Apothecary Melchior and the Mystery of St Olaf's Church by Indrek Hargla Page A

sell it off. The house was empty. Is it worth it, Melchior? thought the Apothecary. All that you do, all is worth doing. Help the Town Council apprehend a murderer and you are one step closer towards your dream. It is one thing to be an apothecary by permission of the Council; it is quite another matter when your pharmacy stands on the market square across from the new Town Hall with its regal tower and bears the name ‘Town Hall Pharmacy’. No one is forbidden to dream. Melchior’s father had purchased a small building in Tallinn when he arrived because he knew that the town had no pharmacy at that time. He had taught his son that nothing is more rewarding for an apothecary than to be a
Council
apothecary, to practise through a council’s endorsement and contract. You must become so essential to the Council and stand out so boldly for your extraordinary work that the Council will purchase a house for the pharmacy and rent it to you. Such was the case in many towns in Germany, and Melchior’s father had wished for it to be so in Tallinn as well.
    Having briefly admired his dream home Melchior turned and began to make his way home. Rataskaevu Street, which was still called Mäealuse Street when Melchior was a boy, had acquired its new name in reference to the roofed well with a wooden frame and a windlass that had been built around the time that Melchior’s family had relocated from Lübeck. Mäealuse Street had been much shorter in those days and was flanked by fewer buildings, yet the more the town grew and accumulated wealth the more important Rataskaevu Street became and the more townspeople took up residence there. Many merchants, a few councilmen, as well as the Pastor of St Nicholas’s Church, lived on this street, and there was even one house said to be haunted. Alas, the building bought by Melchior’s father was becoming too small to hold his growing business. The Apothecary’s workshop was slowly drowning amongst the buildings owned by eminent merchants. The place for a building as important as a pharmacy in a town the likes of Tallinn should be the Town Hall Square.
    Melchior strolled down the street alongside the aqueduct – a long pipe fashioned from oak casks – until the sound of Kilian’s melodies began to reach his ear. On this occasion, however, the song was morewoeful than usual, even more so than when Melchior had listened to the boy in St Nicholas’s churchyard that morning.
    Kilian had been living in that house for nearly a year already, yet the Apothecary had to admit the boy had become even more incomprehensible than he had been initially. Oh, there was certainly much more to him – with his tall, cocked cap – than a mere wandering minstrel; of this Melchior was certain. To regular townspeople Kilian might appear to be a carefree drifter; Melchior sometimes felt that since his arrival in Tallinn the boy had been working on a devious plan. He sensed an avaricious devil hiding behind the suave joker. Yet Melchior sincerely hoped that these seeds of thought only germinated when he was gripped by depression and exhaustion from life’s toils, when gripped by that demon that haunted him on occasion.
    Melchior now found Kilian sitting in his usual place, plucking mournfully at the strings of his lute, and he asked why Tallinn’s merry singing journeyman should be so glum on this fine spring day, why he was not off somewhere playfully flirting with the girls through his songs.
    â€˜Apparently you have formed an impression of me as being overly lighthearted, Sire Melchior,’ Kilian responded. ‘I sing not to titillate anyone at all.’
    â€˜Ah, but of course. You are a Meistersinger.’
    â€˜Only a travelling journeyman for now, although I practise my art of song in order to heap praise upon myself and to cheer others. I have just composed a new tune and was searching for the right words to accompany