Apothecary Melchior and the Ghost of Rataskaevu Street (35 page)

‘I won't tell you now. You wouldn't believe me,' said Melchior softly, almost inaudibly, in a trembling voice and breathing hard. ‘This story, Wentzel, this story is a weird one. It's monstrous, it's horrible, and my soul cries with pain when I think of it. To believe it you first have to believe that a demon can come to earth, that Satan has stolen a person's soul and put only wickedness and hatred in its place.'

‘You're making me shiver all over,' grumbled Dorn from behind the curtain.

‘That's good. You should be afraid, because you're going to find something out that human understanding refuses to believe. You have a candle – read this and think, then blow out the candle. Be alert and very still.'

Melchior handed Dorn the torn sheet of paper on which he had been writing at the table. It had seven lines on it, written in the spidery hand of a sick man.

‘What's this?' asked Dorn.

‘These are a few keys. They'll give you the solution as it was given to me. If you work it out for yourself then I haven't accused anyone unfairly, and you'll know what we're expecting.'

Dorn muttered in vexation that he couldn't stand guessing games, but he read it anyway:

Foot chopped off tramp and why Bruys couldn't walk

Bruys sent Thyl to Germany

Bruys had a bastard child

Annlin's son Hanns is 41 years old

Goswin gave up trading in salt

De Zwarte had completed the portrait

There was very heavy rain on the day Grote and Bruys died

‘This is a strange and confused story of yours,' declared Dorn,
blowing out the candle as commanded. ‘These facts are known, but this business of Bruys's bastard is such an old rumour …'

‘You think about it,' recommended Melchior.

Dorn considered, and for a long time silence reigned.

‘You don't say a word here about that ghost and the Unterrainer house, so I don't understand what you're on about at all,' Dorn remarked at length.

‘There's one more thing I can tell you that I didn't have time to write down. I visited the Red Convent, and I heard that Magdalena had said before she died that she
saw a person risen from the dead.
And that is what de Wrede had also heard her say, you remember? You see, that's the key to everything. But let's be wary now. I think the time is at hand when he should come.'

And again they were silent. Time passed. Evening was turning into night. Somewhere far away a dog barked on the street. The late-evening flies were circling around the fading candle flame.

Finally Melchior heard Dorn whispering, ‘Melchior, explain to me. It was de Wrede who cut off the foot of that tramp, but what has that to do with Bruys, whose legs were infirm from the disease of old age, which the monks there in Mariazell –'

‘Quiet now. I heard something.'

Melchior put his head on the table between his hands and remained quietly resting, just breathing. Dorn was amazed but stayed as quiet as a mouse. He made sure he could see around the curtain and watched the door and window. He did think he saw something, some shape flitting past the window … and then going back again. It might have been a town guard passing, but he couldn't be sure. After that nothing happened, all was silent and still. The candle on the table cast the last flickering splashes of light into the dim room. Dorn eyed the darkening window attentively. He directed all his attention on it, trying to penetrate the darkness, but still he couldn't see too well. The window was composed of small panes of glass and cames; the glass was dull and soiled and almost impossible to see through. Yet suddenly Dorn was taken aback; something appeared at the edge of the window.
And then he saw, very slowly, very slowly, some blurred thing was moving from the wall to the middle of the glass pane. And when that something suddenly stopped Dorn realized that it was also hard to see inside from without. That something was a human eye, and it was cautiously examining the inside of the shop through the glass. And then, in a flash, it was gone. Dorn realized that he had been holding his breath.

Melchior, who was still sitting motionless, suddenly snored and so loudly that Dorn himself was frightened. Damn, he thought, Melchior has fallen asleep, but then the Apothecary hissed almost inaudibly, ‘Be ready.'

Dorn saw the door moving. A hand was pushing it open slowly, ready to withdraw at the first creak. But the heavy door did not creak. Dorn thought the door had always creaked. Had Melchior oiled it recently? The door was still moving, and now, in the darkness, he could see a shape appearing on the threshold. It moved as silently as the grave, cautiously and slowly, slipping halfway through the doorway. Dorn wasn't breathing. The shape must be an enemy, someone who had come with evil intentions, and now he began to understand Melchior's plan – in order to accuse this furtive stranger there had to be an accuser. He was that accuser, and Melchior was the bait. So Dorn didn't move but made himself ready.

The candle had almost gone out. The intruder was wearing a black cloak with a hood. Dorn wasn't sure that he could see well enough through the chink beside the curtain, but it seemed to be an expensive coat, fur even.

Melchior snored once more.

This was a signal to both the intruder and Dorn. The dark shape suddenly took a couple of very quick steps forward, and from under its front it pulled out something long and shiny. Dorn jumped out from behind the curtain at the same moment that the weapon flashed. The Apothecary had kept half an eye open, for he turned to evade the blow and rolled on to the floor. Yet the attacker was so agile that it managed to raise its arm for another blow as Dorn
rushed up to it and shouted, ‘In the name of the Council …' The assailant struck, and Melchior struck back, but Dorn was there. He pushed the figure away from Melchior, felt a cold-bladed weapon pulling across his jacket and heard a screech. The intruder screeched like a demon being drowned in holy water; it struggled against him, it scuffled, kicked and bit Dorn in the jaw, and then from the street behind the door came another cry.

‘There's someone else,' shouted Dorn, pulling the screeching, writhing intruder to the floor.

‘I know,' cried Melchior and jumped up to help Dorn. He forced the long, sharp knife from his enemy's grasp and threw it across the room.

Dorn hit the stranger in the chest with his fist and put his arm around the stranger's neck. Melchior grabbed the sputtering candle from the table with one hand and with the other pulled the hood back from the stranger's face.

They saw the face – distorted with hatred, insanity, burning with inhuman rage – of Annlin.

M
ASTER
A
REND
G
OSWIN'S
servant Hainz had been stripped bare and fettered to the wall of the torture chamber in the Town Council's prison. He had been shackled to a frame, his legs strapped to a moving rack. With one hand Executioner Bose turned a handle that forced Hainz's legs further apart and with the other held a pole on the end of which was a scoopful of glowing coals that were positioned directly under Hainz's sagging testicles and penis.

Hainz was a big man with broad shoulders and tough muscles. His long grey hair fell down the sides of his head, and from his mouth seeped a bloody froth, caused by the spiked torture instrument – a poison spider – that had just been removed. When placed in the mouth and the person is tortured at the same time and he starts to scream with pain the poison spider causes hellish agony.

Bose turned the spindle, and Hainz's were legs bent into a gruesome position; the bones creaked and the blood vessels darkened.

Hainz screeched, ‘The Master doesn't allow us to talk. No talking allowed to anybody.'

Hainz had at one time been a salt-carrier in Tallinn, and salt-carriers were all tough, strong men. They were mostly Estonians, but Hainz apparently came from somewhere around Lübeck and had ended up in Tallinn after being shipwrecked. Since then he had been afraid of the sea and had joined the Brotherhood of Porters and sworn the citizen's oath. The Council required all
porters to swear the oath because such strong men were always needed, and doing so granted the porters citizens' rights. In return the town required that they bear arms in defence of the town, haul stones for building up the town wall, rescue people in the event of a fire … That meant they had to live in the town and not beyond the town walls. Porters had to load loose cakes of salt from the small boats on to wagons and then lift them off again at the weighing-house. When the salt was milled, they stuffed it into bags and heaved it on to the scales; then they laid the bags out in the merchants' cellars or put them on carters' wagons and unloaded them at the merchants' houses. For years Hainz had been hauling Master Goswin's salt sacks, and Goswin had taken him on as his servant. By that time Hainz was married to Annlin, the daughter of a certified grain-measurer at the weighing-house.

‘No talking about the salt-cellar. The Master won't allow it,' yelled Hainz. He was crying, and his tears mixed with the bloody saliva. Melchior was standing next to the Magistrate. He wasn't enjoying this scene, but he couldn't allow himself any sympathy for this man when he thought of the suffering that he had brought to others. God had not given Hainz much insight but still enough for him to understand what pain is, what torture is, what is right and what is wrong. Hainz, however, had chosen to follow darkness and failed to do the duty of a Christian. Melchior had seen his tears before, at sermons at both the Dominican Monastery and at St Nicholas's, yet this man had chosen to torture and kill innocent people. Yes, passion was at the root of it, because the man evidently desired his wife, even loved her in his own way, the basis of it being obedience to his Master, whose money fed and clothed him, kept him from hunger and protected him from cold. A woman's warm body and a warm room, herrings, bread and turnips, and for that you sell your blessed soul? Without even hating your victims or without caring anything for the pain you cause their many kinfolk?

‘The Master doesn't allow talk,' screamed Hainz, yelping and floundering, which caused him even more pain. Wulf Bose scorched
Hainz's dangling balls with a hot coal, and the man howled in agony, yelping, screaming and shrieking.

The door of the torture chamber opened, and the executioner's assistant pushed Annlin into the room. The woman was half-naked. She had been whipped, and her back and shoulders were covered in wheals. She was thrown to the floor, and there she lay for a while, panting. She looked wretched and feeble. Just yesterday, though, she had wanted to kill Melchior, and a person can feel no sympathy for one who has come to slit his throat with a knife. Then Annlin lifted herself up, her wrinkled face quite expressionless despite the humiliation, pain and hopelessness. There were wounds from whipping even on her sagging, tuberous breasts.

‘Leave him alone,' said Annlin in an unexpectedly clear and assured voice. ‘He won't tell you anything anyway as long as the Master won't allow it. You're just torturing him to death.'

‘The Master won't allow talk. Mustn't talk about the salt-cellar,' yelled Hainz.

Bose took the tongs and stepped over to Annlin. Dorn raised a hand.

‘Confess,' he commanded the woman.

‘The Master won't allow …' Hainz's voice had weakened.

‘Speak,' commanded Melchior. ‘You won't get out of this chamber without confessing, and you know it. Did you kill the prostitute Magdalena, de Zwarte the painter and Master Grote of the Quad Dack Tower?'

And Annlin spoke. Hainz had gone to the whorehouse and waited there until Magdalena came. Hainz had given her money and said he wanted to fuck her and knew a secret place and told the woman to come with him. Magdalena came, and Hainz led her to the backyard of Master Goswin's house. There he grabbed the woman firmly by both arms, and Annlin held a pillow over her face until she choked. Later, towards evening, when it had got dark, they hauled the corpse to the well and pushed her in.

‘The painter de Zwarte, you hit him on the head with a stone in
the harbour, didn't you?' asked Dorn, as Executioner Bose raised a hot coal to Hainz's testicles again.

‘Don't torture him,' cried Annlin. ‘He won't tell you anything. Let me talk … Yes, I hit him on the head with a rock. It was I, but I did it on orders. That painter was a liar and didn't keep to his word. Hainz grabbed him as he was going for a piss, and I struck –'

‘You would have killed him anyway,' said Melchior, ‘regardless of whether he promised to keep quiet or not. From the moment he started painting he was condemned, but you couldn't kill him before he went to the harbour. And then you took his money as well.'

‘What use is money to a dead man? Yes, of course, I took his purse. It was our money. It was the price of obedience.'

And Grote? How did you kill him?'

It had been difficult and required a lot of adjustments. Annlin had gone to the evening sermon at St Michael's, where she had been known since she had taken Dorothea to join the holy sisters. After the sermon she had concealed herself behind the bathhouse and stayed there until the evening. Hainz had been waiting on the street on the south side of the nunnery. When Grote came to the tower and it was getting dark, Annlin opened the small gate and let Hainz in. He had quietly run around the perimeter and gone into the area between the two walls. Then Annlin had called the Tower-Master by name; she had called several times in a loud voice. As his wife was doing this Hainz crept up the steps, and, seeing that Grote was going out of the tower, he ran along the walkway through the second storey of the tower and pushed Grote over. The Tower-Master's bones did indeed break as he fell, but he didn't die. Annlin took away the torch that had dropped from the Tower-Master's hand as he fell, stepped up to him, raised the torch to his face and saw that the man recognized her. His face was pale with terror, and he was blabbering something about a ghost. Annlin struck him on the head with a rock.