MELCHIOR HAD A splitting headache the following morning, so he concocted a strong, bitter drink made from spirits, herbs, currant juice, mead and raw egg, according to a recipe his father had passed on to him. He drank the mixture and left the pharmacy in the care of his wife.
When he stepped outside Melchior saw that, even at this early hour of the day, he was far from being the first person to have overcome his exhaustion from the previous night’s merriment. Kilian sat on the rim of the well, playing a dirge-like tune on his lute and from time to time toying with a loose stone at the base of the wall. The clanging of blacksmiths’ hammers and whinnying of horses already sounded from the workshops at the town stables, which were located just a couple buildings down from the pharmacy. Thick soot rose from the town mint’s chimney, and men at the arsenal were arguing loudly over some cannon.
On this day of the week Melchior usually went out of the town, beyond the Seppade Gate windmill to St Barbara’s Chapel where his father had purchased a small plot of land for the pharmacy garden. There Melchior grew medicinal plants according to his father’s teachings, plants that did not grow wild in Estonia’s fields and forests. The Apothecary and his wife planted the seeds together in spring and weeded and watered the plants throughout the summer. Melchior would normally tend for the sprouting vegetation for the better part of the day, but he limited himself to a short visit just to see if the tiny green buds – mallow, celery, cress, camomile, valerian, endive and others – had duteously reared themselves up out of the earth. His garden was set alongside the main road leading south. On one side stretched the farmlands that bordered the suburbs and on the other one could see the town gallows looming beyond Tõnismägi. Melchior quite often had business to conduct at the town’s execution site, as his father had bought permission from the Council to be the first to be allowed to cut open the corpses of executed criminals to acquire body parts that might be used for medicines.
Melchior had been ten years old the first time his father had taken him to Võllamägi; an apothecary must become accustomed to death. Moreover, there are many parts of a dead person’s body that help to heal the living. On that first occasion the condemned had been some young, strong man – a fisherman from near the village of Viimsi – who had stolen from the Town Council. A body’s organs still function for some time after he or she suffers a sudden death, and parts can be cut from it to be used for medicinal remedies. For example, human fat can be boiled to produce an effective salve for aching bones, and a young maiden’s kidney is a good antidote to poisoning from forest berries. Or when thin fillets are cut from the muscles in a young man’s thighs, are spiced with myrrh and aloe, soaked in wine, hung in a dry, dark place and finally bathed in the light of a full moon, they can become a remedy for sicknesses of the liver. Melchior’s father had also received permission from the Council to dig beneath the gallows to search for mandrake root, which holds great power. When a person is hanged all the liquids once contained within the body flow out and into the ground, including a man’s sperm, which germinates into a mandrake root in the soil. This tuber resembles the shape of a human body and helps with a number of sicknesses when ground into a fine powder, and it also restores virility when boiled and the liquid is drunk. Tallinn’s town doctor had prescribed very few such medicines as of late, however, and it had been over a year since Melchior had last cut the liver out from a fisherman’s corpse on Võllamägi.
Melchior watered the rows of plants, exchanged a few words with the beadle of St Barbara’s Chapel and then turned back towards the town. His route led him west along the cart road leading to Karja Mill, near Karja Gate, and past the cluster of shacks that formed the village of Pleekmäe. The south road was lined with goods-laden carts, herds of livestock and wagons transporting logs and broken slate. Tallinn was growing so fast; with every passing year the wall was built higher and thicker. There was always some new tower or a gate being widened somewhere. Tallinn was stunningly beautiful when approaching from the south: the grey stripe of the wall, the windmills spinning lazily, the drawbridges and gates cast against a green backdrop, the steeple of St Olaf’s Church and Toompea Castle cutting across the line that marked where sea and sky met. The air carried a fresh scent, and a warm sea breeze carried moisture inland. The weather was gorgeous, and Melchior decided to take a circuit around the town to clear his head a bit and think.
He strolled from the Karja Gate weir onwards in the direction of Savi Gate, from which both the sea and the port could be seen. Water was channelled along an aqueduct from Lake Ülemiste, Härjapea River and smaller brooks into the moat that surrounded the wall, which was then dammed into small ponds. The weirs thereby created pools before three of the town’s gates, pools that were also enclosed by defensive embankments. One had to climb a flight of steps and then cross a bridge in order to reach the mill and the gate. If an enemy were to attack from the south they would find it so difficult to negotiate that even if they did reach the gate the crossbowmen, cannons and harquebuses would have already sent half the marauders on their way to the next world. There was a place for watering horses near the weir from which the water flowed out towards the sea. The banks along the channel were good for fishing, which was another skill that Melchior’s father had taught him. The pair had come there to catch food appropriate for the fasting table only a short time before his father’s death …
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.
‘If the esteemed Magistrate does not decline then we are offering a strong beer brewed behind the Lurenburg Tower,’ the innkeeper called over, trying to win Dorn’s favour. ‘And, naturally, we would not take any money from our esteemed Councilman …’
‘Silence, you gallows lout,’ Dorn snarled. The Magistrate then considered for a moment and said, ‘Yes, bring your beer, although I cannot take it for free. According to my oath of office I am not allowed to take anything from those who will be summoned to a Council trial before long.’
The innkeeper did as he was told and, saying nothing, brought Dorn a tankard filled with strong mark beer then disappeared into the backroom. Götzer seemed to be somewhat confused by the Magistrate turning up, but Melchior assured him that both he and Dorn wanted to hear the Skipper’s story right to the end.
‘I should tell the Magistrate that it is a very interesting tale,’ Melchior added.
‘What’s interesting is the news the Commander’s squire just brought me,’ Dorn replied, but he sipped his beer compliantly.
‘Did the Commander’s squire bring word of a certain golden collar? Yes, I thought as much. However, Sire Götzer was halfway through telling me how the Victual Brothers’ high-ranking men met their end. We had just got to the execution of Gödeke Michels. The Magistrate and I would very much like to hear about this.’
Götzer needed no further encouragement. ‘Gödeke, yes, he was captured later, you see, after a dreadful sea battle far off near Frisia, in which nearly a hundred men went to their watery graves. They also say that Magister Wigbold was captured at that time, and he and his men were tortured with pliers on Simon of Utrecht’s ship in the hope that one of the rats might give away where their treasure and Störtebecker’s might be hidden. Alas, not one said a word, only that everything was shared equally and they wouldn’t give it back to pepper sacks such as them.’
‘But they were still beheaded?’ Melchior asked.
‘So the Hamburg Council confirms and so it swears – although seamen tell all sorts of tales. Gödeke was said to have been seen years later somewhere near Bergen, and Magister Wigbold – the Master of Seven Arts, as he was called; he who was so clever that no one could trap him until that day – well, they say that his face was not known in Hamburg and that four men came forth on separate occasions to claim that they were the him and that all laughed manically when they were beheaded.’
‘Because it is said that God himself was so tired of their piracy.’
‘Satan more like …’ the Skipper sputtered. ‘And, speaking of God, was it not that same man they called Magister Wigbold – because no one knows his true name – who once lived in a monastery? While there he studied various arts, which is why he was called the Master of Seven Arts. Well, he was expelled from the monastery for theft or some such sin, after which he studied at some town in England whose name I know not – it is because of this that he was also called “Magistrate”. They say he was the most clever and cunning of the Victual Brothers and that on many occasions he had to knock some sense into Gödeke and Störtebecker, which is why they left some seafarers alive. Yet it was Master Wigbold himself who devised their most effective raids. When they needed to parley, then it was done according to Wigbold’s counsel. They say he was a clever merchant, too, and that because he had been a monk he would never allow Störtebecker or Gödeke to sack monasteries or kill monks. Not that Gödeke would always listen, of course. He was known to have tortured seafarers simply for pleasure and used their bodies for archery practice, ripped their tongues from their mouths and gouged out their eyes.’
‘Thank God those pirates are all dead,’ grunted Dorn.
‘Well, Magistrate, that I could not say for certain unless I saw Gödeke’s head. And could I still gouge out his eyes after his death, then that I would do, may I be damned,’ he raged, banging his empty tankard on the table. ‘But now a good day to you, gracious Sire Apothecary and Sire Magistrate. This cripple is away to meet some other cripples. May the Almighty grace you with good health.’
Götzer bowed awkwardly and stumbled out of the tavern. Dorn immediately leaned over the table towards Melchior and said, ‘In the name of St Victor, Melchior.’
Melchior chuckled, ‘May he be praised.’
‘In every sense and every weather, as our honourable Prior Eckell says. But, tell me now, why were you so keen to hear that rambling nonsense when I come bringing word that –’
‘That the golden collar that belonged to the honourable Knight of the Order Von Clingenstain has disappeared and that Toompea wants the town to find it.’
‘Precisely so, although I cannot see how you already know this. The Commander sent word that the collar was nowhere to be found. He had Clingenstain’s servant – that Jochen – shackled and tweaked with red-hot pliers, yet Jochen swears to the Lord most high that he knows nothing of the collar, that Clingenstain did not ask him to take it to the ship and that he has never even set eyes upon it.’
‘And the Commander believes the man who cut Clingenstain down a notch also took the collar,’ Melchior mumbled.
‘That is precisely what he believes.’
Melchior thought for a moment and then spoke. ‘Well, this is an odd thief then indeed – a man who takes with one hand and gives with the other. The world has never before seen the like.’
‘What the bloody hell are you saying now?’ Dorn demanded.
‘Simply that strange affairs are wound around this collar. Clingenstain buys the collar to give as a gift to the Grand Master of the Order and wears it around his neck to show it off for half a day. Before he goes to confession Clingenstain says he is taking it home so that Jochen can put it under lock and key on the ship. Now I hear he did no such thing.’
‘And what is so strange about all that? The murderer chopped off his head and stuffed the collar into his own pocket.’
‘Only that he stuffed a coin into Clingenstain’s mouth. You see, Magistrate, the man who dispatched Clingenstain must have hated him deeply, and it would therefore be very strange if the murderer chopped off the Knight’s head, forced a coin into his mouth and then stole his collar.’
‘Why? That was quite a good trade-off, was it not?’
‘Yes, it would have been, but you don’t make deals with a man you abhor. Nothing about that golden collar seemed to fit even before, and I believed from the off that the Order Knights would not find it.’
Dorn sipped his beer and said, ‘Listen, Melchior, if you know anything about this collar now then say at once because Spanheim is full of holy rage. I have to tell the councilmen something about this collar.’
‘Tell them that you will, of course, apprehend the murderer and that the Order will get the collar back if it is in his possession,’ Melchior replied.
Dorn glared at the Apothecary for a moment and then shrugged. Melchior always had odd thoughts and spoke in a puzzling way. Nevertheless, the Magistrate was reassured by the fact that the Apothecary did not seem concerned about the golden collar.
‘A strange matter it is, but I suppose that’s just what I’ll say,’ the Magistrate sighed in the end. ‘And what happens now?’
‘Now? Now I should very much like to talk to Master Casendorpe, and there is no better way for me to do that than to visit his workshop on Kuninga Street, which is what I intend to do. For our magistrate, however, I cannot recommend a better course of action than for him to keep his eyes and ears open and to ask around as to whether anyone has seen any old Visby coins recently. I receive money from townspeople every day, but I certainly do not recall anyone having paid with that old Gotland coin.’
Melchior winked slyly. The Magistrate sighed again and left – but before doing so barked at the ‘swindling’ innkeeper that he should start counting up his veerings for payment of a fine.