Apothecary Melchior and the Mystery of St Olaf's Church (6 page)

‘A blessing from Heaven, that it was,' Melchior concurred. ‘The air at sea is truly purer now, although piracy will continue for as long as goods are carried by ship. As I've heard, the Vogts in Vyborg and Turku still allow the men along their coasts to take hold of vessels from Tallinn. All the same, it is odd that Clingenstain met his end now, just after he left Gotland.'

‘What do you mean by that, my friend?'

‘Nothing more than that it is odd. He was alive and well for as long as he was overlord of Gotland, and it was after he became free from that post is when he met his maker. And, what's more, it happened in Tallinn, where Clingenstain probably never stepped foot previously and where no one could have borne enmity against him.'

The Magistrate sighed deeply. ‘Right here in Tallinn, yes. You rub salt deeper into the wound.'

‘I suppose it is an apothecary's responsibility to rub remedies on all types of wounds. Not that I would wish to jest at your expense, my dear friend, but I do say that if I can in any way help you pass between the boulders of the Order and the Council so that they might not grind you into dust –'

Melchior was interrupted by a high-pitched screech from outside. He
turned to look and saw that it had apparently been the Maiden Hedwig Casendorpe, who, upon hearing Master Freisinger's words, had become thoroughly exhilarated and had then nearly run into Pastor Rode. The Blackhead Freisinger was now attempting to explain something apologetically to the priest while Hedwig joyfully flitted off back towards the market.

‘What is it?'

‘Nothing at all,' Melchior replied. ‘Only the Master Blackhead and his bride-to-be. They just bade one another farewell rather sweetly. What a wonder. The Master Blackhead even has time to involve himself in affairs of the heart before such an important evening.'

‘Evening? What evening?' Dorn asked.

‘My good friend, today is the first day of the beer-tasting festival at the Brotherhood of Blackheads, to which both the Sire Apothecary and the Magistrate have been warmly invited. Yesterday I saw those casks of spring brew being rolled from the Dominican Monastery straight towards the Blackheads' guildhall.'

‘Oh, devils,' Dorn cursed. ‘How could I have forgotten? You don't suppose the festivities will be cancelled, now that … ?'

‘A murderer is running about the town? We can ask Master Freisinger right now.'

Melchior poked his head out the window and shouted down to Freisinger, who was standing with his gaze fixed longingly on the Maiden Hedwig.

‘And a fine day to you, Master Blackhead. Don't just stand there in my doorway. Come into the pharmacy, seeing as you are in this part of town.'

‘With pleasure,' the merchant answered from below. He glanced towards the Town Hall, his eyes following the bounding Hedwig, and then blinked rapidly. Freisinger opened the pharmacy door wide and stepped in; Melchior was already pouring him a tall cup of elixir.

‘And the Magistrate here as well … A good morning to you,' Freisinger said, nodding.

Melchior would not say that Freisinger was a friend, exactly – the men were too different in character and in their spheres of operation – but the Apothecary did regard this lofty, tawny man with respect and not only because Melchior, as town apothecary, was invited to sessions of food and drink at the Brotherhood of Blackheads. Indeed not. Melchior believed Clawes Freisinger was a just-minded fellow with a grand and
knightly air that somehow seemed to lift him above the level of the other town merchants. Freisinger encompassed an inexplicable dignity, as if he were nobleman or chivalrous trader. The Alderman of the Brotherhood of Blackheads also had a touch of mystery and an enigmatic force to him that Melchior had never quite pinned down.

Melchior filled a small stein of elixir while the Magistrate expressed his interest in who had just shouted out there on the street.

‘The Maiden Hedwig Casendorpe almost ran down Pastor Rode of the Church of the Holy Ghost,' Freisinger replied.

‘Ah, so it was the Maiden Hedwig. Then it is quite clear why she nearly knocked the Pastor down,' Dorn said, erupting into laughter.

‘I know not. For what reason then?' Freisinger replied frostily.

‘Now then, Sire Blackhead, the whole town is aware that you and the Maiden Hedwig will soon require the services of the Pastor, who will stand in front of the altar and by the power vested in him …' the Magistrate intoned knowingly and winked. ‘Tell us rather, Master Blackhead, when will old Casendorpe arrange an engagement party?'

Freisinger was apparently not amused by this sort of discussion. ‘That you should certainly ask of Master Casendorpe,' he marked curtly.

Melchior patted the Magistrate's shoulder and chuckled. ‘Our town is small, and it is not as if anything goes unnoticed – and women also tend to gossip up a storm when a wedding seems to be imminent. Well, I, too, have heard that Master Freisinger is rumoured soon to be putting aside his merry life with the Blackheads and taking on the role of a married citizen of the town – but stories are come in all shapes and sizes, and once they have been let loose then they reach the pharmacy in time, so do not be irritated by our curiosity, Master Blackhead.'

‘I hold it not against you, Melchior,' the merchant replied. ‘Surely you, as a married man, know that you say one thing, although is understood otherwise, and all the while third parties hear it in a third manner and pass it along differently to a fourth.'

‘Such it is, Master Blackhead,' Melchior assented. ‘However, maybe you will have a sweet pharmacy elixir to counter the throat ache that ailed you last week? I still have some left, and by your expression I would say the pain has not quite passed yet.'

‘It would be an absolute sin to not take a drink now that I am here. A thousand thanks. I shall, I presume, be treating you in return this evening.'

‘Oh, of course, the beer-tasting festivity,' Dorn remarked. ‘Do tell, it will not be cancelled, will it?'

‘When has any festivity at the Brotherhood of Blackheads been called off before? No matter if a hundred enemies surround the town there will always be a fest at the Blackheads. Word has gone out and the beers brewed.'

‘If you say so, Master Blackhead, if you say so … I do not recall the Blackheads having held such grand festivities here in the past. There was really nothing to be heard of your guild when I was young,' Melchior remarked with a nod. It was said that the Brotherhood of Blackheads had been in Tallinn for a few hundred years, long before the other guilds, but the Blackheads themselves were the only party to assert this, and, in truth, Melchior could not remember having heard much about the Brotherhood before Master Freisinger arrived in town. Nevertheless, Freisinger did come to Tallinn, and the Blackheads' fame rose in no time. The young merchant invited the sons of Great Guild merchants and other foreign traders to join, and in the three years since the cheerful and easy-going Blackheads had been acclaimed across the town for their mighty festivities and drinking sessions, their hastiludes and tournaments. Before Freisinger arrived there had been only three old unmarried merchants in Tallinn who called themselves Blackheads, but they were so aged and frail that the Guild of the Brotherhood of Blackheads would have gone to the grave with them.

Freisinger sipped the elixir, saying it indeed did his throat well. ‘I suppose the Blackheads are different in every town,' he said in reply to Melchior. ‘Not that our brotherhoods are many in number either. But you enquired before as to whether the festivity would be called off. For what cause should it be cancelled? Has something happened?'

‘Has the Master Blackhead then not heard about Toompea?' Dorn asked.

‘I was at the market just before coming here, and I did overhear something concerning Toompea, but I did not investigate the matter. What is it then? Has war broken out? Speak up, Melchior. No doubt these stories have also reached the pharmacy,' Freisinger probed merrily.

‘What I know', Melchior began slowly, ‘is that the former Commander of the Order in Gotland, Henning von Clingenstain, is said to have been divested of his head yesterday evening on Toompea.'

‘Gracious Lord. That Clingenstain?' the Blackhead cried. ‘So it is true
then. Heavenly grace. Who would commit such a dreadful deed?'

‘They say the murderer escaped to the Lower Town,' the Magistrate grunted, vexed. ‘But who that person is, that I do not know.'

The men clinked their glasses together and drank, as is always done in Tallinn when bad news is heard from Toompea.

‘Do you know whether Commander Spanheim has already set a bounty?' Freisinger asked after a pause.

‘I know not what our Commander has or has not done, but no doubt I will hear of it soon enough because I am on my way straight to Toompea from here – once my stomach problems abate somewhat,' Dorn said. ‘No, the members of the Order said nothing about a bounty. They only mentioned that some sort of coin had been stuffed into poor Clingenstain's mouth and that his head was nailed to a wall …'

‘A coin stuffed into his mouth,' Melchior exclaimed, astounded.

‘So they said. That it rolled out of his mouth when the head was moved. I don't even want to think about such a grisly thing.'

‘Dreadful,' Freisinger said musingly. ‘The quicker the murderer is apprehended the better, or the Commander will be furious, and should his wrath fall upon the town … That would not be good for merchants. When you are up on Toompea will you remind the Commander that we are expecting him as a guest of honour today and the day after tomorrow? By the way, what does the honourable Town Council think of the case? Will it set a bounty as well?'

‘The honourable Council has not yet discussed anything,' said Dorn. ‘The honourable Council is in repose or is handling its own trade affairs, and the Magistrate must now head to Toompea with a horrible backache. A foul tale, it is. No matter which way you look at it. Foul.'

Melchior chuckled. The Magistrate had spoken earlier of a stomach ache. Freisinger bade the men good day and asserted once more that as long as the Council did not forbid it then an event as important as
Smeckeldach
would certainly not be called off. And that, according to custom, the Commander, as the land's overlord, was also warmly welcome. Freisinger then tipped his cap and left. Melchior thought he glimpsed the face of Goldsmith Casendorpe flash amongst the crowd outside just a moment earlier, which in turn led him to the thought that he would certainly lament when the town lost such a resolute Blackhead, the most valiant in the guild's history.

It was written in the Great Rights of the Brotherhood of Blackheads
that no citizen of the town or married man may belong to the guild. When a Blackhead takes a wife – and, given the direction from which the winds currently blew, Master Freisinger seemed to be sailing towards that very harbour – he must resign from the post of Blackhead Alderman. The individual then becomes a town citizen and a married man; he is accepted into the Great Guild, and the Blackheads must search for a new alderman. It was a somewhat strange rule, but all matters associated with the Blackheads
were
peculiar. They had certainly been in Tallinn since the earliest days, but no one had really seen or heard about them. There were some two or three old greybeards who had not taken wives, but they always looked for newly arrived foreign merchants to appoint as their successors. And no one knew what affairs were run by the guild itself. Yet, now that the Brotherhood had struck an accord with the sons of the Great Guild masters and with merchants' foreign journeymen, no jollier group could be found in the town. Who knows, maybe I would have become a Blackhead as well, Melchior pondered.

‘Very well,' he said to the Magistrate. ‘As I understand it we must now undertake an important trip to Toompea. I will quickly weigh out some remedies so that Keterlyn might make do on her own while I am out.'

The Magistrate scratched the back of his neck and acknowledged that he had indeed come with that request on behalf of the Town Council.

‘Look, Melchior, if you do not oppose, then …' he began haltingly, ‘then just as last time the Council would employ you as assistant to the Magistrate … Well, yes, and perhaps that story of a backache was actually something of a false pretence, or what have you …

‘That stomach-ache story? Very likely,' Melchior corrected, chuckling. ‘Anyway, I consent gladly. And I have just recalled that I recently sent the Commander a unique drink that I concoct out of sweet mead and a few curative herbs and which drives exhaustion out from the bones following several days of revelry. As if by wizardry. This is my town and my pharmacy, and I want to know what goes on. Let us go to the back room. I will speak to my wife and then must search for my cap and clean the dust off it.'

‘Away, away, my friend. Let us speak to your cap and clean the dust off your wife and then off to Toompea,' Wentzel Dorn exclaimed, springing to his feet.

K
ILIAN
R
ECHPERGERIN ENJOYED
strolling through the gardens of Tallinn and practising melodies in the cool shade amongst the bushes. He had several favourite spots, one of which was in the orchard between Seppade Street and Mäealuse Street, where the poorer folk lived and where Ludke would not find him. Kilian was frequently irritated by the fact that the master's servant would tag along after him around town if Old Man Mertin had not given the boy any other jobs to do. But a boarder may not be surly; a boarder must show humility and gratitude. After Ludke located the garden Kilian began to pass the time somewhat closer to home in the cool shade of St Nicholas's churchyard at the foot of the hill. Below lay the courtyards of the houses on Seppade Street; above was St Nicholas's, and it was surrounded by trees. It was a shady, secure spot, and Ludke had not yet found it. There was a good sitting stone near the northern edge of the churchyard directly across the street from the town mint; it was enclosed by dense foliage, and from there Kilian could get a good view of whoever was passing by.