Apothecary Melchior and the Mystery of St Olaf's Church (8 page)

The townsmen now reached the main gate of the
castrum minus
, the Small Castle
.
They stepped meekly through the portal, where, naturally, no one stood guard at this time and entered the castle's inner courtyard. They were now at the heart of Order power, a heart that gave off the pungent stench of slurry because the Order's barns, stables, sheds and coops were situated in the space. Hens strutted across the grounds, and a pair of swine wallowed in the shade.

Dorn looked around for an attendant who would inform the Commander of their arrival. This proved unnecessary, however, as the Commander himself stood near a well in a corner of the castle courtyard and …

Commander Ruprecht von Spanheim roared.

He roared in such a way that the court attendants ducked and the Magistrate jumped in surprise.

In truth, this roar had nothing to do at all with the appearance of the Council envoys. The esteemed Commander had just doused his body in a bucketful of cold water. When he spotted the townsmen Spanheim issued a guttural grunt, kicked over a second full pail of water and gestured towards the door to the castle hold. An attendant directed the Council entourage across the courtyard towards the southern wing of the castle where the Commander's personal quarters were to be found. The group had to wait there for some time while Spanheim dried himself
and dressed in fresh clothing. The court attendants were silent, the town advocate pursed his lips worriedly and Dorn inspected, with great interest, the view from an arrow-slit that looked down upon Toompea's grazing lands and Tõnismägi Hill.

The Commander finally entered and ordered them into his reception hall. When he saw Melchior amongst the other faces he guffawed cheerily.

‘Melchior, you old wizard. Who allowed you up here?'

Melchior bowed cordially and handed a clay bottle to the Commander without a word.

‘By the Holy Virgin, your miracle remedy,' Spanheim exclaimed and laughed. He snatched the bottle, guzzled it and then ordered the court attendants and Town Advocate to make themselves scarce because, as he said, ‘Toompea is no fairground.' By the time, a little while later, he entered the starkly furnished reception hall mantled by a low-vaulted ceiling the Commander was glowing. He praised Melchior. ‘No, do not protest. I affirm it is a miracle remedy …'

‘I must hastily state that it is, nevertheless, a most ordinary pharmacy elixir, nothing more,' Melchior replied modestly.

‘Oh, hell and demons, Melchior, do not argue with the Commander,' Spanheim snapped. His surly mood seemed to have passed as it always did when he had sampled Melchior's mellow beverage after several days of intense merrymaking. They stood in the Commander's reception hall, where there was really nothing more than a coal brazier, a writing stand and a faded Order tapestry.

‘Do not argue,' the Commander repeated. ‘On the battlefield, thank you for asking, I can hold my own – I sliced entire companies of Poles into tiny pieces in my younger days, that I did. At a feast I can drink Fellin's entire joker-filled castle under the table, where they would remain if only the dogs did not come to lick the crumbs from their beards. Even Tallinn washerwomen can hold more beer than that Commander of Fellin, whose name causes kittens to laugh and to keep laughing until someone steps on their tails.'

Dorn forced out a hollow laugh, and Melchior confirmed that the honourable Town Council and pharmacy held the general belief that they were, without question, absolutely certain that not a soul in Fellin could match Tallinn's Commander in matters of beer drinking.

‘That's just how it is,' the Commander barked. ‘I've drunk the lot of
them under the table, and I'll carry on drinking and go to bed with my head held high and my back straight, and then I'll screw ten whores before daybreak if I choose to do so, and that happens to me quite often, I can tell you …'

‘And I, too, have always held the conviction that no one can compare with our Commander when it comes to laying whores and drinking beer. The whole of the honourable Town Council knows that …' Dorn began to elaborate, but Melchior quickly stepped on the Magistrate's foot and coughed. Dorn fell mute, startled.

Spanheim paid this no heed. ‘So it is,' he said, sighed and approached his writing stand.

‘Come closer, Magistrate,' he commanded. ‘I want to show you something.'

What the Commander had to show made both Dorn and Melchior reel. The Commander seized a human head from a chest on the stand and held it up before them.

‘Knight von Clingenstain's head is here, but his body will rest in the chapel until it is entombed at Dome Church for his eternal rest,' Spanheim declared.

‘Holy Mary and the heavenly host,' Dorn mumbled in shock. The head had belonged to a man of about forty years of age, and it had been drained of blood. A head becomes much smaller when the blood has been drained from it, Melchior noted. The face shrivels and the skin takes on a light-yellowish tone …

‘Back to the matter in hand,' the Commander said with greater seriousness. ‘Yesterday evening someone decapitated Knight von Clingenstain and escaped down to the town. Magistrate, before I sent an attendant to the Town Hall this morning I dispatched my page to the Grand Master of the Order with these sorrowful words. Such an outrageous crime is a stain on the entire town of Tallinn. It is unprecedented for a high-ranking Knight of the Order to be heinously murdered in the town.'

On Toompea, Melchior thought, murdered on Toompea.

‘And now it is Tallinn's solemn duty to put the murderer in chains and bring him to Toompea so that a tribunal of knights may sentence him to death. He will be staked to Pikk Hermann and tortured, as is just and righteous,' Spanheim continued. ‘A decree stating this will be sent to the town, but this command has been made known to you in advance, here
and now in this very place.' Dorn bowed and wished to say something, but the Commander continued, ‘And when I send the next page to visit the Grand Master of the Order I want to be able to inform him that the murderer has already been strung up on Pikk Hermann and that Tallinn's Town Council has displayed the honour and respect to the Order that it is obliged to show. Magistrate, do you understand that I do not wish to send a message to the Grand Master to the effect that the murderer is still at large in Tallinn and that the Council has not yet apprehended the man? I do not want matters to take the same course as the last time that the Council and Toompea were at odds for more than two months over the surrender of a thief, who, during the course of that time, fled by ship. Your Lübeck law there in Lower Town is fair and just, by the Grand Master's good grace, but it denies me the authority to put the murderer in chains and drag him up to Toompea myself.'

Dorn collected his wits and asked, ‘But could the esteemed Commander then state who this murderer is so that I may make his name known to the honourable Town Council and so that the Council might give permission to –'

‘Torture him and so forth, as is just and righteous. Of course, I would tell you, damn it, but I do not know who it is. I have already interrogated every attendant, artisan and servant on Toompea, yet they neither saw nor heard a thing. Even that Jochen, the servant of our departed brother, Henning, was lying with some washerwoman at the time and has nothing to tell me.'

‘But who, then, must I incarcerate?' Dorn asked, bemused.

‘Holy thunder and Jacob's bones,' blasted the Commander. ‘
You
are the Magistrate. Does every killer there in Lower Town have a sign around his neck showing whom he has dispatched to the netherworld? Does every crook paint his name upon the church wall so that you might apprehend him accordingly?'

‘But according to law Toompea must demand the town produce a criminal by name and then, and then a Council trial … But who then must the Council trial find guilty, shackle and bring here?'

‘My dear Magistrate Dorn,
you
are the man who will establish the identity of Clingenstain's murderer, and then
you
will pass this information along to
me
, and
I
will issue a demand for him from the Council. It is exceptionally simple.'

‘Esteemed Commander,' Melchior intervened, ‘the Magistrate merely
wishes to say that it would be of great assistance to him were Toompea able to provide him with advice and direction. For example, it would be very useful to know at what hour this dreadful murder became known and who found the corpse, whether there may have been things at the scene that could disclose anything about the murderer and how we know for certain that the killer fled down to the town.'

Spanheim glared momentarily at the Apothecary. ‘Now, Melchior, what are you doing sticking your nose into this affair? There are afflicted and diseased folk in the town. Go and mix medicines for them, and the Magistrate will act on his own by the Council's authority. If it is necessary, then take along an executioner to bend some bones, and certainly someone will ultimately confess,' said the Commander. ‘I permitted you to enter here only because you brought me that miracle elixir.'

Dorn coughed and said, ‘An executioner would definitely be of use to the town, but Melchior is also of great assistance to the Council, for where other than the pharmacy do the townsfolk go to gossip? Every person – no matter merchant or councilman, mason or cobbler, beer peddler or minter – has affairs at the pharmacy at some time or another. And it is there, you see, that the honest Melchior fills up tankards for men to wet their whistles and speak of all they have seen and heard.'

‘And at greater length and with more pleasure than in the executioner's chamber,' Melchior added. ‘The executioner, I might add, is my good friend and sometimes visits the pharmacy himself to request medicine for his aching bones.'

‘And this is not the first time that Melchior has been of help to the Council Court,' the Magistrate continued. ‘Last year, you recall –'

‘Fine. Very well,' Spanheim interrupted. ‘In the end it is none of my business to say how the Council apprehends the murderer, and if you and your pharmacy are indeed of benefit, then …' He took another swig of elixir and began to relate what had happened.

Henning von Clingenstain stayed on Toompea for five days at a house belonging to a Viru vassal who was away at his manor, as most vassals generally are in springtime. Commander Clingenstain was travelling from Gotland to Marienburg, but certain obligations required that he pass through Tallinn on his way. There were eight men of Gotland on Toompea altogether, the others all being lower-ranking brothers that the Commander had housed in the castle dormitory. Clingenstain had spent the majority of his time in Tallinn within the dining-hall located at the
eastern edge of the castle, because, as Commander Spanheim had said, ‘something
had
to be done with those four casks of beer, that barrel of herring and heap of salted pork that the Council sent for the purpose of entertaining the esteemed guest'. In addition to Clingenstain, the Knight's squire Jochen was also staying at the vassal's house; he had now been shackled and beaten to a pulp. Clingenstain had only gone back the house to sleep. Last evening the Knight had set out for his lodgings at close to eight o'clock. He was alone – a couple of Order attendants had spotted him stumbling about near the stables, looking for the right path and shouting for his servant. Clingenstain reached his lodging through a side portal at the northern wing of the keep, via the gate where the road crossed the moat directly into the bishop's residence, without having to make a wide arc through the outer bailey and Dome Gate. Jochen found Clingenstain's decapitated corpse one hour later and ran into the castle shouting hysterically. Commander Spanheim had immediately ordered the alarm bell be sounded, yet for whom and for what was Toompea to be searched? The Commander personally interrogated every knight, attendant and squire for half the night, but no one had witnessed anything further.

‘Eight o'clock …' Melchior murmured when the Commander had finished. ‘So we can therefore say for certain that the murderer fled to the town.'

‘Why are you conjecturing already?' Spanheim asked. ‘You cannot infer anything, because it was only at dawn that we found the sword and a trail of blood.'

‘The sword?' Melchior asked.

‘Yes, the murder weapon, the one used to kill Clingenstain. It was an Order attendant's sword. The killer had stolen it from the castle smithy. The blacksmith was blind drunk, of course, and I have already had him shackled. The sword, though, we found at dawn in the moat near the Short Hill guard tower. Then we spotted a trail of blood on the wall of the Dome Gate as well as on the cobblestones leading from the vassal's house up to the gate. The murderer had cast the sword aside, but the blade caught the morning sun, and we found it. Now, I would like to know, how have you already deduced what we came to know only later?'

‘The gates are secured at sundown, and no one can reach Lower Town from Toompea after that,' Melchior replied respectfully.

‘And so?' queried the Commander.

‘The murderer rushed to carry out the murder before the gates were closed. If the killer resided on Toompea it would have been simpler and more logical to wait until the dead of night when no one is moving about the streets and both Clingenstain and Jochen would have been asleep. But no, he committed his crime before nightfall so that it would still have been possible to slip out through the town gate.'

‘That's what I thought,' the Commander replied. ‘He had to exit the gate just moments before the guards arrived and secured it.'

Melchior continued, on a roll now, ‘He likely cloaked the sword in his cape and brought it with him to the gate so that he would have something with which to defend himself had the murder been discovered immediately. We can conclude from this that he has been a soldier or has, at least, been involved in combat. The killer then went through the Dome Gate and cast the sword aside near Short Hill Gate because he would already have crossed into the town jurisdiction by this time. He felt more confident then, as he knew that members of the Order could not pursue him there. Hence the murderer almost certainly entered the town.'