High Tide in Tyskebryggen

A Murray of Letho short story

High Tide in Tyskebryggen 

'You must not think of going home yet.' 

'That's extremely kind of you, but my business here is done,' said Murray, then looked up at his host. Odgar Hansen, flour merchant, was prosperously plump and well-padded with wool which exuded, like everything else here, an odour of damp. He also had an expression of fearful anxiety on his shiny face. 

'No, I mean, for your own safety. Though of course as my guest ... I did not mean ... oh, dear. It is very worrying.' 

He stared perplexedly at the breakfast table, where a square German table clock, left, who knows, by some member of the Hanseatic League two centuries before, showed eight o'clock. Hansen had already been up and out for two hours, attending to his concerns at the harbour across the cobbled way outside. Murray helped himself to more bread. 

'What's the matter? Is it the Swedish king?' 

'Oh! Well, and that's another thing. They say Karl Johan is coming to make his headquarters at the Rosencrantz Tower. As far as that goes, I'd say take ship as soon as you can and leave this mess behind you.' His brow was so furrowed that Murray expected it to fold up altogether. 'But no, but no. Not yet.' 

'Bad weather? Storms coming?' Murray was becoming anxious by infection: he was not a happy seafarer. 

'Oh, it is a draugen!' exclaimed Hansen at last, as if it explained everything. He collapsed with a sigh on to the chair opposite, a black pool of anxiety against the cheerful painted patterns on the wooden walls. 

'And what's a draugen?' The question was cautious. Hansen wiped his hand over his face and pulled his ear. Murray could have sworn that, along with anxiety, his host was suffering acute embarrassment. His mouth opened and closed a few times, as though he were trying to find the best words. Then he gave a shamefaced little shrug, out of proportion to his considerable size. 

'It is a kind of ghost. An evil spirit. Well, a spirit that warns of disaster.' He stopped, muddled: he had clearly never before considered the morals and motivations of things otherworldly. He was a straightforward man. 

'A specific kind of disaster?' Murray prompted. 

'Death at sea,' said Hansen lugubriously. 'You must understand, Mr. Murray - I am a church-going man myself. I believe all the pastor tells me, I read my Bible, all of this. But I am also a man of the sea, and there are strange things at sea. Besides, six or seven of the merchants clearly saw it: it was the talk of the harbour this morning, and while you and I both know that matters grow mightier with talking, I know these men, and I spoke to them myself: they are sure they saw what they saw.' 

He sagged in his chair like one of his own sacks of flour. Murray took a thoughtful draught of ale. Hansen was a worrier - Murray had known him only a month, but in that time Hansen had worried about the weather (mostly wet: it was Bergen, after all), the shipping, the price of timber, the price of flour, the quality of flour, the shortage of flour, the superabundance of flour, woodworm (a serious threat in the entirely wooden buildings of Tyskebryggen where he lived), his apprentice's timekeeping, his apprentice's morals, his pastor's opinions, and the ongoing political situation, which was certainly fluid, to put it at its best. Hansen's forehead was perpetually creased: if he could have found nothing to worry about, that would have worried him, too. Murray was torn: now that he was back from India, he felt guilty at a prolonged absence from his estate in Fife. On the other hand, a few more days might settle his host's anxieties about this draugen, and he could leave in peace. He had to admit that he was not so confident a sailor himself as to wish to tempt fate.