Free Apothecary Melchior and the Ghost of Rataskaevu Street by Indrek Hargla Page B

have been so frightened by the apparition that …’ said Melchior with a sigh, and didn’t finish the sentence. They both drank a decent draught of ale. Hinric would soon have to start the lunchtime prayers, and Melchior didn’t want to detain him long. Yet he still had something to ask.
    â€˜When I came here,’ he said, ‘I couldn’t have guessed that there could be any connection between the death of Grote and pious Master Bruys. Now I’m confused. Friend, surely you can guess my question without my asking it. Master Bruys went on a pilgrimage to the future convent, and on the same day Tobias Grote saw a ghost – on Rataskaevu Street, he said. Some sort of ghost that made him say the words “May Heaven have mercy on Bruys; may the angels be merciful to him.” The next day Master Bruys died at Marienthal, and Tobias Grote died that same night, his face distorted with horror as if at the moment of death he’d seen … what?’
    Hinric closed his eyes and rapidly uttered a prayer.
    â€˜You want to ask’, said the monk finally, ‘whether it is possible that Grote saw the ghost of Master Bruys? That he saw his angel of death?’
    â€˜I have heard of such things,’ said Melchior gravely. ‘Before death, a person’s death-double has been seen, their soul shadow. I know that the Scriptures and the canonical books don’t speak of such things, and even the saints don’t protect us from such demons, but still …’
    Hinric was silent, his gaze far away, as if he were wondering whether, as a holy man, he should say aloud the words he wished to. ‘I have also heard that a person can foresee the death ofsomeone close, even when that other person is far away. Didn’t that happen with one woman who lived with the holy sisters at the Convent of Esswein, and she went there when her husband died and all their sons were spread around the world. She hadn’t seen her youngest for over ten years when, one morning, she started weeping and praying to St Michael to defend and bless her youngest son. She prayed until she lost consciousness, and when she recovered, she didn’t eat a single morsel for several days, spending all her days fasting and praying in the chapel, until word reached the convent that her son Michel had been killed by an arrow during the siege of a fortress. That woman herself died a few days later, and the night she died they say that tears flowed from the eyes of a wooden image of St Michael.’
    They were silent for a few moments, until finally Melchior blinked rapidly and asked, ‘You said that a person can foresee the death of someone close. Were Grote and Bruys friends then? Bruys was about twenty years older than Grote.’
    â€˜They had become close,’ said the monk. ‘Someone was talking about that today, and I’m sure I’d heard it before. That was when Grote was a simple soldier travelling the seas. He was on the ship that carried Bruys’s goods, and on that ship was Bruys’s youngest son, the one who later perished in the fire, as well as his wife. The son was still just a boy, and their ship was attacked by the Victual Brothers. Thanks to Grote’s bravery the attack was repelled and Bruys’s wife and son spared. The Victual Brothers might not have killed them, but they certainly would have abused them and demanded a ransom.’
    â€˜Not that God would have spared their lives anyway,’ muttered Melchior to himself.
    Probably everyone in Tallinn knew the story of Laurentz Bruys. He was thought to have been from somewhere near Bremen, but he had come to Tallinn when still a young man. His business prospered, he became powerful, a respected citizen of the town, a distinguished patron of St Nicholas’s Church and, of course, a guildsman of the Great Guild. Out of an old house on Lai Street hebuilt a new and bigger one. At one stage he was bookkeeper to the