Apothecary Melchior and the Ghost of Rataskaevu Street by Indrek Hargla

new refectory, and the work was ongoing, although it had stopped for now because the town promised to pay the master builders more if they built the Seaward Gate and carried out work to enlarge the harbour.
    Approaching the nunnery’s lands from the west the visitor would see before him the beautiful inner side of the town wall and the towers, in front of which lay the towerless St Michael’s Church and, beside it, in a square, several other monastic buildings, the chapter house and the Abbess’s house. First the visitor had to walk through extensive gardens, an orchard and a paddock. Entering through the gates from the cobbled street, which was noisy and none too clean, the visitor encountered a marvellous sense of peace as if, at one step from the town, he had gone into the countryside, to beautiful meadows, sheep pastures, amid apple trees and birdsong. Monastic air, thought Melchior, monastic air is always distinctive, just as town air is always distinctive.
    He kept going along the path, bowing to the lay sisters working in the garden, and arrived at the church. Then he walked through the new refectory building and the apple orchard until he finally arrived at the Louenschede Tower. The old town wall ended about here, having been demolished to the north. The convent’s gardens continued to the stables and houses of Köismägi. He stopped and thought for a moment.
    Tobias Grote had fallen between the walls, as Dorn had said. Just here, where the old town wall ended, one could access the strip of land between the walls. This was a sort of no-man’s land, a simple, sandy, shingled and weedy patch of earth. The old town wall enclosed the convent’s inner courtyard, which contained all kinds of outbuildings, including the nuns’ bathhouse, the brewhouse, the tavern, the laundry, the storehouses, the woodshed and the smithy. The old wall was built on to the convent building, so that from where the Apothecary was now standing there was no access to the courtyard. From the area between the walls, however, it was easy to get through the apple orchard and reach the Köismägi stables, where the convent’s land was enclosed by a low wall and in which there was a small gate. At night it was closed, but it would not be hard to scale the wall. From this no-man’s-land there was no access to the town wall or to the Quad Dack Tower because the only entrance was from the convent’s courtyard.
    Melchior stood and thought. What could the Tower-Master have seen here that terrified him so? A ghost? Why should the ghost of the Unterrainer house – if it existed at all – haunt Grote at the sisterhood? But since Melchior was now here, he went to the area between the walls and took a look around.
    It really was very quiet here; the air hardly moved. The afternoon sultriness was heating the stones of the wall. All that could be heard was a gust of wind in the treetops and the chirruping of the grasshoppers from the gardens. The town wall was supported on the inside by arched niches, and on these a defensive walkway with wooden parapets was built; it was from here that Grote had fallen. The walkway was not very high, Melchior noticed, but if you were to fall, head first or on to the stones, you might indeed be killed. Access to this walkway was from both the Quad Dack Tower and the next tower along, the Nunnadetagune, the ‘tower behind the nunnery’, which was between the Louenschede and Quad Dack Towers.
    Melchior shrugged and examined the ground. Grote had fallen somewhere here. The soil was uneven, lumpy, full of gravel, puddles, weeds and goat droppings; over by the wall lay the stinking carcass of a cat. Melchior recalled Wentzel Dorn’s words and frowned. Grote’s corpse had been lying on his back, his face skywards and contorted with horror. His head had been bloody and his bones broken. As he fell he must have smashed his head against a stone. Melchior looked for some