Apothecary Melchior and the Ghost of Rataskaevu Street (37 page)

‘And that is enough,' said Melchior. ‘May the Lord God himself decide on the guilt of those unfortunates. Adelbert's and Ermegunde's terrible fate actually has no connection with what happened next door to Unterrainer's house a few decades later. Let it teach us that we mustn't believe any old gossip about the supernatural, and yet we tend to do that too readily. Above all, let it be a lesson to me because at first I didn't see the most important element. All three who died – de Zwarte, Magdalena and Grote – had said that they'd seen a ghost, but none said that they'd seen the ghost of a
woman.
None of them actually said that they'd seen the ghost of a woman in the Unterrainer house, or whatever it was that was supposed to haunt it. Nor did anybody say that they had seen the ghost of a monk. Actually they were talking about something quite different. Hinric, what did Grote say to you? Do you remember his words?'

‘He'd seen a ghost at the end of Rataskaevu Street who came to bring him a message from the realm of the dead, saying “May Heaven have mercy on Bruys.”'

‘Exactly,' said Melchior, ‘but for
which
Bruys was he asking mercy? And let's recall de Zwarte's exact words in the letter he sent home. De Zwarte wrote that in Tallinn he
saw
a ghost risen from the dead and now it was haunting him day and night. But Magdalena had said that she saw
a person risen from the dead.
What I mean is that actually nobody said anything about a ghost or the Unterrainer house. It was my own interpretation that bound these things together – and thank heavens it did because the wrong path
led me on to the right path. When I finally saw it, everything was so clear and simple – I had been making the story unnecessarily complicated. Gentlemen, what is a ghost? What does a person regard as a ghost? I suppose it is when they see an apparition of a dead person – something unearthly, something supernatural. But wouldn't we also, when we meet a person of flesh and blood whom we knew for certain is dead, say we'd seen a ghost? That's what Grote and Magdalena saw, and Magdalena said it quite precisely, too. She had seen a
person risen
from the dead. She had seen someone who should have been dead. So, once I started to see all these things clearly, when I finally put aside all the silly gossip and thought only about what we actually knew then –'

‘Then they saw a person whom they thought was dead and couldn't believe it,' Hinric interjected.

‘Because that person looked dead. That individual no longer had a human face,' said Melchior, ‘so they couldn't believe they were seeing a living person. Gentlemen, I will now tell you the story of Laurentz Bruys and Arend Goswin, who once came to this town as friends, full of hope and zest for life, but ended up as the most terrible of enemies. It's a terrible story and will remain a nightmare during my sleepless nights for a long time.'

They all sipped their ale, and Melchior continued. ‘Bruys's and Goswin's businesses flourished in Tallinn. They made good money out of salt, but they weren't granted family happiness. In the year of Our Lord 1394, of the seven children in Bruys's family, only his son Thyl was still alive because God had called the other children to him. Arend Goswin's three sons had died in childhood, and his wife died giving birth to a daughter, Dorothea. The child grew into a marvellously beautiful maid, but her mind was feeble – in fact, she was regarded as an imbecile. Goswin loved her unreservedly, the only one of his blood who had survived, and the girl should have come here to the Sisters of St Michael as a nun as she was unlikely to be married because of her feeble-mindedness. Yet Dorothea was the most admired girl in the town, and Thyl Bruys lured her somewhere to a secluded place beyond the town and
deflowered her – so they say. Evidently this didn't happen violently, but at first the girl simply didn't understand what was being done to her. Later, in her own way, she came to understand it. She thought she was now filthy, that she was a whore, that she couldn't appear that way before Christ and St Michael. She drowned herself, and as a suicide no church would bury her in the sanctified way. It was a catastrophic blow to Goswin, as it would be to any father for his only flesh and blood to perish in that way.

‘Goswin demanded revenge, but there was no way to bring Thyl to justice. Dorothea didn't die a virgin, but neither did she die by Thyl Bruys's hand. There were no witnesses that Thyl had taken Dorothea by force, and the nuns couldn't find signs of violence on Dorothea's body. In Goswin's eyes, though, Thyl was guilty – maybe before God Thyl would be found guilty, too – but Goswin couldn't demand punishment for Thyl before the court. Dorothea had drowned herself. So Goswin demanded justice from his old friend Laurentz Bruys. Bruys was a fair-minded man. He agreed that Thyl should be punished because he must have known very well what sort of a son he had. But he was
his
son. He offered Goswin money, he left Thyl without an inheritance, but that wasn't enough for Goswin. Goswin demanded more. He demanded what no father would do to a son. He demanded Thyl's death because he was blinded by his grief and rage. He rejected Bruys's money and said that only blood was a just punishment. Bruys was horrified by this demand; suddenly he saw a monster before him instead of a friend. Then Goswin demanded Thyl's castration, and, of course, Bruys would not agree to that either – and that was another reason Bruys sent his son into exile in Germany. He sent him away because in Tallinn Goswin would have killed him or paid someone to kill him. When Bruys eventually received the news of Thyl's death he said that even the Lord God can't give sanctuary to those who don't want to find sanctuary. He had sent Thyl into exile so that his son wouldn't fall victim to Goswin's revenge, but that was all he offered Goswin in compensation, and they became sworn enemies.'

‘All this was twenty-five years ago,' said Dorn with a sigh. ‘They
say that time heals all wounds – but not those that a person brings upon himself.'

‘Punishing Bruys became Goswin's sole aim in life – and that is where the just desire for revenge turned evil. Goswin was even more angered by the fact that the following year another son was born into Bruys's family. God seemed to be making a fool of him. So he then decided that if he couldn't punish the culprit he would punish the innocent because Dorothea had also died an innocent. In fact, this began to seem more just to him – Bruys had to suffer the same pain that he had suffered. Bruys had to feel pain for the suffering of the innocent. What satisfaction would there be for Goswin if the culprit died? The innocent had to suffer, and the innocent were Bruys, his wife and their young son Johan. Only that would be justice.'

‘So Annlin told us,' said Dorn mournfully. ‘She had to be tortured with the tongs, but she did tell us.'

‘Goswin thought up a cunning plan, one of the wickedest that a person in the grip of evil and blind hatred could devise,' continued Melchior. ‘He knew that Bruys had a bastard son. He had been born several years before Johan when Thyl was still in Tallinn. It must have been some silly bit of mischief, in some village beyond the town, where Bruys sometimes had to go on business. Bruys didn't acknowledge the child, and why should he if, after disowning and exiling Thyl, another son had been born to him? He wanted nothing to do with the other son, who meant nothing to him, because not having been born in lawful marriage the boy would never have become his heir or a citizen of the town. But Goswin knew about him. He had the boy found and bided his time. That time arrived when Johan was twelve years old. Now I have to tell you about a physical flaw in Laurentz Bruys, one he passed on to his progeny. On Laurentz Bruys's left foot there were six toes, and his sons had them, too.

‘Magistrate, Sir Knight, Brother Hinric, you have to talk to people. Even when they have every intention of lying to you they aren't always lying. Some grain of truth always slips into their story.
No lie is so enduring that it can be perpetuated for ever. A lie has to be believable, and so an enduring lie is never a complete lie. Annlin was lying to me about that night when the tramp was killed on Rataskaevu Street, but she slipped in some truth about her son. Goswin was lying to me about his penitence and injustice towards Bruys. He was playing games with me, but he couldn't check himself completely, and at one point he called Thyl Bruys a bastard. At first I thought he was just swearing, but then it occurred to me that Goswin might have meant it literally,
expressis verbis,
and I thought for a second that maybe Thyl was
the
bastard, but no. There were six toes on Laurentz Bruys's left foot and six toes on Thyl's as well. And so had the bastard son and Johan. Nature, or God, plays such a cruel joke on people that flaws are passed on from father to son – and shouldn't I, of all people, know that?

‘It was my dear Keterlyn who pointed out that the same things had been done to the tramp's corpse as to Bruys – he couldn't talk, he couldn't have children and, instead of the sixth toe, he had the whole foot cut off. I should have seen the truth straight away, but I was blinded by an apothecary's thinking. I thought that somehow someone needed that foot. And when we found de Wrede cutting up corpses I believed that it was he who had removed the tramp's foot. How stupid I was.'

‘Was that foot actually cut off by Goswin?' asked Hinric.

‘Goswin ordered it to be done,' declared Melchior, ‘but Hainz did it, and not because Goswin needed it but so that no one would see it. Six toes is quite a rare deformity, and if anyone had noticed it the story would certainly have spread, someone would have realized that that poor creature had to be Laurentz Bruys's son.'

‘He was his son, his bastard son?' asked Greyssenhagen.

Melchior shook his head, drank some beer and thought for a bit. ‘It isn't easy for me to talk about this,' he said. ‘This horror took place on Rataskaevu Street, near my home.'

‘No one was allowed to know it,' muttered Dorn. ‘Bruys and Goswin seemed to have agreed to pretend that the old hatchet had been buried.'

‘So that tramp wasn't his bastard?' Hinric asked.

‘No,' said Melchior, taking a deep breath, ‘he wasn't. Twelve years ago Goswin put his plan into action. He waited for the right moment. He was patient and tenacious. Hainz and Annlin ambushed Bruys's bastard one evening outside town, lured him into town and took him to Bruys's storehouse. At that time Johan was alone there in the granary. Hainz throttled Bruys's bastard and knocked Johan unconscious. Then Annlin set fire to the store. The fire was a terrible thing. There were many more wooden buildings around then, it was a confused situation, people milling around everywhere, and the fire spread. Then they led the half-conscious Johan away. I don't even know the name of that bastard son, but I suppose the court attendant will find the woman who went to Bruys's funeral – who, I would guess, was the mother of that boy. The bastard was so badly burned in the fire that he could only be identified by the sixth toe, and Bruys had no reason to doubt that it was the corpse of his son. Johan had died, and Bruys's wife died of grief days later. After that Bruys dedicated his life to pious causes. God had punished him, and now he had to seek his peace with God, and so, finally, he became one of the patrons of St Bridget's and a man who was called a saint in his own lifetime.'

‘If a person dies in a fire, then the body is usually found curled up,' said Dorn.

‘Exactly,' said Melchior, ‘but Mathyes told me that Johan's corpse was lying straight. No one understood the significance of that, for there was no reason to doubt. Johan was alone in the granary, and there he died. But the corpse of a person burned alive is usually rolled up into a ball, as that person tried desperately to ward off the fire until their very last breath.'

‘And they took Johan to Goswin?' asked Hinric.

‘Goswin put him in the salt-cellar. He shackled the boy there and gave up trading in salt. He cut out the boy's tongue so that he wouldn't scream; he cut off his sex organ because then a prisoner is more tame. He made Johan his slave, torturing and humiliating him, but he kept him alive. Twelve years. Can you imagine that
Goswin kept him like a dog in the cellar and took pleasure in every moment? He kept him in chains, had him brought to him while he had breakfast, forced him to beg for scraps of food, whipped him, let him wallow in his own faeces. Annlin and Hainz took care of him, buying ointments for his wounds to keep him alive. Goswin had them collect medicine from
me.
They bought the ointments for his wounds, and I found traces of that ointment on Johan's body. If wounds are smeared with my salve the skin remains slightly yellow for a few months.'

‘But how could Goswin force two Christians to commit such crimes?' Tears were appearing in Hinric's eyes. ‘Was it money?'

‘Oh no,' said Melchior. ‘When I had swept from my thoughts all the connections with the Unterrainer house, when I saw the story clearly and simply … When I realized that the murderer could only go into hiding in some nearby house because he had nowhere else to go – Simon and Ursula were in the yard of the Unterrainer house that evening, and they thought they heard a ghost and saw some indistinct shape – I thought about the Goswin, Witte and Greyssenhagen houses. Yes, esteemed sir, I even thought that that corpse might have been some tenant of yours or a victim of Witte's whipping or one of Annlin's relatives from the country … And then I recalled Annlin's words – she has a son in Tartu named Hanns who is forty-one years old. The idea came to me in the brothel when the old hag was talking about Bruys's bastard son, and then it all became so clear, so terrible, and everything fell into place at once: the hacked-off foot, the fact that Goswin gave up the salt trade, supposedly out of blindness, and even the contradiction that de Zwarte had written home that his last work in Tallinn was finished and he had been paid well.'