Apothecary Melchior and the Ghost of Rataskaevu Street (31 page)

‘He wrote two letters,' said Melchior. ‘What was in the second?'

‘His second was short and confused. He must have been drunk when he wrote it because he did have that fault of occasionally drinking too much. He wrote that his latest work was ready, he'd been paid well and he was looking for a ship so he could get home before the autumn storms. He wouldn't survive another dark autumn and winter in this town. He wrote that he'd seen a ghost risen from the dead, which now haunted him at night and that he had to flee from it so it wouldn't drive him mad and kill him. This letter came on our company's ship. He was supposed to have arrived home on the next one, but only a coffin turned up in Antwerp. There he lay, his head smashed in, and we buried him and wept and cursed this damned town.'

‘Choose your words better,' snapped Dorn, but Melchior silenced him with a wave of his hand.

‘That last letter. Do you still have it?'

‘I have it here,' replied de Wrede, tapping his head with his
finger. ‘It was just as I told you. His work was finished, including the last job, he had been paid well and now he was starting to look for a ship that would sail him back to his beloved homeland before the autumn and the storms. “The autumns are so terrible and the winters even more horrible. Everything freezes. This is a damned town, and I've been forced to paint unholy marks. And I've seen a ghost, risen from the dead, and now it haunts my nights and won't let me shut my eyes in peace. I have to escape because otherwise I'll lose my reason. It will destroy me. It will kill me.” Those were his words. The final line was in such jumbled writing that we couldn't read it.'

‘And that was the letter which brought you to Tallinn?' said Melchior.

‘My father and uncles sent me here. The men on the ship told us that he'd fallen at night in the harbour while drunk and been killed by the blow, and since he'd already paid for his passage they used his money to buy him a coffin and sent him home because there was no one to give the money back to. I was instructed to punish the guilty party and …' De Wrede fell silent, coughed and groped for the tankard, which was almost empty. Melchior whispered to Dorn to have some ale brought in. The Magistrate looked doubtfully at Melchior but asked Master Bose to see if there was any ale in the antechamber because he was thirsty.

‘So you came to avenge your brother? Because his head had been smashed in?'

‘We were told that he had fallen in the harbour against a large rock, but we didn't believe it. His wound looked as if someone had hit him with something hard. And those words about the damned town, unholy marks and the ghost –'

‘In the churches here it is the custom, and it is done by the command of the Bishop himself, for evil to drive out evil itself,' interrupted Melchior. ‘Don't you know the Scriptures? The Mark of Triquetrum
has
to be painted on a church wall so that evil demons cannot torment Christian people.'

‘What a country,' muttered de Wrede. ‘But, yes, I had heard that
there is still such a custom and that the bishops themselves insist that symbols of Satan are painted on church walls.'

‘And the battered head?'

‘My brother was slightly built. With his weight he would never have fallen hard enough to receive a wound like that. Somebody must have smashed his head in and taken his money. I was sent here to take revenge on his murderer, and, if he was murdered by a ghost, then I was ordered to conjure up that ghost.'

‘What a country,' sighed Dorn sarcastically. ‘You wouldn't believe that there are any Christians in Flanders.'

Bose brought the ale. Dorn drank much of it himself then passed it to Melchior, who took a swig before passing it on to de Wrede.

‘So what was demanded from you?' he asked.

‘My father said that many things weren't right about his son's death. Those unholy marks and the story of the ghost meant that someone had bewitched him. In our family there is …' De Wrede fell silent, searching for the words. ‘We've encountered things like this before,' he continued, ‘and if someone had put a death curse on my brother then I had to find the culprit and have him cursed likewise. Father cut off Gillis's scalp – because it contains great power – and he gave it to me to bring with me.'

‘And what did you do in Tallinn?'

‘I did some business because business needed to be done. And I looked for that curse that killed my brother. I've never heard so many ghost stories in any town as there are here. I went among the Blackheads, and I listened. I made myself talk to everyone who had ever known my brother here. I searched for the curse, and I didn't find anything. I started doing other things, which –'

‘At the Red Convent, as I've heard,' remarked Dorn with a sneer.

De Wrede blushed and continued rapidly, ‘I was looking for a sorcerer who could help me. It took time, but I was finally led beyond Reppen's Pastures where one of them is supposed to live. He demanded parts of my brother's body, and I gave him the scalp. He demanded more body parts from me, and I went to St Barbara's Churchyard to find some.'

‘So you
have
been desecrating the dead?'

‘Yes, I have,' admitted de Wrede, ‘but only because I was seeking the truth about my brother's death. That sorcerer demanded the foot of a virgin and a hanged man's sex organ and took a hell of a lot of money. Those first ones that I cut off at night were not good enough for him, and he sent me off for new ones. I did a deal with a gravedigger … and I suppose you know the rest.'

‘What did the sorcerer promise you?'

‘That if my brother had died under a curse he would conjure up my brother's spirit and punish its bewitcher by making him die the same way. He boiled up those body parts, and the smell was so strong that I wanted to run away, and then he said that they were still the wrong ones, and I had to bring new ones and pay him even more silver and a keg of ale, at which I got angry and pushed him into his own cauldron.'

‘Good gracious,' exclaimed Dorn, ‘and, to begin with, you believed him?'

‘That's what I was sent here for, to punish the guilty party because Tallinn Council would do nothing about it.'

‘What were you doing at St Michael's Convent?' asked Melchior to silence Dorn.

‘I went there because I heard one man in a tavern beyond the town wall saying that Master of the Tower Grote had fallen to his death, and he had an expression on his face as if he'd seen a ghost, and that Grote had been terribly frightened at the Apothecary's pharmacy when the Apothecary told him he looked like he'd seen a ghost.'

‘You don't know who the man might have been who spoke about my pharmacy?' ventured Melchior, scarcely concealing a smirk. Dorn had a heavy coughing fit, and when it had passed he retorted that that chatterbox must have been a town guard.

‘He probably was,' said de Wrede. ‘Certainly someone in the service of the Town Council, but maybe I didn't see his face very clearly. At any rate, I understood from him that the Tower-Master had a wound on his forehead like my brother. It seemed a very
strange coincidence to me, so I went there to ask more about it.'

‘And what did you find out?' asked Melchior.

‘Not much,' admitted the Fleming, ‘actually nothing. He had fallen and died, and whether he was bewitched by someone or what he said about a ghost – nothing.'

‘What do you know about the death of Master Laurentz Bruys?'

‘He was some respected and pious merchant, wasn't he? He died a week or so ago, and his funeral was the other day. They held a remembrance for him at the Blackheads'. I didn't know him myself. We didn't do business with him.'

Melchior thought for a moment and exchanged a wordless glance with Dorn. If you read the words to him and frighten him a little, that'll be enough for me, said Dorn's look.

‘And what other ghost stories have you heard in Tallinn?' asked Melchior.

‘That on Rataskaevu Street there is a house that's haunted. My brother was working next door to it, at Mr Goswin's place, but I haven't managed to talk to him. He's an old and feeble man who keeps away from the world. And then he was painting for the Knight Kordt von Greyssenhagen, who also goes to the brothel, but I don't know any more about him … I have been to Pastor Witte's church services, the one whose house is haunted. He is also a very pious and diligent servant of God. I did hear that one of the whores at the Red Convent had once said that she'd also seen a ghost, but then she drowned in the well.'

‘And you went to the Red Convent to make enquiries?'

‘I have been there,' admitted de Wrede, ‘and no one can blame me for that – even some councillors go there. Magdalena is supposed to have said that she saw a person risen from the dead. But it's not worth believing whores' stories; they're all liars, and they'll tell you anything as long as you open up your purse.' De Wrede's voice was indignant, even angry.

‘And you swear that this is all God's truth, and you swear it in the names of all the saints?' asked Dorn.

‘Yes, I do.'

‘Then get out of my sight,' shouted Dorn, ‘and keep in mind that I forbid you to go outside the town walls other than to the harbour, where you can go with all your belongings as fast as possible, in the name of St Victor. If I hear one single word more, just one, that you have been seen at St Barbara's Churchyard or beyond Reppen's Pastures, you're going straight to court and into the frying-pan.'

De Wrede got up from the chair, bowed and thanked the Magistrate, then made off in the direction of the street door as if he had a hundred demons at his heels. Executioner Bose shook his head sadly, collected his implements and retired to the torture chamber.

‘So you think he was telling the truth?' asked Dorn after a while.

‘He has boldness and enterprise,' declared Melchior, ‘so his gullibility is all the more strange. He is prepared to pay a lot of money to a country quack, he associates with a whore, he believes all kinds of stories about ghosts, yet he appears to be a good Christian. I think you did the right thing letting him go for now. He has already punished that sorcerer, but whether he was telling the whole truth … I don't know. He said something very interesting, which doesn't seem to fit with the rest, and that is something I have to think about.'

‘If he lied to me, even a single word, then he will be the first Fleming to be drawn and quartered in Tallinn,' said Dorn. ‘Yes, I swear it, in the name of the laws of Lübeck, the Council and St Victor.'

M
ELCHIOR
'
S
FATHER
HAD
taught his son chess at one time, but he had forgotten what he'd learned. Ten years ago the Lay Brother Wunbaldus and Prior Eckell had unintentionally forced Melchior to relearn how to play. It was a reflection of life, every piece with its own significance, and if they are arranged properly on the board one could configure a situation that helps one to think through a difficult dilemma, see it objectively and often from an entirely different viewpoint. The blessed Prior Eckell had once done this, and it had helped Melchior to find his murderer. Chess helps you to create order in your thoughts. Chess tells you about life, like a star chart, but you have to look at it from the right angle.

Melchior couldn't sleep. He felt that the Wakenstede curse, which had crushed him at St Barbara's Churchyard, had not yet gone far enough away; it was still close at hand and looking for a fresh moment to attack when his spirit was at its weakest. He had slept only for a couple of hours, and outside the window it was pitch black. Groping with his hands, Melchior went down to the kitchen, lit a candle and drank from a clay bottle a strong drink that he had mixed to ward off the menace. It didn't ever really do much in the end, but it did help to keep a new wave of the curse at bay, at least for a while. Then, in the shop, he kneeled in front of the image of St Cosmas and prayed to be given a clear understanding so he could find the evil that had led to the deaths of all these people.

All these people … he said to himself. How many people?

The chessboard might provide an answer. He took the candle to the board and placed the pieces on it. Then he moved the figures on the board. He imagined a face for every white piece and arranged it as he believed it would confront the black. But when he finally looked at the arrangement he couldn't make any sense out of it; it was simply a confused mass where everything might mean anything, and there seemed to be no clear meaning. Angrily he pushed a few pieces away and set about rearranging the figures. He took the white king, saying that it was Master Bruys, and put it in the middle of the board. He set the black king against it and said that this was an evil fate, and then he put figures on both sides which he believed to be in the service of each side. The white queen was St Bridget and the black bishop Bruys's wicked son Thyl. The black castle represented the evil Unterrainer house. Around these he placed the other figures which seemed to be involved in the story, although there were still too many of them.

Too many.

Too much confusion, too much evil, too much black.

He cleared all the black figures off the board except the king and stopped to think.

Master Bruys stood opposite his evil fate and beside him only St Bridget.

Next to the white king he lifted a black knight and thought of it as Greyssenhagen. But in this game Greyssenhagen shouldn't be black; he should be on the same side as St Bridget. Or should he?

Even when he lifted the curse of the black castle, the Unterrainer house, he couldn't find a proper place for it. He didn't know how near to Master Bruys to place it. It didn't suit this game. He cast it aside.