Apothecary Melchior and the Ghost of Rataskaevu Street (7 page)

‘Someone has already ripped the poor chap's balls off,' said Peter. ‘Who knows for what terrible sins …'

Melchior pulled a knife from his belt, one that he always carried with him, and instead of a body part he cut off a little piece of the boy's sackcloth jacket.

‘Mr Apothecary, what on earth are you doing now?' asked Joachim.

‘Just in case,' replied Melchior. ‘There's nothing left to take from his body. Take him away now.'

‘I suppose we should drag him to St Nicholas's then,' said Peter. He got up and looked around. Then he let out a hearty curse.

‘What now?' asked Melchior, still examining the corpse closely.

‘That damned house,' said the town guard. ‘That something like this should happen right outside
that
house.'

Melchior looked up. He hadn't realized that they were standing in front of that selfsame Unterrainer house. The old two-storeyed gabled building raised its ghostly form before them, and its blackened windows were gloomy witnesses to the corpse and the guards.

Peter said that these were just silly old-wives' tales really, that he had never seen a ghost in the town and that this was a house like any other – and, anyway, what they should do is knock on the door and ask whether anyone had seen or heard anything.

Melchior thought this was sound advice, but the whole street here was closely packed with houses, and the respectable townsfolk
would hardly be pleased to be woken up in the middle of the night. There was the Unterrainer house, now occupied by Pastor Gottschalk Witte, and right next door was the merchant Arend Goswin. Then there was a patch of garden, where fruit grew, bordered at the rear by the old stables. Further on, in two grand three-storey houses, lived Burgomaster Wolze and Nider, another merchant. Beyond these there was one small house that had stood empty for over a year, followed by the home of the respectable merchant Mertin Tweffell. There were distinguished people living on the other side of the street, too, opposite the hill that led up to Toompea. The house on the corner belonged now to Lübbink, the goldsmith, and opposite were the residence of the Order's vassal for Harju, Kordt von Greyssenhagen, Master of Jackewolde, and then the home of Canon Albrecht.

But Peter had got up and was heading for Goswin's house. He said he knew the merchant's servant Hainz well, and he could speak to him. Hainz would open the door anyway, and Goswin was so old now that he would have been asleep long ago. Besides, a guard always had the right to get even the most respectable townspeople up at night if necessary.

The door was opened, however, by the merchant's old housekeeper Annlin, and even then only after knocking for a long time. The poor woman was full of terror, barefoot and staring perplexedly at the corpse lying in the torchlight. Soon her husband Hainz was also present, a tall strong man who had previously been a porter at the harbour and who was generally thought of as a bit slow. Peter talked to them, and Melchior overheard that no, they hadn't seen anyone, they had been asleep for a long time like good Christians, and what should their Master, a merchant, have to do with the corpses of tramps? Next Peter stood on the other side of the street, in front of the Knight Kordt von Greyssenhagen's house, but he gave up knocking. Strange, thought Melchior. A candle flame had seemed to flicker for a moment behind the window, but he wasn't quite sure.

The guards didn't dare cause any more disturbance. They took
the dead body by its arms and legs and started dragging it towards St Nicholas's Churchyard. The boy was very light. Melchior stayed a moment staring at them in silence, the piece of sackcloth between his fingers, then sighed and felt a strong desire to sleep.

W
AKING
EARLY
–
AND
how can you sleep any later when the twins raise such a racket at sunrise from hunger – Melchior had that familiar feeling that while he was sleeping at night, as his senses were resting, something had fallen into place. Although his dreams had been haunted by the dead body of that emaciated young man and the dismembered genitals, he realized that what yesterday evening could only be recalled to mind in vague fragments had now come to him of its own accord in the night. His reason had shuffled the disjointed features into place by itself. Something told him that it was all connected with the medicinal herbs he sometimes bought from a farmer's wife at the town market. That old Estonian woman knew her plants well and understood their medicinal properties. She would bring entire bushes to market, and Melchior usually bought a whole armful of them and gave a couple of pennies more than these shrubs, picked from meadows and forests, were really worth. But then he would bring the shrubs to the pharmacy, spread them out on the table and start sorting them. He would put all the different plants in different places and then divide them up again according to what herb would go straight into an infusion and what would go into the attic to dry and later be powdered with a mortar and pestle. Sometimes it is the same with human memory.

As his tired head rested at night, his reason had taken the correct fragments out of the bush and arranged them in their rightful places.
His mind had put the snatches of sentences and words – ghost, sea, death, beer – into place. Now he remembered. Oh, of course, it could only be that old inmate of the almshouse, the former ship's captain Rinus Götzer, who had told such a story in some harbourside tavern. Götzer had, as was his wont, been drinking a few tankards of ale bought for him by kind sailors, and Melchior, who had found himself in the harbour on some business one scorching day and had dropped into the tavern to wet his whistle, had, with half an ear, overheard Skipper Götzer's story. He spoke of a man who had talked of a ghost, and after that he had … well, he had met his death. The ghost was said to have come after this man and killed him, and all this happened right here in Tallinn, but when and by whom Melchior had not heard. Or had he dreamed it all up? Either way, he now remembered, and that knowledge gave him no rest.

He went down to the kitchen, and Keterlyn gave him gruel with bacon and peas, and to perk himself up he drank a mug of beer. Then he went and unlocked the door of the pharmacy, brought a jug to the table with some sweets and confections left from the day before and thought, for the umpteenth time, that he ought to take on an apprentice until young Melchior grew up, because Keterlyn was so occupied with the children that she scarcely had any time left these days to help him out.

People came in, telling him the news, buying his sweets and other tasty things, some asking for medicines as prescribed by letter from the town physician. Melchior talked with them, but his thoughts kept returning to those ghost stories. Tallinn was his town, and Rataskaevu Street was his street, and there should be no place for demonic forces here. But no matter how much he rejected these thoughts they kept returning.

Too many deaths, too much talk of ghosts. And the corpse of some unknown young tramp in front of the ghostly Unterrainer house.

The townspeople who visited the Apothecary, though, were mostly talking about the funeral of Laurentz Bruys. His grave was already being dug in St Nicholas's Churchyard because the weather
was hot, and the body had been brought to town yesterday from Marienthal. The fellow guildsmen of the deceased had ordered masses to be said at the church and a handsome gravestone from the stonemason. They had sent word to Toompea and the vassals in Harju, as Bruys was a friend of the Order and highly respected among the vassals.

At about noon, when a woman from the
saun
had come to help Keterlyn with the children, Melchior said that he now needed to go into town on business, and may the women manage without him in the meantime. He went along a familiar route, past the magnificent frontage of the Guildhall of the Great Guild, past the Church of the Holy Ghost, down the hill to the Dominican Monastery. At that time the preaching brethren were having their lunch in the refectory; Hinric, the
cellarius,
whom he was seeking, was said to be in the infirmary with a patient. Melchior thought he would wait in the monastery garden. He sat on a little bench, looking at the well-cared-for fruit trees and beds, in which grew various herbs and grasses; Ditmar, the monastery infirmarer, used them for mixing medicines, and the brothers brewed their famous spicy ales with them. Many a time Melchior had done business with Ditmar, bringing his own herbs, which he had bought from merchants or country people, for trade and exchange. He had held heated disputes with Ditmar about the qualities and curative powers of some plant or other and would no doubt continue to do so because, despite his status as a monk, Brother Ditmar was a fierce debater and blindly convinced of what was written in the prescriptive monastic books about the curing of the sick.

Prior Reinhart Moninger passed by. Melchior bowed before him and kissed his hand. They had met a number of times, exchanged a few words; Melchior had listened to his sermons and sat with him in the Guildhall drinking ale. The Prior was a quiet and serious man. Many regarded Prior Moninger as
too
quiet and serious, as he did not want to get involved in worldly affairs, but Melchior saw him as a wise man, a very wise man.

Then along came Brother Hinric, framed by a tousle of light-grey
hair. Hinric was a tall man of Estonian origins, whom Melchior had called his good friend for over ten years now. He bowed in greeting to the Apothecary and asked with a doleful smile whether Melchior had come in a spiritual emergency or whether he wanted to discuss the word of God.

‘Actually I don't know that myself,' said Melchior cheerily. ‘Both, I suppose. Forgive me for interrupting your lunch.'

‘It really isn't appropriate to disturb the servants of God during mealtimes,' replied Hinric, ‘for that is the only hour of the day when they can refresh themselves so as to resume diligently praying for the welfare of the townspeople. Actually, I'm fasting today, and I was with a young lay brother, Eric. I was praying with him. He's been laid low with a fever for quite a while, and he's already hearing the angels calling him.'

‘So I've come at a bad time,' said Melchior.

‘That can't be helped. What about your own mealtime?'

‘As ever,' replied Melchior, and before he had time to protest Hinric beckoned to one of the brothers and asked him to bring some bread baked with salt herring and a skin of ale.

‘I promised the Prior that I'd help him put together some ideas for this evening's sermon,' said Hinric a moment later. ‘So don't be offended, friend, if I can't spend long with you. We have to keep Master Bruys's sermon in mind, and tomorrow there will be a mass said in the church in his honour.'

‘Yes,' muttered Melchior. ‘I suppose he left a big sum to the Dominicans?'

‘He was a pious man,' said Hinric, shrugging his shoulders. ‘He had great respect for the Dominicans, but I think I understand why he also wanted St Bridget's to be built. We aren't too happy at the prospect of yet another religious community in the town – and, what's more, one with such modern rules – but the Pope has approved it, the Order wants it and … and I understand that if there is one very devout man with plenty of money then it doesn't matter how much he donates to existing churches and monasteries, that won't be talked about in days to come nearly as much as what he
caused to be built, how a magnificent convent had been created with his money. He wanted to be the founder of such an establishment.'

‘I suppose so,' said Melchior, breaking a piece of bread, putting some dill and parsley on it and taking a man-sized mouthful. The herring bread made by the preaching brothers was, he thought, the best bread in Tallinn, and it tasted all the better with fresh dill and bitter beer. ‘Actually, I wanted to ask you about quite a different man, one who has also been called to meet his Maker.'

‘Might you be thinking of Master Tobias Grote?' asked Hinric.

‘That's the one.'

‘And why do you come to ask the Dominicans about him? He was the master of the tower on the grounds of the holy sisterhood.'

‘Why I've come is because on the day of his own death he visited my pharmacy. He was for some reason very much out of sorts and said that he had to visit the Dominicans. The next morning he was dead.'

‘May the angels help him,' murmured Hinric. ‘He was a good man. But I understand, Melchior, what you're thinking. So, he told you about the ghost and Master Bruys?'

Melchior now took a proper swig of beer and sighed deeply.

‘No,' he said finally, ‘actually he didn't. He didn't say a word about a ghost or Master Bruys. And what you're saying now makes me even more curious – you know it's an affliction from which no apothecary is free. Listen, I'll tell you what happened.'

Hinric listened with interest, nodding, and when Melchior finished, he said, ‘So that makes two men who are very curious. Grote, the Master of Quad Dack Tower, came to our monastery and asked to speak to me. I asked if he wanted to be shriven, and why didn't he confess at the Holy Spirit, but he said no, he didn't want to confess, he wanted instead to ask advice about ghosts and get some guidance. Melchior, you know I'm a man of great patience, and I heard him out. At first I also thought he must have drunk too much beer and started seeing devilish visions, and when he spoke I thought I'd recommend that he go on a long fast, to say the
Lord's Prayer ten times a day and to go on a pilgrimage and think a bit more about his own soul. But as he carried on – and his story was confused, I have to say – I started to feel that he wasn't talking about demons caused by too much drink at all. These demons are different.'

‘So what had he seen?' Melchior enquired.

‘His story was confused, but he said something like “Holy Father, help a sinner and tell him what he must do when he has seen spirits. Does it mean his death? Should he be afraid?”'