Apothecary Melchior and the Mystery of St Olaf's Church (19 page)

But Melchior did not wish to think about that now. He forced his thoughts away from memories of his father and back towards more everyday affairs, quickening his pace along the shoreline. The town wall now ran directly towards the north and edged along the rocky coast. The path diverged close to Väike Rannavärav Gate. One of the paths crossed the Council's woodyard and wound down towards the harbour, but Melchior took the other fork and began walking towards the suburbs of Süstermaye and Köismäe. These glorified villages held a great number of taverns in which seamen whiled away the hours. He needed to find the almsman and former ship's captain Rinus Götzer.

Götzer was a fine man who had once captained a warship that had hounded the Victual Brothers. The brave Götzer had lost all his property as well as his hand in fighting them – although he had survived a period of imprisonment by the pirates – and was now under the care of the almshouse of the Church of the Holy Ghost. He spent the greater part of his time wandering from tavern to tavern in the villages near Tallinn
where there was always someone willing to buy the old skipper beer in exchange for a good story. Melchior could not think of another person in town who knew more about the ships docked at the harbour and their crews or of anything to do with the sea. It was said that merchants would regularly send an attendant armed with a couple of pennies to visit Götzer and hear whether there might be any truth behind the banter of guildsmen at the beer tables as well as more general information about what was going on at the harbour and what snippets of information some merchants might be keeping from the others. Melchior remembered this man from his boyhood when he used to visit the harbour with his father to watch the ships. Now only a poor cripple was left of that once proud skipper.

Having made his way through two or three establishments Melchior finally found the old sea dog in a tavern near Grusbeke and Epping towers where he had gone to buy a couple of tankards of its cheapest beer with the money he had collected in alms that morning. The small tavern was nestled amongst other identical rickety wooden shacks, where fishermen of mostly non-German descent resided. Melchior slipped Götzer a handful of aniseed sweets, which brought a tear to the withered old man's eye. They were the sort of sweets eaten by councilmen and nobles, and such delicacies rarely appeared on an almsman's table. Melchior said he had come to the harbour on business but thought to quench his thirst a bit beforehand because the weather today was hot, and he had already walked far.

The old man devoured the sweets, washed them down with a swig of beer but did not get a chance to thank Melchior for the indulgence before the Apothecary spoke.

‘There is absolutely no need for thanks, Sire Skipper,' he said after himself taking a sip of the tavern's beer, which definitely packed a punch. ‘You have done so much good for the town of Tallinn that now is the time when the town of Tallinn repays you. I myself would not dare set sail to hunt pirates down, but my business would soon fail were those thieves to seize the goods that I have ordered.'

‘So it is, perhaps,' Götzer sighed. ‘They rob and they murder at sea and will carry on robbing and murdering. Nothing will change by the Lord's grace alone.'

‘No doubt, although it is now more peaceful out there,' Melchior reasoned. ‘The Victual Brothers are no more and … ah, well, you, Sire
Götzer, know better than I. You did command a Hanseatic warship.'

‘I sailed the sea my entire life, and there is no harbour, no bay where I haven't been with my ship, sheltering from a storm or trading. I know the sea as I do my own pockets – where there's no longer been even half a grosz since I fell into the hands of the Victual Brothers with my few valuables,' Götzer sighed.

Melchior shook his head in sympathy. ‘Allow me to buy you another drink. That is a truly awful tale. Hey, beer to this table,' he called out.

‘Thank you, Melchior, my gratitude,' said the Skipper, and the pair again clanked their cups.

‘A cripple I may be,' Götzer soon began, ‘but I complain not of it. The sea teaches you not to complain; the sea teaches you humility. It teaches you much more than you will ever learn from pastors. Be as devout as you like and abide by the Scriptures and so forth, but no seaman can help it if he sometimes thinks that the sea is God and God is the sea. Everything that fate does with you, everything that you are a part of, springs from the sea, and you are at the sea's mercy when are a sailor. You may be a wealthy merchant, buy a chapel and an altar for yourself, give money to the monastery and to the poor and have masses held for you from morning to night, but when a storm be on the horizon and it carries you towards some bay … And then you see that yonder are beacon fires, you thank the Lord again and say your prayers as you've been led safely to shore. At daybreak you see that three swift ships are there at anchor, ships that have been in wait for the very moment that someone entered the bay led by their false beacons. Yes, that was what those Victual Brothers did, may the plague take them and Satan skin them alive.'

‘I'm with you completely on that,' Melchior declared firmly. He downed a hearty swig of beer and ordered the innkeeper to bring bread so that their feet might not feel lighter than their heads. ‘Yet you, Sire Götzer, kept your vitality, did you not?'

‘For this I've praised the Lord God for many a year but at the same time wondered what indeed his plans were when I was forced to watch as Gödeke Michels gouged my crewmen's eyes out with his own fingers before stuffing the men into empty herring barrels and throwing them overboard so that those who did reach the shore would be dashed against the cliffs.' The Skipper spoke with sadness. ‘They had no barrel left for me, so they speared me in the chest and threw me overboard all the same. I know not to whom I prayed, Melchior, whether it was the Lord God or
St Joost or whoever, nevertheless, I was picked up by a Rostock herring boat, and I made my way back to Tallinn without a penny, poor as a church mouse.'

‘You are alive, Sire Rinus, and your crew is dead. God has his own plans for everyone …'

‘And we must humbly accept them. Yes, so it is said. So it is said by the Dominicans and at the Church of the Holy Ghost and at every church along the Baltic Sea. Melchior, I do not complain about these events. Everything that the Lord has allowed me to have a part in, that I will humbly accept, yet I ask these pastors why it is that God does not hear the prayers of those thousands of men that have been murdered at sea like rats during the plague.'

‘You are posing questions that are either too difficult or too simple. No doubt men of faith will reply that those who have robbed at sea will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven … Sire Götzer, will you allow me to ask, did you ever reach Gotland on that warship of yours?'

‘Gotland?
Gotland
, you say?' the Skipper barked. ‘Ha! I lost my hand off the coast of Gotland. Some Dane wounded it so badly that the hand began to rot and was cut off at the Dominican infirmary in the town of Visby, otherwise I would have gone straight to the Creator's flock. No, I do not complain and I do not grumble. Few men that have sailed the seas live to such an age as I have, and the Guild of the Holy Flesh cares well for us all at the almshouse.'

‘Honour and praise to them,' Melchior affirmed.

‘And, well, as the town also has such a generous apothecary, then …' The Skipper dried his eyes once again.

‘My father told me that no one who served as an apothecary can become as rich as a merchant, but neither can anyone harbour hatred against an apothecary in the way that one might hate a merchant,' Melchior recited.

‘In the name of St Victor, Melchior, your father spoke the absolute truth, may he rest in peace,' declared the Skipper.

‘Yes,' Melchior mumbled, ‘yes, he died in peace, here in this very town and just at the time that the Teutonic Order's ships set sail for Gotland to wipe the Victual Brothers out.'

‘An honest and fine man he was, Melchior, an honest and fine man,' Götzer sighed. ‘But you asked something about Gotland …'

‘Oh, indeed. I wished to enquire whether you ever happened to come
into contact with Prior Eckell of our pious Dominicans on Gotland?' Melchior questioned.

‘No, I did not. Eckell I do not remember. Not that I generally recall much of that time; I was unconscious for the greater part of it. I may well have asked God to send us on the path to find Gödeke Michels so that
I
might gouge
his
eyes out, just as he had done to honest sailors, but I never had the chance. I tell you, Melchior, we often numbered three ships full of soldiers escorting Tallinn merchants' vessels, and, well, there were also Knights of the Order on board the ships, as the Order usually had its own section of every boat that carried goods, and, well, my eyes, alas, did not see for themselves the Order battering the Victual Brothers off the coast of Gotland, because at the time we were engaged in battle somewhere near Bornholm and merely heard of the victory, you see – of how Order Knights skinned Victual Brothers alive and strung their corpses along the walls of Visby, chopped off their heads and drove them on to the ends of mooring posts, and … Melchior, I would have wished to have been there in person and to tear Gödeke Michels into quarters with my own bare hands.'

‘What about the rumour that he escaped?' asked Melchior.

‘Ha! All their chiefs escaped the Order on Gotland,' Götzer was spitting with anger. ‘Gödeke, Klaus Störtebecker himself and that treacherous Magister Wigbold as well. They were all later captured near Zeeland and then beheaded on Hamburg's Isle of Grasbrook, or at least so it's said …'

‘To punish them for all their crimes, each of their heads should doubtlessly have been chopped off a number of times – and even that wouldn't have been enough,' Melchior said. ‘Please, carry on while I rest my legs and listen.'

‘I could carry on all the way through to next Christmastime. At that, well … where'd I leave off?'

‘You left off with how the Victual Brothers were beheaded on the Isle of Grasbrook.'

‘Well, not that I witnessed it with my own eyes, but I suppose I know well what people say,' the old man said, leaning back to spin his tale. ‘So, yes, the Hanseatic League finally caught them – Störtebecker first and then Magister Wigbold and Gödeke a year later, too, and the executions began at the cock's crow and lasted until night-time, so that blood flowed up to your knees, and the crowd still cried out in great joy when the next head
was removed. But the man that took them captive was no other than Simon of Utrecht himself with his famed ship the
Bunte Kuh
. It was a huge vessel, a true warship with cannons on deck and a downright … I've seen it once in my life. Well, of course there were other ships there also, so – since the towns paid captains according to how many thieves were captured – they branded every Victual Brother with a hot iron so that there wouldn't be any dispute afterwards over who caught how many men. Störtebecker himself, right, their highest chief and the most terrible seafaring murderer this world has ever seen, that Störtebecker's knees buckled in front of the killing platform and he pleaded for his life, promising to gift the town of Hamburg a gold chain so long that it could be wound around the church. Naturally he was shown no mercy, as there was not a single man or woman there whose family had not been harmed by Störtebecker's men. Ha! Then another tale runs that Störtebecker said, “No matter – if you don't let me live, then at least have mercy on my men, and on as many men as the number of steps I take after you've beheaded me.”'

‘I seem to recall having heard that story as well,' Melchior grunted. ‘They say he took thirteen full steps after his head had been removed, and only then did he fall to the ground. His head was nailed on to a post. However, mercy was not shown to thirteen men or anyone else. All were made shorter by a head's length, yes. And so Magister Wigbold and Gödeke were also snared after another year, although no one dared to believe this for some time because Wigbold's cunning was so great that he had escaped every previous trap set for him …'

The Skipper broke off his story, as the tavern door suddenly banged open and there stood none other than Magistrate Dorn himself. The innkeeper started upon seeing him and even spilled a three-legged clay pot of sprat soup on to the floor, since the appearance of any court official had never heralded anything good during the decades he had run the tavern. It usually meant the law had come to issue him a fine for selling beer that was too light or for serving too late. However, on this occasion Dorn did not pay any attention to the innkeeper and marched straight towards Melchior.

‘Ah, our magistrate is here as well and already on his feet so early in the day,' Melchior exclaimed cheerfully.

‘Rounding you up like a sheepdog,' Dorn growled. ‘They said at Rannavärav Gate that you were looking for Sire Götzer.' Dorn then noticed the old captain and nodded to him respectfully. ‘And our good
Skipper here as well. Listen, Melchior, I have heard something of consequence.'

‘Maybe the Magistrate will wait for just a short time, as the Skipper and I were in the middle of talking,' Melchior replied.

‘No, no. I don't want to hold you up. I haven't got anything important to say,' Götzer said.

‘I would still ask the Skipper to kindly finish his tale. It is of interest to me', Melchior reiterated, adding with emphasis, ‘and of
great
interest to the Magistrate.' The Apothecary then turned and winked at Dorn, who, naturally, did not notice.

‘But, Melchior, someone just came to tell me …' the Magistrate began, but Melchior patted him on the shoulder and asked whether he wouldn't like to take a seat and order a beer.

‘Beer? What blasted beer?' Dorn sputtered, then abruptly fell silent and blinked. ‘
Beer
?' he asked, astounded.