Apothecary Melchior and the Ghost of Rataskaevu Street (3 page)

‘Oh yes,' replied Melchior, nodding. ‘I heard that news this morning, too. It does make you sad when such an upstanding and God-fearing citizen leaves our midst.'

‘So it does,' said Dorn, ‘and so suddenly and unexpectedly, too, that you don't understand any more who or what directs a man's life. Is it God and his saints, or … ?' He sighed and sat down on a chair in the corner of the shop.

‘Our pastor at St Nicholas's can surely tell us more about it,' said Melchior. ‘But, well, I wouldn't call this death unexpected. Hasn't there been a lot of talk about Master Bruys's will at the Guildhall of the Great Guild and how some merchants have called it excessively magnanimous?'

‘Hold on,' interjected Dorn. ‘You said Master Bruys? You mean he's dead?'

Melchior stared at Dorn in astonishment. He blinked quickly and grew serious.

‘Good heavens. So someone else then?'

‘Grote, the Master of the Tower,' said Dorn. ‘He fell from his tower last night and died right there between the walls.'

‘Fell from the tower?' exclaimed Melchior.

‘Well, over the parapet, apparently from the defence walkway above those stone arches. He must have been drunk because the corpse stank of beer and in the tower chamber he had a fair-sized keg. He went out on the walkway while sloshed and stumbled, what else … ?'

Melchior eyed his friend attentively. He knew he had something on his mind, but he didn't push him.

Dorn carried on. ‘The guards found him there this morning; at
first they thought he might have been beaten to death or something, that there was something on the back of his head, but there were no signs of a beating on his body at all, only his forehead, which was bleeding and broken. He was lying there on his back staring at the sky, a few bones sticking out as you'd expect when somebody falls from a height, I suppose, but …' He was silent for a moment, licked his lips, and Melchior waited. ‘It's as if … as if he had been terrified. As if he had been beside himself with fear. I've never seen a dead face like it. Usually they look peaceful, frozen in place, so to speak, but Grote … As if he'd seen a ghost.'

‘A ghost?' asked Melchior, animated. ‘What ghost?'

‘Well, that's what I said. It's as if he'd seen spirits or demons. His face was sort of stiff with fear and not with pain, that I
do
know. After a fall like that the pain is so great that a man can't bear it, but he had a face like … his mouth was open and his eyes wide with terror – horrible to think of. Lord have mercy.'

‘Very interesting,' said Melchior. ‘Incredible.' He poured himself a dram and drank it in one go. Dorn stared at him and finally muttered, ‘Pour one for me, too. A bigger one, full.'

Melchior did as he was asked and told Dorn, ‘Yesterday, Master Grote came by here, as he sometimes does. He wasn't feeling too good, and I guessed he must have been drinking beer the evening before because he stank of it even then. He bought a couple of stoups of this drink, but there seemed to be something on his mind. I wouldn't say that we were friends, but sometimes we did meet up here and there, sometimes in the taproom at the nuns' tavern, and one autumn he recommended a good Estonian bricklayer to me who worked in the courtyard of the nunnery and who made a very good job of my back wall. But, anyway, yesterday he really did have something on his mind; he didn't talk much, but he seemed to want to ask me something. I suppose I was just chattering away, asking about his sons' health and so on, because there was nobody else in the shop at the time. And then …' Melchior blinked rapidly and shook his head. ‘It sounds incredible, but that's just how it was – that, although he was always quiet when
he came here, I must have said, “Master Grote, you have a look on your face as if you'd seen a ghost.” And he was very frightened at that.'

‘Frightened?' asked Dorn.

‘Just that. By St Victor. He was startled and almost knocked his stoup over. He looked at me with fearful eyes, mumbling something I didn't understand, and then he quickly drank up his dram and said he had something to do at the Dominicans and took his leave.'

‘What do you mean?' asked Dorn.

‘That he looked like a man who'd seen a ghost, and I, like a fool, said that, and he was terribly shocked, as if he really had seen a ghost. And now you come and tell me that he's fallen to his death off the walkway and he had a face on him like one who's seen a ghost.'

Dorn sighed. ‘Don't hold on to my every word. That man drank pretty hard, and if he thought he saw something he might have been seeing demons conjured up by his heavy drinking. As they said in that sermon at the Dominicans, about what happened to the man at Dünamunde, the one who just drank and drank and gave up going to church …'

Melchior smiled. ‘That was a very instructive sermon. Prior Moninger admonished Christians to drink less, but I think he also wanted to say that you shouldn't drink alone but with friends, and in a way that there is time left over in a man's life for the word of God. But since you've brought it up, it makes me wonder what business Master Grote – may the saints protect him – had with the Dominicans. My recollection is that he always went to the Church of the Holy Ghost to take the sacrament, and I don't think I ever remember seeing him at a sermon at St Catherine's.'

Melchior was deep in thought while Dorn drank his sweet dram and turned the subject to Master Bruys, for his death was news to him. He knew Bruys the merchant well, as the latter had once been a councillor, and Dorn remembered a very bitter dispute at the Guildhall of the Great Guild when the merchant lords were almost tearing each other's hair out over the building of a new convent.

‘Yes, yes,' said Melchior in reply, but his thoughts were elsewhere. ‘He died at Marienthal. He'd gone there on a pilgrimage – or had himself taken there. Soon the whole town will know about it, I suppose.'

Laurentz Bruys had been an old and very respected man and must have been one of the richest men in Tallinn. He was said to have donated the most money to his church and the almshouses, and, because he had no children, his will left very large sums to St Nicholas's, the Dominican Monastery and the new Convent of St Bridget.

Master Bruys had fathered seven children, of whom only three survived childhood. One son had unfortunately perished in a fire that raged in Tallinn, one had fallen into the hands of the Victual Brothers and been hanged, one had gone back to Germany under confusing circumstances, and his father had disowned him, and the only daughter who grew to adulthood married a man in Riga but there died in some epidemic. The merchant's wife had also died, and he had lived alone in his house on Lai Street with his servants. Melchior also knew that while many people regarded Master Bruys almost as a saint – because of his exceeding religious reverence and fear of God – others could not stand him because he was one of those who strongly favoured the building of a new convent by the Order. And Melchior also remembered that there had been deep enmity between Master Bruys and another Tallinn merchant, Arend Goswin, that went back several decades, but in the end they had made up. That story was not spoken of much; it was ancient history and should be forgotten. Rumours could spread with terrific speed and just as mysteriously they could die down and disappear. In recent years only good had been spoken of Bruys the merchant – as long as it didn't concern the plans to build a new convent.

‘That will of his,' the Magistrate continued (the drink had put him in a talkative mood), ‘he made no secret of it. He came to the Town Hall one day, read it out in the presence of two councillors and let a notary sign it.'

‘Yes, I remember,' Melchior remarked. ‘He allows his house to be sold and some of the proceeds to go to his business in Lübeck, but much more of it will go to the Sisters of St Bridget and churches in Tallinn.'

‘Well, he has no living children, and the one son who is supposed to have become a soldier – Thyl was his name – was disowned. Nor does he have any living siblings, so everything is in his will. Oh, I remember well how there were large sums for both almshouses and a small amount for the Dominicans and then some for road building, in particular for the one to Marienthal. Well, and then for intercession to the churches and donations to St Nicholas's and the Church of the Holy Ghost and the other brothers of the Great Guild who are making the pilgrimage in his name to Compostela …'

‘Wasn't there some grim tale connected with Thyl?' Melchior asked suddenly.

The Magistrate frowned. ‘Yes, there was, now that you mention it. So many years have passed since then that I've forgotten. Or, well, just between ourselves, I think the Council wanted it hushed up quickly … in any case it didn't get to the Magistrates' Court.'

‘That's how it was, I suppose,' murmured Melchior.

‘But so what?' sighed Dorn. ‘It's such an old story, and nobody blames Master Bruys, may the Lord have mercy on him. By the way, not even the Town Council was forgotten in his will – with his own money he had two pounds of wax candles bought for the Council and left fifty marks separately for the law court so that justice would always be done according to God's will and the laws of Lübeck – that was what he had written down. And I can't recall all the smaller bequests. Now, didn't he even leave an instruction that any new landlord would not be allowed to drive his servants out of his house and that they should be allowed to stay there? He left money to them, too. Yes, he was a generous man with a noble heart. If only there were more like him. And St Bridget was merciful to him, too, it seems. She allowed him to die while on a pilgrimage to the very place for which he'd fought so many battles – if you can say that about a sacred establishment.'

‘You can,' Melchior said with a smile. ‘You can certainly say that about St Bridget's Convent. They nearly came to blows with guns and swords over it. Sometimes – forgive me, friend – but sometimes it seems to me that our aldermen look at things a bit too narrowly, and their thinking is stuck in a time when they were still young. I think Tallinn is now such a big, rich town that three monasteries are a good thing for it.'

‘That may be so,' opined Dorn. ‘No one has done badly yet out of any monastery. Not that I go along with St Bridget's rules or even understand them exactly, but if more pilgrims start flocking to Tallinn instead of scoundrels and murderers that can only be a good thing.'

‘I suppose so,' agreed Melchior.

‘By the way, Melchior, have you heard the news?' cried Dorn suddenly. ‘Pretty good news for once. At the Council they're talking about that pirate, that rascal – who I'd like to have drawn on the wheel – that Clawes Döck who's been robbing merchants around Tallinn, the one we wrote to the gentlemen in Raseborg and Lübeck about, the one that Visby Council is defending strongly … That murderer has now been caught at Abfors and put in chains.'

‘That's good then,' mumbled Melchior.

‘So far, so good. The only thing now is that Erik of Gotland has got to agree to have that robber chopped into pieces. But I suppose the Council knows how to fix matters in Visby. It's not like the old days … '

At that moment the wife of the butcher from Assauwe Tower entered the pharmacy. Dorn nodded politely to her, and Melchior was interested to know whether the wormwood oil had helped against her esteemed husband's vertigo, and the wife shrieked that it helped so much that it was as if the Virgin Mary herself had blessed him and could the Apothecary give her more, instantly.

‘It does seem to help if the wormwood juice and the oil mixture have a bit of powder from pounded mares' hooves added,' declared Melchior, stepping over to the pestle. ‘I don't have much of it, but
there's always some for Madam Butcher.'

So Dorn bid his friend goodbye, saying it was now time to go to the town guards and find out whether any crimes had been committed in the town.

U
RSULA, THE
MERCHANT
'
S
daughter, was fourteen, and Simon, the goldsmith's son, was fifteen. They were told that they were no longer children, and they must almost have believed it. They had known each other their whole lives, were born in Tallinn and grown up in adjoining houses at the junction of Karja Street and Kuninga Street. They had walked the path to school up on Toompea together and to hear sermons in church and to Christmas mass.

Simon was a tall, strong-boned, lanky young man with slightly squinting eyes and a nice low voice, which seemed to Ursula to be getting lower every day. Just a few years ago Simon had been singing in the choir of the Church of the Holy Ghost in a very high voice, and Ursula had always gone to hear him sing.

Ursula was a redhead, and, as Simon's voice grew deeper, her hair grew redder. Simon said she was the most red-headed girl in town. Simon had said that several times now, and Ursula had taken to wondering whether the boy actually meant something else by it. Especially the way Simon said, ‘I believe that you, Ursula, are the most red-headed girl in town', and then looking deeply into her green eyes, forcing the girl to turn her gaze away and carry on wondering what Simon actually meant.

Talking didn't come easily to Simon. He never actually said anything much. He rarely told stories, and when he did he would get it over within a couple of sentences, as if the only important
thing were to find out what had happened and not how it had happened, what people thought and said about it. Yes, Simon spoke little and said only the essential things that he himself believed or knew or was sure of or that he thought very important. And if he said something repeatedly about Ursula's red hair then the girl knew that it was very important to the boy.