Apothecary Melchior and the Ghost of Rataskaevu Street (38 page)

‘He hadn't been paid well,' remarked Dorn. ‘Everyone thought he was a bad painter – and, anyway, how is that Flemish dauber mixed up in all this?'

‘And what's the significance of Hanns being forty-one years old?' asked Hinric.

‘If you calculate, then you'll work out that Hanns was born in
1378,' replied Melchior, ‘and Dorothea drowned herself when she was seventeen.'

Mathematics had never been Dorn's strong suit, but Hinric was good at reckoning. ‘That means that there can't have been more than a year between the births of Dorothea and Hanns,' said the Dominican.

‘A few months,' declared Melchior.

‘So what does that signify?' demanded Dorn. ‘The horrible old hag didn't talk about that under torture.'

‘I understand,' whispered Hinric. ‘Now I understand.'

‘Goswin's wife died giving birth to Dorothea,' said Melchior, ‘and someone had to suckle the girl. Annlin's son was born a little later, so Annlin suckled Goswin's daughter. They grew up in the same house. They were like brother and sister – to Annlin, Dorothea
was
her daughter.'

‘That is why she, too, hated Thyl to the depths of her soul,' sighed Hinric. ‘Dorothea was just like her own child, and Hainz would do anything that Annlin and Master Goswin commanded.'

‘But now the business of that damn Fleming?' Dorn insisted. ‘What portrait? I couldn't understand what the old woman was wailing about while Bose was pinching her with the tongs.'

‘I also commissioned him to paint a picture,' remarked Greyssenhagen. ‘The picture was finished, but … I don't know … so far I've never hung it up. It's not quite my likeness.'

‘Goswin had Annlin buy a great deal of medicine for wounds and aches this winter because Johan was at the point of death,' Melchior explained further. ‘They did make him well, but in the meantime Goswin was starting to fear that the boy might not survive. He paid de Zwarte to paint a portrait of him because he might need it when his prisoner died. It was a poor substitute but at least some consolation for Goswin, who had been awaiting his revenge for so long. He forced de Wrede to keep quiet and paid him very well, demanding that the painter should not tell anyone what he had to do, and Goswin told everyone in town that the portrait was of him. This explains why de Zwarte said that Tallinn was an accursed town
and he'd seen a ghost … Poor tormented Johan no longer looked like a living person. It was hard to guess his age because his face had shrunk from the darkness and the poor diet. De Zwarte didn't dare to put into words exactly what he had done … but he was in desperate need of the money. He couldn't go home poor and a failure, and Goswin paid him handsomely. De Zwarte wrote home that his works were finished,
even the last one, and he was paid well.
In Goswin's house, though, there are no paintings, and Goswin told me that he'd thrown the painter out, straight to the harbour, and the portrait hadn't been completed. Of course, Goswin would never let de Zwarte leave Tallinn. If he had seen Johan and been ordered to paint him, that was his death sentence.'

‘What about Magdalena and Grote?' asked Hinric.

‘Hainz is thick in the head,' explained Dorn. ‘He must have left the cellar open and Johan unchained, and the boy escaped. He bumped into Magdalena in front of the house, and Magdalena had lived in Bruys's house along with Johan.'

‘Magdalena didn't tell Bruys because Bruys had cast her out,' continued Melchior, ‘but she did tell other women, even though she didn't understand what exactly it was she had seen. She supposed that she'd encountered a person risen from the dead. Why was Grote killed? Because Bruys was dying, and Goswin was in a hurry. Bruys went to Marienthal on 1 August, and Goswin wanted to take Johan there that same night in a cart. But Johan was able to break free and escape when they tried to haul him on to the cart. Not far, it's true, but he remembered the way home. He had got no further than the corner of Rataskaevu Street and Lai Street when Hainz and Annlin got hold of him and dragged him back to the cellar. But Grote the Tower-Master saw him while he was drunk and started to think he'd seen a ghost. He babbled on about it in the taverns and at the monastery. Goswin got to hear and ordered him killed. I can imagine that poor Grote, who was quite stunned by the sight of Johan, thought that Annlin, approaching him in the dim light at the moment of his death, must have been a ghost, and that's why he looked so startled. Besides, Annlin must have smelled quite bad if she'd been cleaning
the prisoner's faeces out of the confined salt-cellar all day. There was a dead tomcat next to Grote's corpse, too, which also stank, and that must have added to the effect that caused Grote to think that Annlin was a ghost. And he was half-blind in one eye.

‘But that evening when Johan got out Goswin no longer had time to convey him to Marienthal. The town gates were already shut. He had to wait for the next evening, but there was heavy rain that day. In that weather he wouldn't have been able to make the trip. The cart would have got stuck in the mud, and it would have attracted too much attention if it left town in that weather. Then Bruys died that same day. Because of the rain it wasn't possible to send a message from Marienthal to town, and news of Bruys's death reached town only on 3 August. This was a dreadful blow to Goswin. His entire plan had collapsed, his revenge and the only pleasure he had to look forward to in life had crumbled to dust. He was maddened with rage and desperation. He went to Johan and attacked him with a knife. There was no more reason to keep him alive. Goswin ordered the corpse to be taken out of town on a cart and buried in the forest. But Johan wasn't dead. He must still have had some desperate will to live, so he was able to get out one final time with three wounds on his body. But this effort robbed him of his last strength. Hainz and Annlin caught him in front of the house, but the town guards saw them. The guards rushed to the spot, Annlin and Hainz ran back into the house, but Johan died there and then. He had no more strength left in him.'

Melchior was silent for a moment, and his eyes clouded over.

Hinric shook his head and whispered something in Latin.

‘For twelve years Goswin kept him in a torture chamber,' Melchior said quietly. ‘Can you imagine what that boy had to go through? That was the time when he was growing from a boy into a man; his tongue was cut out and his sex organ cut off, but he still had to remember who he was, who his parents were and where his home was. Goswin told him why he was keeping him alive and what sort of death he should die.'

‘And he was very good at hiding his hatred under a mask of
sorrow,' noted Greyssenhagen. ‘There was a time when I thought that someone might have helped Bruys to die – when someone rich, and who has plenty of enemies, dies it's not at all unusual for that to happen. And it was I who invited Goswin to be a patron in place of Bruys because I had noticed that he had never said anything against the convent. I could never in my life have guessed that it was all just hypocrisy and for some horrible revenge.'

Melchior nodded. ‘It was supposed to be Goswin's final and actual revenge. He was biding his time, and fate seemed at last to be on his side. Bruys built a prayer house attached to St Bridget's Convent. It was placed in a secluded corner at the back of the convent's land, and this suited Goswin very well. Gentlemen, this revenge of his – this was the moment he was living and breathing for, it was to be a perfect masterstroke, a work of art …' Melchior swallowed and continued, ‘Before Bruys died, Goswin wanted to take Johan before him and say, “Look, you didn't want to punish the culprit, so now you have to punish the innocent, because only then will you understand the torment I had to feel when my only daughter died. Here is your son, whom you thought was dead and buried – but, look, he's alive. All these years he's been chained in my cellar, wallowing there like a castrated dog in his own shit and begging me for scraps of food that I spat out in front of him. Now take this dagger and do what I asked when your son killed my daughter. Now you can choose again, but this choice will be harder. Stab your own son through his throat, release him from his torment and die in the knowledge that you killed your own son by your own hand, or die in the knowledge that your son will stay in my cellar to the end of his life to suffer torment.”

‘That was supposed to be Goswin's revenge, and he held that moment sacred. Bruys had lost the power of speech, and Goswin was not afraid that he would be able to say anything about it. But when Bruys died it seemed to Goswin that all his dreams had collapsed, but fate gave him one more chance. He was invited to be a patron of St Bridget's, and he accepted. He gave the convent his assets because he wanted to obliterate Bruys's legacy from the
memory of Tallinn. He didn't want to continue the man's venture; he wanted to snuff it out, so that, even in a hundred years' time, when his gravestone was laid in the floor of St Bridget's they would speak of Arend Goswin as a founder of that convent but no one would remember Laurentz Bruys. When Greyssenhagen handed Goswin the image of St Bridget to kiss, I understood that. It was written on Goswin's face, all his hatred and his hope that he would blot out any memory of Bruys for ever …'

All of them went quiet for a while, no doubt thinking about poor Johan. Melchior knew that he would never be sure exactly how much of Johan's reasoning power had been left, but he feared that the boy hadn't lost it completely. He was afraid that the boy remembered, remembered all of the twelve years, all the pain and torment, oppression and hopelessness. His mind could certainly not be clear, no one's would be, yet if he'd been given a few more moments of life, to draw one more breath, maybe he would have managed to say who he was and that he had fled from his imprisonment.

‘Tomorrow the Council will discuss what will become of Master Bruys's will,' added Dorn with a sigh. ‘It's a complicated story, because Johan outlived him. Johan should have inherited.'

‘And de Wrede is bringing a lawsuit for the killing of his brother,' added Melchior. ‘If anyone kills on a master's orders, that master is just as guilty, I say. Goswin is now writing letters to all the religious communities in Livonia and elsewhere asking to be given asylum as a penitent, but the Council –'

‘The Council wants to prosecute him,' said Dorn. ‘Annlin is to be buried alive and Hainz left on the rack to die, but Goswin …'

‘They'll order him to go on a pilgrimage and then into a monastery,' whispered Melchior.

‘Hainz is a citizen of the town and is allowed to testify against his Master. Maybe the Council will send Goswin on a pilgrimage for killing and enslaving Johan, but for him to have ordered the fire in the town … for that he would have to be drawn and quartered,' declared Dorn, ‘but that decision is in the hands of the burgomasters.'

‘I would sentence him to being immured alive in the salt-cellar,' said Melchior, ‘and leave him some water and bread and a dagger as well. Let him choose the kind of death he would prefer.'

Ursula and Simon had run back again to their hiding-place. Here, between the old wall of the stables and the bush in the backyard of the Unterrainer house no one could stumble upon them as they said goodbye to one another. In two days Simon was to board a ship to travel to Münster. They were no longer afraid. There had never been any ghost in the Unterrainer house, only the sounds made by that poor troubled Johan Bruys in Goswin's cellar. Everyone in the town now knew about that.

Arend Goswin had died a week before, right there in front of the court, just as he had dropped to his knees to beg for mercy. He had died of humiliation and shame. People would throw excrement on his grave.

But Ursula and Simon had to say farewell. May all the saints bear witness, they didn't want to do it. They kissed – they now knew how to kiss. It was sweet, but the pain was all the greater. They barely spoke, for words no longer meant anything.

Ursula was the first to get up and say that now she had to leave. She didn't want Simon to see her tears.

Simon remained leaning against the wall, watching, with a broken heart, as the girl set off at a run. Suddenly a light breeze seemed to seize Ursula's hair. The girl stopped and looked around, alarmed. Yet there she was, the wind ruffling her hair, and it seemed to Simon that Ursula was listening to something. It only lasted a moment.

Then the girl turned around and asked Simon, ‘Did you hear it, too?'

‘No, I didn't hear anything.'

Ursula smiled sadly. ‘She blessed me in the name of St Michael. She said that you'll marry me, but I have to be patient and determined.'

‘Who did?' asked Simon. ‘Who blessed you?'

‘She said her name was Dorothea,' called Ursula softly, glancing back at the boy for a moment and then running off.

Simon gazed after her for a long time.