it was mostly Estonian spoken here. The street running along the wall was not paved with stones, and pedestrians had to step through slurry and mud. Pigs and goats were herded into the green scraps of garden left between the houses, a practice strictly forbidden by the Council. It was a shabby and notorious quarter, and if anyone within the town walls should want beer or a woman of pleasure late at night then this was where they had to come because it housed the only brothel within the walls.

Melchior stopped in front of the house known as the Red Convent and pondered the fact that in the forty years of his life he had got by without ever visiting a prostitute, but now, tracking down a ghost, he had to go into a brothel. Finally he took courage and opened the door, assuming that he probably didn't need to knock first.

The entrance hall was small and narrow. It seemed once to have been an ordinary domestic entrance, but now the walls were covered with shabby planks, and in this way the rooms were separated. From the street door a passage led straight to the back of the
diele,
where a staircase led up, evidently to rooms intended for slightly more elevated people. Melchior was greeted by a sneering old hag, who snapped, ‘Look, Sire Apothecary has finally come to look over the girls.'

Gritting his teeth, Melchior searched for a penny in his purse, slammed it down in front of her and said that he was here on Council business, and if he wasn't told what he wanted to hear a terrible misfortune would befall this house.

‘But no girl will open her mouth for that money,' laughed the hag. ‘Nobody's put that down for ages. Anyone coming from the Council would know what kind of money has to be paid.'

Melchior laid another five pennies on the table and said, ‘This money is all yours if you tell me about a prostitute called Magdalena. The one who drowned in a well in the spring.'

The hag stared greedily at the money and grumbled, ‘She has died and met her Maker. What more is there to say? She took men to bed, she did her job honestly and didn't speak ill of anyone.'

‘Before she died did she say anything about a ghost on Rataskaevu Street?' insisted Melchior, and, seeing how the hag was taken aback, he went further, ‘You must remember if she talked about it. When and where did she see it? Did it happen just before she died?'

‘That's not something for the Council to get involved in,' she asserted.

‘Then nor are these pennies yours,' declared Melchior and gathered up the money.

‘Stop there, Apothecary.' Greed flashed in the woman's eyes. ‘Don't rush off now. I'll tell you what I know.'

‘Then tell me and quickly because I don't like being in this house.'

‘Oh, that's what all the great and rich and respectable gentlemen
say, but sometimes they get hungry, too. Haven't I seen all sorts of burgomasters and merchants here, all those nice knights and their henchmen sent out to get women.'

‘Don't you slander respectable people, and tell what you've got to tell,' yelled Melchior. ‘What did Magdalena say about the ghost?'

‘She didn't tell me anything. I heard from another woman that she'd seen a person risen from the dead – and a thing like that doesn't bode well – and that maybe her last hour was near.'

That's exactly what it meant, thought Melchior. ‘And that was all?'

‘I didn't hear any more.'

‘Tell me about her,' demanded the Apothecary. ‘What sort of woman was she? Was she a gossip?'

‘But you've come too late, Mr Apothecary,' sneered the hag. ‘If you want to know what sort of woman Magdalena was, sir, you should have come last spring.'

‘Don't evade the question. Tell me.'

‘She was a smart woman,' said the hag, suddenly growing serious. ‘It's not easy for a woman to live in the world if she doesn't have anyone to feed and clothe her and she's been driven away from her Master's home. In this house she had clothes to wear and food on the table, and she'd saved enough money to go to the almshouse in her old age and not suffer for want of anything. That great merchant – and wasn't
he
buried like a saint? – he wasn't so holy and pious after all. He'd lived wildly in his younger days, even had a bastard child, but when he heard that Magdalena had taken a few men to bed for money he threw her out on the street. That's the sort of man
he
was, see. To the end of her days Magdalena never forgave him for that.'

‘Did Magdalena say that Bruys had a bastard?' Melchior asked suddenly. A thought had suddenly entered his head, a mad thought, but it had slipped out again so quickly that he couldn't catch it.

‘She didn't say anything, but I must have heard it somewhere.'

‘Woman,' commanded Melchior, fumbling for a couple more
pennies, ‘if you know then speak, but if you don't keep silent. With whom did Master Bruys have a bastard?'

‘I don't know her name, and many years have passed since someone said that he had a wife at home but kept sneaking around town after younger ones. I don't know any more than that. Now shall I look for a girl for you, Mr Apothecary?'

But Melchior left without saying goodbye. He hurried to the Town Hall troubled by dark thoughts. They forced him to believe something that he hadn't believed before, to regard as possible things that did not seem to come from this world where Christian people lived. But he well knew what horrors are committed during wartime or to demonstrate one's own power. He knew very well what hatred can do to a person.

He rushed up to the writing-room of the Town Hall where Clerk Johannes Blomendahl and his two assistants were working; one of their tasks was to fill in the daily legacy inventory, in which a note was made of all sales and purchases of houses, inheritances and encumbered transactions.

Clerk Blomendahl had, by Melchior's reckoning, been in his post for at least fifteen years. He was a fair-haired, lanky and slightly hunched man who also carried out notary's duties and wrote wills, contracts and other important documents for all the townspeople who wanted them. Whereas he might once have been a cheerful and jovial novice lawyer, now the job had made him into a taciturn and serious man, one who had never been seen drinking ale at the guilds and did not seem to be married either, although he was a town citizen with full rights and a member of the Great Guild.

‘Melchior, what do you want?' he snapped as soon as the Apothecary stepped into the office, breathing heavily from climbing the many steps. ‘I've got a lot of work to do.'

‘Good health to you, too,' said Melchior, bowing. ‘What do I want? I'd like to see the town's inventory.'

‘You know very well that without Council permission –'

‘Without Council permission it can't be shown, I know. But I have sworn the oath of an assistant magistrate, and I am a
deponent witness for the town, and I have an urgent need to know what that book says about a particular house.'

‘An alderman has to give permission. Otherwise you can't.'

‘Would the permission of a magistrate be enough?'

‘The permission of a magistrate
would
be enough were it in writing or stated here before me.'

‘But is it acceptable if a magistrate gives that permission
after
the Clerk has read to me from the book, and this action will lead to a murdering evildoer being thrown into the prison tower and brought to justice?'

The Clerk had to consider. Ordinarily this would, of course, have sufficed, but he remembered that this had happened before. The Magistrate had ordered a reading from the town's record book to the Apothecary. And what Magistrate Dorn had already done several times before, maybe he should not have to do again. Furthermore, the Magistrate usually arrived full of irritation if he were obliged to climb up all those stairs to the office just below the roof.

‘Which house do you want to know about?' Blomendahl then asked with a sigh. ‘I'm not allowed to read it out or copy it out, but what I suppose I
can
do is look at what it says and then tell you “inadvertently” what I know. That I can do.'

‘The Unterrainer house, where Pastor Witte now lives. Could you “inadvertently” tell me who has bequeathed and bought that house?'

It took some time because Blomendahl had to go into a back room, browse through old dusty scrolls, make several calculations and then commit numbers and names to memory. But when he came back Melchior heard that that house had been bought in 1347 in the name of Cristian Unterrainer from Colberg, who had, on arrival in Tallinn, extended it considerably. Seven years later it came into the ownership of one Jurgen Zeneberck, who had brought before the Council the deed of sale made by Unterrainer; it was certified by the Clerk of the town of Rostock and witnessed as due and correct by the Council.

‘But who bought it there in the name of Unterrainer if not himself?'

‘I just happen by chance to remember that I got the name of someone called Greisshacken from the inventory – or something like that,' replied the Clerk reluctantly, ‘and then I think it said as a dowry for his daughter.'

‘Greisshacken?' asked Melchior excitedly. ‘Are you sure?'

‘The Clerk at the time might have written that name differently, and every name is spelled in its own way in every town, you should know that,' Blomendahl pointed out. Then he sighed again, adding, ‘Gretzhaycken and Groishagen are the other forms of the name, but a man with that name from the town of Colberg bought the house as a dowry for his daughter Hermecundke, that's what seems to be in the book.'