Apothecary Melchior and the Ghost of Rataskaevu Street (16 page)

He found Master Götzer at a tumbledown tavern by the stony shore that led to the pier. A few boats were tied up alongside it. The sea was whipping up a storm, and a light rain was pattering. Rinus Götzer was hanging around in front of the tavern and was half-asleep. Melchior tapped him on the shoulder and asked if the Honourable Skipper wished to remain lying in the rain because there were threatening dark-blue clouds over the sea, and – as far as Melchior knew of weather signs – a heavy thunderstorm was brewing over the town.

‘That's God's truth,' stammered the skipper, aroused from his doze. ‘There'll be thunder here, my word there will, and a terrible storm over the sea. But what brings you here, Apothecary? I haven't seen you for a few months.'

‘That's what brings me,' replied Melchior. ‘It's been a few months since I chatted with Master Götzer and heard his news. If I remember rightly, it was in the spring when I last saw you.'

‘I suppose it was,' said Götzer.

‘But it wasn't here in this tavern,' Melchior continued. ‘I think it was somewhere near the harbour, in that place with holes in the roof.'

‘Exactly, yes. It was at Frückner's, the boarding-house belonging to the grim-looking Swede whose wife died last spring of the breathing disease. That was it.'

‘People die,' replied Melchior, ‘that's true. Oh, I'd be pleased to come along and listen to you telling your best stories, but, unfortunately, the fact is that I was looking for you to ask about someone else's death.'

‘Were you just looking for me, Apothecary?' the poor man exclaimed.

‘I was indeed. Just you. And how would it be if we went to Frückner's Tavern now, and I'll buy you a couple of best ales, and you'll tell me the same story you told last time – only then I didn't have the sense to listen.'

And they walked along the muddy, faecal street, among the wooden shacks where nearly every household smelled of fish. The fishermen were just coming in from the sea, the threatening weather having driven them back early into harbour. They walked almost as far as the harbour, where, to protect the ships, a strong stone bulwark had been built against the west wind. Melchior recalled that it had just been completed when he and his father first arrived in Tallinn, and to him it had then seemed like the greatest of stone bastions rising up out of the sea. True, there were already complaints that the old bulwark no longer withstood the autumn storms and was greatly in need of rebuilding. From what Dorn had told him, Melchior knew that the harbour guard was constantly going to the Council cadging money to build it bigger. Tallinn harbour was defenceless against the northerly winds, and a storm had already smashed some ships to pieces while at anchor. Jutting out from the bulwark were two wharves on log piles rammed into the sea bed, alongside which the last boats and small ships were just arriving back. Between the bulwark and the boathouses stood the three-storey port tower that marked the site of the harbour to friendly ships and from which approaching enemy ships could be seen while still far out at sea.

The bargemen had already finished today's runs. The goods had been unloaded from the ships into their boats, everything had been carefully logged in the port and the boatmen were drifting off to the taverns to relieve themselves of a small part of the day's earnings. They were a different sort of people from the townsfolk. They spoke a different language and about different things. Life here was seedier and crueller than within the walls of the town, and it smelled different, too. Quite a few taverns doubled as dosshouses, where foreign sailors and other wanderers could take shelter, and thus there were plenty of whores around, often living in the taverns. Of course, the whores were older, more slovenly and more hideous than those offering company within the town walls to rich knights and merchants.

Frückner's Tavern was miserable-looking on the outside and no
better inside. They sat in a back corner on blocks behind an old herring barrel, and Melchior ordered the Swede to bring the best ale available in this hovel. And when they discovered that Frückner's finest was much better than one would have guessed from the appearance of the place they wished each other good health and long life, and the old alms-taker's curiosity grew about what need of him, a poor beggar, the noble Sire Apothecary could have. Melchior knew that this was just a ruse, for noble masters do sometimes need the services of Götzer, so he told him that he was seeking information concerning a death.

‘Is that so?' said Götzer. ‘Time passes, yet you keep on chasing your murderers. It's a dangerous thing, Master Melchior. I've seen a fair bit of hatred in my life, hatred that drives people to kill, and if someone gets in their way …'

Melchior smiled sadly and shook his head reassuringly. ‘No, no, Master Götzer, it's not as bad as all that. At least not like ten years ago when I was looking for one particular murderer.'

‘Ah, that Master Wigbold,' cried Götzer, but Melchior raised his hand to his mouth in warning. What had happened ten years ago was a dismal and repulsive affair, one that brought into the light of day much that should have been left buried. On the initiative of Councillor Bockhorst the interested parties in the case reached an agreement that the almshouse of the Church of the Holy Ghost would support Rinus Götzer for as long as he lived, to buy fine woollen cloth and ten marks' worth of herring and bread every year – on condition that Rinus Götzer did not tell anyone what he knew of the fate of Master Wigbold.

‘Let that matter rest,' Melchior now admonished the pauper. ‘It isn't proper for either of us to recall that name, and I was looking for you about quite a different matter.'

‘I'm listening, and, with the support of St Joost, I want to be of help,' Götzer assured him eagerly. The Apothecary had never left him unpaid. He had always slipped him a penny or two for a good yarn.

‘What interests me', Melchior went on, ‘is a story that you told
here in this same tavern around springtime, from which I remember only a couple of snatches. But in the meantime that story has become very interesting to me. You were talking about a man who had seen a ghost in Tallinn, and a little while later that man died.'

‘Oh, yes, I did tell that one right here, yes, and that story is probably known by every bargeman and that glum-looking publican, too, because it was right here that the man fell to his death, hitting his head on a rock as he was waiting for the morning ship and –'

‘Please tell it in the right order now, Master Götzer, and as exactly as you can recall. When did it happen, and who was the man?'

The pauper rolled his eyes for a moment and grabbed his stoup and took a manly draught.

‘It was none other than that Flemish painter who was invited here by the Council and painted pictures in the churches and then at some rich councillor's house, too, What was his name now?' Melchior waited patiently. ‘Gils or Gillis, some name like that it was – surely you should know it, Apothecary. Painted something at some churches. And his other name was something like Schwartz, but said the way the Flemings say it, I suppose. Ah, so it's him you've come to ask about? That was a funny story that.'

‘Has anyone else come to ask?'

‘Well, they did come – those Flemings and Hollanders are wandering around the harbour here and in town all the time – but only about a week ago a Blackhead came here snooping around and asking one or two people –'

Again Melchior had to ask the pauper to tell everything in the correct order. But now the man's name came to his mind. Of course, he had heard of him, but, as it always is with things that don't concern you directly, it had gone in one ear and out the other. It might have passed Melchior's memory by in the summer when there was talk in the town about a Flemish painter called Gillis de Zwarte, who had been working in Riga when Tallinn Council invited him here to paint pictures of saints. Apparently he had
finished several paintings and then St Nicholas's or the Church of the Holy Ghost disputed the price, saying the work was bad. Or perhaps they said it because the fee for an overseas painter was too high. At any rate, de Zwarte was then said to have painted some councillors' portraits, and then … well, what happened after that Melchior didn't know.

‘He fell to his death when he'd had a skinful,' Rinus Götzer refreshed his memory. ‘Right behind this very tavern, against a big rock left over from building the bulwark.'

And gradually, with occasional promptings to Master Götzer, putting questions and directing the tale back on track – because the man really was very old now and his train of thought tended to get confused regularly – Melchior finally got to grips with the story.

Gillis de Zwarte had done a spell of work in Tallinn, painted portraits and been in quarters at the home of some Blackhead and come into direct contact with the Brotherhood of Blackheads, although he was not a merchant but an artist. And then his work and livelihood in Tallinn had come to an end, and the man wanted to sail back to Flanders before the rough autumn storms came and the ships were no longer plying. This must have been the previous October or so, when he had had his boxes brought here to Frückner's boarding-house and started doing a deal in the harbour to find a suitable conveyance. So one evening Master Götzer happened to be here in this tavern, and de Zwarte was, too, boasting about his big purse and lapping up the beer that loosened his tongue. But while some men get merry from beer de Zwarte had become doleful, and with every tankard the melancholy took a greater hold on him. Then Götzer heard him talking about a ghost that he had seen with his own eyes.

‘Now I don't remember his exact words any more,' Götzer went on, ‘but roughly what he said was that Tallinn is a frightful town and he would thank his guardian saint when he finally got out of here – and that was supposed to happen the next day at dawn, you see, because he had a deal with a ship owner – and then he would also be free of the ghost that was now haunting him day and night.
And he also said that the whole town be damned and that Rataskaevu Street and those people and –'

‘Rataskaevu Street?' Melchior asked with interest.

‘Yes, that's what he said, and he reckoned he'd seen that Rataskaevu Street Ghost, but I don't know any more about that. And, well, here in the tavern there were all sorts of other townsfolk as always, servants and rope-makers and porters and boatmen, and no one was pleased, what with him cursing our town like that and rambling on about some ghost. But he didn't say any more about it, and then I went off back to the almshouse because they were about to close the town gate. The next morning, though, I heard that the same evening the painter had fallen to his death behind this very tavern, and, instead of a living person, they put his coffin on the ship, and that was how he sailed back to Flanders.'

‘So that was the story you told in the tavern when I was here? Now I recall it. A man who had seen a ghost and then died.'

‘I suppose so,' agreed Götzer. ‘Wasn't it strange? It's not every day you hear someone saying that a ghost has been chasing them. But he was dead, banged his head against a rock, and there was no sign of a ghost when he was found. His head was split open. The Flemish ship owner was a generous man, and the harbour guard Granlund thought that it would be right that the money paid for a living man to be carried should now be used to carry a coffin, and he was taken onboard.'

‘A thousand thanks to you, Master Götzer, but now, who else has come asking you about this death?'

‘Hah, who? It must have been that Flemish Blackhead with the name that ties your tongue in knots, that de Wrede or whatever. He was in a few taverns, just asking around – from me, too – but he bought only half a stoup of flat ale and went on demanding what ghost and how and so on, but I didn't chat to him for long.'

‘Cornelis de Wrede,' muttered Melchior to himself. ‘Cornelis de Wrede yet again. That's interesting.'

He thanked Master Götzer once more, bought him two stoups of ale and left a couple of pennies and suggested he come by the
pharmacy if he had any aches or pains. Next he quizzed Frückner the publican, the Swede with the glum face, but that left him none the wiser. Yes, there had been a Fleming who had arranged a passage for himself last autumn, drunk, who had then fallen to his death behind the tavern. He had paid in advance for board, and he had probably moaned about some ghost, but what man doesn't talk nonsense when he's drunk? The harbour guard had come to look at the corpse, and then he must have informed the Town Hall that the foreigner had fallen to his death while sloshed, and that's how things had stayed.

That's how things had stayed, Melchior mused to himself as he made his way back to town. That's how things had stayed with Magdalena, too. And that's how things would stay with Grote the Tower-Master. And who knows with how many others … ?

T
HE
STORM
HELD
off. Although deep black clouds had been piling up in the vault of the sky since noon, and somewhere out at sea lightning flashed and thunder rumbled, not a drop had yet fallen on Tallinn. Melchior was walking through the storm-threatened town in the evening light, his head full of strange thoughts. He wanted to talk to Dorn, to ask him any number of questions, but the Magistrate was not in his office. So Melchior had a better idea. He hurried towards the Seppade Gate, went through the magnificent arches and under the gateway and came out at the start of the highway that led south, bordered by the lattice-fenced garden-plots of the townsmen and, further off, the cemetery of St Barbara's Chapel. Melchior's own garden, on land which his father had bought from the city, was also near by, but today he would not have an opportunity to go there. The recent rain had watered the plants well, and in a couple of weeks he and Keterlyn would probably be faced with a lot of work, harvesting the fruits and plants, putting them out to dry and starting to prepare for the long winter. Yes, autumn was on its way, and that meant a lot of work for Melchior. In the autumn the last ships came, and the merchants would bring the potions, spices and oils he had ordered. The firewood needed storing in preparation for the tough northern winter, which brought with it many new diseases and epidemics. But for a few days all those things could wait.