Apothecary Melchior and the Ghost of Rataskaevu Street (15 page)

Melchior mingled with the funeral-goers at the rear, and as they went towards Town Hall Square – Master Bruys's corpse had to be borne with dignity across the town's principal public area – the procession became more mixed up, and then he pushed forward, ending up beside Brother Hinric. The monk greeted him with a nod.

The funeral procession made its first stop in front of the gate tower on Pikk Hill, where the guilds distributed bread and ale to the paupers and beggars. It was the custom to make three stops on the way to the burial place, and since there is not much distance between Lai Street and St Nicholas's Church the coffin was carried onwards to the front of the Town Hall, where a second stop was planned with a third after that at the Seppade Gate. During the stop the pallbearers were supposed to change over, alms were to be distributed, strong ale would be drunk and the musicians would play such sad songs that this day would long remain in everyone's minds.

In Town Hall Square the funeral procession was besieged by a huge number of beggars and paupers, and while the Bishop exhorted them to virtue and decency and the guildsmen handed out bread and the ale-bearers poured ale, Melchior found a suitable moment to tug at the front of Hinric's habit.

‘This isn't the only burial in Tallinn today, is it?' he asked the monk, and when he raised his eyebrows in surprise Melchior added, ‘I don't suppose Master Grote is being buried so grandly?'

‘I hear he was laid to rest at dawn,' replied Hinric. ‘And the reaper of death has brought his scythe to our monastery as well in the night. Eric, our young lay brother, died – of a chill, we think. He had been in poor health and suffering from a fever for a long time. Poor boy.'

‘May St Catherine bless his soul,' replied Melchior. He had seen Lay Brother Eric a couple of times – a thin, lanky boy who was always coughing and who had not been helped by any cure in the infirmary.

‘But, to tell you the truth, I'm surprised to see you here among the funeral-goers,' said Hinric.

‘I wanted a bit of fresh air and to take a breather,' Melchior responded nonchalantly. ‘And there are a few things that just won't leave me in peace. Among the mourners I can see a few patrons of St Bridget's Convent.'

‘Generally they're not very welcome in Tallinn – at least, not yet. But people have a way of getting used to everything.'

‘Isn't that so,' sighed Melchior. ‘Friend, if I were to ask you whether anyone named Adelbert or Abelard has ever been on the list of preaching brethren, what would you answer me?'

‘I'd answer that you don't seem to be able to leave the dead in peace,' said Hinric sullenly.

‘So you know what I'm talking about?'

‘You're talking about a very old story, which, God willing, is long forgotten and which it would not do anyone any good to dig up again. It's a sad and painful story, Melchior.'

‘It is. But I hear so many different versions of it that – inquisitive man that I am – I really want to know the truth. So what happened at the Unterrainer house, and are the horrible deeds that were done still haunting the living?'

A couple of beggars had broken through the crowd to come up to them, throwing themselves on their knees in front of Hinric and asking for a blessing. He hurriedly said a prayer and made the sign of the cross over them.

‘Do you think it's possible to find out the truth about that old story at this remove?' the monk asked Melchior.

‘That's what I'm asking you. Is there anyone who knows what actually happened and what your monastery daybook says about Adelbert.'

‘His body is resting in the monastery graveyard,' replied Hinric.

‘So there is no way he could be haunting Rataskaevu Street. Is that what you mean?'

The monk shook his head impatiently. ‘It's a very old story, Melchior.'

‘And old sins cast long shadows. Let me tell you something. Rumour has it that it was a Dominican monk called Abelard or Adelbert, but I think it was definitely Adelbert, because there was a famous Abelard to whom a similar thing happened, and maybe those two stories have got mixed up.'

‘Are you thinking of the learned Abelard of Paris?' asked Hinric.

‘Yes, that's the one. It's a famous story, and I've heard it told and even read it in a book, how Abelard the philosopher was in love with his pupil Heloïse. If you recall, it ended with Abelard being castrated and both lovers entering a monastery. Basically it's the same story – forbidden love and castration, and that's why the rumours have mixed up the two names. So the name of that unfortunate Dominican – who was also castrated by his lover's husband – is more likely to be Adelbert. Am I right?'

‘On his gravestone it says Adelbert,' nodded Hinric. ‘But I don't know that story. I will listen, friend, and watch to see if I can help you, but I'd advise you to leave that old story in peace.'

Finally the funeral procession passed from the Seppade Gate back to St Nicholas's. The mourners went into the church where the Bishop of Tallinn, along with the Pastor of St Nicholas's and the canons, said a brief mass. St Nicholas's was being enlarged, so the mourners occupied just one aisle to avoid the scaffolding. Work had been broken off for the funeral. As the members of the Great Guild stepped up one by one to Bruys's wooden casket and bid the deceased farewell – for which purpose a hole had been cut in it above the face – Melchior's eye was caught by Master Goswin. The old merchant was having trouble holding back the tears; his face was screwed up with pain and a hopeless despair overshadowed his expression. His hands were trembling, and his face twitched. Master Goswin's grief seemed different from that of the other Great Guildsmen – it seemed he felt real pain at the loss, and his presence was more than just a dignified leave-taking. The bearded old man leaned over the corpse lying in the wooden casket, touched his face once and said something, some last words. Only the deceased and the mourner could know them. It was pain,
it was mourning, it was genuine unbearable loss that afflicted Goswin's face.

What really happened between them? wondered Melchior. That I have to find out.

Afterwards the coffin was carried to the grave, where the Bishop sprinkled holy water into it and dropped in some incense and some coal. The Bishop of Tallinn, an elderly and God-fearing man, kept very closely to that custom, although pastors did not often conduct funerals that way any longer. The holy water was meant to keep demons away from the grave, so that they would not attack a Christian and do what they could not do in his lifetime. The incense, though, was so that the corpse would stink less in the hot weather. The coal, which does not change its form and appearance underground, is a sign to future generations of gravediggers that they may no longer touch this ground, for a blessed soul is resting here. Then the Bishop laid some ivy and evergreen laurel in the coffin, saying that those who die keeping Christ the Lord in their thoughts and loving Him may have died to the earthly world but their souls lived on in God.

The ordinary people who had accompanied the funeral procession did not come into the graveyard. Melchior, however, noticed among the other mourners an old woman who, to judge from her dress, was certainly not a merchant's wife, more likely the wife of a farmer or publican. She was old, in a soiled grey dress, and Melchior thought he had seen her before on the town's streets among the lower orders of people. Or was she maybe one of the beggars who asked for alms? Melchior couldn't recall. At any rate, the woman caught his eye because she didn't belong here. Her face had a sadness – and something else. She was at a funeral, and she wasn't begging; she had come to say farewell. Who was she? Some former servant of Master Bruys? A housekeeper perhaps? One of the poor people for whom this holy man had done good?

Master Bruys's body was laid to rest in the grave in the casket, his head facing west and his feet to the east so that on the Day of Judgement Christ the Lord will appear on the earth to the east, and
so Bruys will be able to see the last sunrise and the Redeemer coming towards him. His face was covered with a handkerchief, and then there was singing. Among the other merchants of the Great Guild Master Goswin again caught Melchior's eye. He was not singing. Tears were streaming down his old bearded visage, and he closed his eyes to hold them back.

People of higher rank – Church fathers, knights, members of the chapter and other noble gentlemen – then departed for the Guildhall of the Great Guild, where a mourning wake was held in memory of Master Bruys. The Apothecary, of course, was not invited to that.

A
S THE
THUNDERCLOUDS
gathered once again over the town, the air growing thicker and threatening rain, Melchior hurried through the Coast Gate and set his steps towards that part of town to the east of the harbour that was covered in wooden shacks. Estonian and Swedish fishermen lived here, and there were plenty of taverns. In one of those, he was sure, he would find the honourable Rinus Götzer, inmate of the almshouse, a one-armed beggar and former skipper.

Decades before Master Götzer had been a captain on Tallinn ships and later even on one Hanseatic ‘peace ship', which had pursued the Victual Brothers and cleared the seas of those pirates. He had lost an arm in battle, and he had lost all his property and had been living on the charity of the Church of the Holy Ghost for many years. Almost all his hair had fallen out, and he had difficulty walking, but his mind was intact. Melchior occasionally prepared him a gift of some medicine for a cough or pains in the limbs. Rinus Götzer was an honoured and respected man in Tallinn. That he was as poor as a church mouse must therefore be God's will, as was the fact that the townspeople did not forget him, because Götzer never went hungry in the almshouse, and his clothes were clean and of good cloth because all the good that he had done for Tallinn in the past was now being paid back to him by the town – albeit not in abundance, because is not poverty bestowed on some people just as wealth is bestowed on others, so that the wealthy may
distribute their assets to the poor? And perhaps not just out of piety, but because of another thing, something which Melchior had been reading about for ten years and which he privately called ‘the mystery of St Olaf's Church'.

Actually, Master Götzer had one more merit, of which not every inmate could boast. He knew many stories about the Victual Brothers and earlier wars at sea. He had seen Gödeke Michels with his own eyes and had taken part in battles with the Victual Brothers, and when he spoke of these events in harbourside taverns there were always people who would drop him a penny or two or buy him a stoup of ale. And since Master Götzer visited these taverns often and knew all the seamen he also heard all kinds of tales. No one was afraid to tell their own stories in front of the old skipper, and when Götzer asked, by way of continuing the story, what the situation was in Visby or Stralsund harbour there was always someone to tell him.

In short, Master Götzer was a mine of information about what went on around Tallinn harbour, who was carrying what sort of goods where and taking what in exchange, the state of the ships, who their captains and crew were, where crew were needed, who was talking behind whose back, who was not satisfied with what, who was looking for what, and who had what. They were valuable bits of information, and they were paid for. Sometimes some merchant would slip old Götzer a penny to put his ear to the ground and listen as to how things were aboard his rival's ships, who was seeking a better company, and so on. Now and then a seaman would be dissatisfied because there was too little room for his goods in the hold, and this reduced his enthusiasm for picking up an axe or a knife when pirates attacked the ship. Most ships belonged to more than one shareholder as well as to trading companies, and the Order had shares in nearly every vessel. The captain, too, always owned a small hypothetical share. Of course, this gave rise to disputes between owners. Shareholders paid well for gossip, for what the men were saying onboard ships and what the actual situation was at sea. So Götzer had his own source of
income, but since there was no special need to buy clothes and food in the poorhouse he spent it in the taverns, investing his money in enterprises that promised even greater dividends. Master Götzer was thus something of an eavesdropper and knew everything about the affairs of the harbour – or almost everything.

And a little while ago – as Melchior well remembered – he had heard Master Götzer in a tavern chatting about a man who had spoken of some ghost that had pursued him, and that man had later died. Who this man was and how he met his end Melchior did not recall, and the story had faded from his mind, either that or he had considered it too unimportant to remember.

Melchior strode along the hedge-lined road and saw before him the first houses of the suburb they called Kalamaja, shacks thrown together out of beams, planks and anything else that were to hand, inhabited by fishermen, bargemen, their families and other harbour people. The harbour was to the north-east, and one could see the harbour tower and the landing-bridge, alongside which were moored ships with shallower draughts. The masts of the bigger
kogge
ships could be seen out at sea, where they sat at anchor. Wagons rolled past Melchior, and the commoner people were milling around. Melchior stepped into several taverns and asked after Master Götzer, and in a few he had indeed been seen that day. Here and there the old skipper had had a stoup of ale and then stumbled off to places where there were more receptive ears for his stories and more generous people. The local seamen had heard all Götzer's tales before, so he would be looking for some place where there would be sailors from foreign ships who did not know his yarns. Melchior had heard these narratives from Master Götzer many times, and on each occasion the battles would get bloodier and the boldness of Tallinn's seamen greater. That is the way with war stories. Melchior remembered times when Master Götzer spoke merely of doing battle against Gödeke Michels, but over the years the old skipper had heard tell of others, so now he was relating how he had been in combat with Arend Stycke, Ulrich Bernevur and Egbert Kale, depending on where his hearers were from. Melchior
recognized this gambit – for every party you had to find something to engage their interest.