Apothecary Melchior and the Ghost of Rataskaevu Street Read Online Free

falls from a height, I suppose, but …’ He was silent for a moment, licked his lips, and Melchior waited. ‘It’s as if … as if he had been terrified. As if he had been beside himself with fear. I’ve never seen a dead face like it. Usually they look peaceful, frozen in place, so to speak, but Grote … As if he’d seen a ghost.’
    â€˜A ghost?’ asked Melchior, animated. ‘What ghost?’
    â€˜Well, that’s what I said. It’s as if he’d seen spirits or demons. His face was sort of stiff with fear and not with pain, that I
do
know. After a fall like that the pain is so great that a man can’t bear it, but he had a face like … his mouth was open and his eyes wide with terror – horrible to think of. Lord have mercy.’
    â€˜Very interesting,’ said Melchior. ‘Incredible.’ He poured himself a dram and drank it in one go. Dorn stared at him and finally muttered, ‘Pour one for me, too. A bigger one, full.’
    Melchior did as he was asked and told Dorn, ‘Yesterday, Master Grote came by here, as he sometimes does. He wasn’t feeling too good, and I guessed he must have been drinking beer the evening before because he stank of it even then. He bought a couple of stoups of this drink, but there seemed to be something on his mind. I wouldn’t say that we were friends, but sometimes we did meet up here and there, sometimes in the taproom at the nuns’ tavern, and one autumn he recommended a good Estonian bricklayer to me who worked in the courtyard of the nunnery and who made a very good job of my back wall. But, anyway, yesterday he really did have something on his mind; he didn’t talk much, but he seemed to want to ask me something. I suppose I was just chattering away, asking about his sons’ health and so on, because there was nobody else in the shop at the time. And then …’ Melchior blinked rapidly and shook his head. ‘It sounds incredible, but that’s just how it was – that, although he was always quiet whenhe came here, I must have said, “Master Grote, you have a look on your face as if you’d seen a ghost.” And he was very frightened at that.’
    â€˜Frightened?’ asked Dorn.
    â€˜Just that. By St Victor. He was startled and almost knocked his stoup over. He looked at me with fearful eyes, mumbling something I didn’t understand, and then he quickly drank up his dram and said he had something to do at the Dominicans and took his leave.’
    â€˜What do you mean?’ asked Dorn.
    â€˜That he looked like a man who’d seen a ghost, and I, like a fool, said that, and he was terribly shocked, as if he really had seen a ghost. And now you come and tell me that he’s fallen to his death off the walkway and he had a face on him like one who’s seen a ghost.’
    Dorn sighed. ‘Don’t hold on to my every word. That man drank pretty hard, and if he thought he saw something he might have been seeing demons conjured up by his heavy drinking. As they said in that sermon at the Dominicans, about what happened to the man at Dünamunde, the one who just drank and drank and gave up going to church …’
    Melchior smiled. ‘That was a very instructive sermon. Prior Moninger admonished Christians to drink less, but I think he also wanted to say that you shouldn’t drink alone but with friends, and in a way that there is time left over in a man’s life for the word of God. But since you’ve brought it up, it makes me wonder what business Master Grote – may the saints protect him – had with the Dominicans. My recollection is that he always went to the Church of the Holy Ghost to take the sacrament, and I don’t think I ever remember seeing him at a sermon at St Catherine’s.’
    Melchior was deep in thought while Dorn drank his sweet dram and turned the subject to Master Bruys, for his death was