Beowulf

by Caitlin R. Kiernan

  “Oh, my poor lost son,” she whispers. “I asked you not to go. I warned you they were dangerous. And you promised…”

  If any others of her race remain in all the wide, wide world, she does not know of them and so believes herself to be the last. Neither troll nor giant nor dragon-kin, and yet perhaps something of all three, some night race spawned in the first days of creation, when Midgard was still new, and then hunted, driven over uncountable millennia to the brink of oblivion. She had a mother, whom she almost remembers from time to time, waking from a dream or drifting down toward sleep. If she ever had a father, the memory of him has faded away forever.

  Long before the coming of the Danes, there were men in this land who named her Hertha and Nerthus, and they worshipped her in sacred groves and still lakes and secret grottoes as the Earth’s mother, as Nerpuz and sometimes as Njördr of the Ásynja, wife of Njörd and goddess of the sea. And always she welcomed their prayers and offerings, their tributes and their fear of her. For fear kept her safe, but never was she a goddess, only some thing more terrible and beautiful than mere men.

  She is legend now, half-glimpsed by unfortunate travelers on stormy nights. Sailors and fisherman up and down the Danish coast trade fearful whispers of mermaids and sea trolls and sahagin. Those passing by the bog on midsummer nights may have glimpsed for themselves the aglaec-wif, aeglaeca, the merewif or demon wife. But she and all her vanished forebears would have surely long passed completely and permanently beyond the recollection of mankind, if not for Grendel.

  In the cave below the cave, crouching there before the cold altar stone, she sings a song she might have first heard from her own mother, for she does not recall where and when she learned it. A dirge, a mourning song to give some dim voice to the inconsolable ache welling up inside her.

  So much blood where so many have died

  Washed ashore on a crimson tide.

  Just as now there was no mercy then..

  But the song buckles and breaks apart in her throat, becoming suddenly a far more genuine expression of her grief, a wild and bestial wail to transcend any mournful poetry. It spills like fire from out her throat, and the walls of the cavern shudder with the force of it.

  And then for a time she lies weeping at the foot of the altar stone, her long, webbed fingers gouging muddy furrows into the soft earth, scraping at the stone beneath, snapping dry bones.

  “I will avenge you, my poor son,” she sobs. “He will come to me. I will see to it. He will come, and I will turn his own strength against him. He will pay, and dearly will he pay…” but then the capacity for speech deserts her again.

  The merewife rises, coiling and uncoiling, her scales shining in the ghostly light of these moldering, phosphorescent walls, and she leans down over the altar and cradles her dead son in her arms again. Her long and spiny tail whips furiously about, madly lashing at thin air and stone and the treasures that have lain here undisturbed for a thousand years, and it crushes everything it strikes to dust and splinters. She holds the name of her son’s murderer in her mind, the bold riddler of Hrothgar’s hall, the champion of men and the wolf of the bees. And her sobs become a wail, and then her wail becomes a shriek that rises up and up, leaking out through every minute crevice and fissure, slithering finally from the gaping mouth of the cavern—the cave above her cave—and cracking apart the gaunt ribs of the night.

  Something awakens Beowulf, who lies where he fell asleep hours before, wrapped in furs, on the floor not far from the fire pit. He opens his eyes and lies listening to the soft noises of the sleeping mead hall—a woman sighing in her dreams, the ragged snores of drunken men, the warm crackle of embers, someone rolling over in slumber. The faint creaking sound of settling timbers. All the lamps are out, and the hall is dark save a faint red glow from the dying fire. Nothing is out of place, no sound that should not be here. Outside the walls of Heorot, there is the chilling whistle of wind about the eaves, and far away, the faint thunder of waves falling against the shore. He thinks of Wiglaf, alone on the beach with the ship, and wonders if he’s sleeping.

  Beowulf peers into the gloom and spies Olaf lying nearby, snuggling with Yrsa beneath heavy sheepskins, a satisfied smile on his sleeping face.

  “Are you awake, Beowulf?” and he looks up, startled, to find Wealthow smiling down at him. She stoops, then sits on the floor beside him.

  “My queen…” he begins, but she places an index finger firmly across his lips.

  “Shhhhhh,” she whispers. “You’ll wake the others,” and then she moves her finger.

  “I was dreaming of you,” he says quietly, only just now remembering that he was. In the dream, Wealthow was traveling with him back across the sea to Geatland, and they were watching the gray-black backs of great whales breaking the surface of the sea, their misty spouts rising high into the winter sky.

  “How sweet,” she whispers, and Beowulf thinks there’s something different about her voice, the barest hint of an unfamiliar accent he’d not noticed earlier. “I hope it was a pleasant dream.”

  “Of course it was,” he smiles. “What other sort could you ever inspire?”

  “I love you,” Wealthow whispers, leaning closer to Beowulf, close enough that he can feel her breath warm against his face. “I want you, Beowulf Demon-feller, son of Ecgtheow. Only you, my king, my hero, and my love.”

  Wealthow puts her arms about his neck, drawing him close to her breasts, and she kisses him lightly on the cheek.

  “Do you not think your husband might have something to say in the matter?” he asks, looking nervously past her at the others, still asleep.

  “My husband,” sighs Wealthow. “Do not trouble yourself over Hrothgar. He is dead. This very night, I have done it myself, as I should have done long ago.”

  Beowulf says nothing for a moment, confused and baffled at what he’s hearing. Wealthow smiles wider and kisses him on the forehead.

  “Surely you have heard of his infidelities,” she says. “They certainly were no secret. Hrothgar never tried to hide his whores…or I should say he never tried very hard.

  “Why would you say these things to me?”

  She has slipped her hands beneath his tunic, and they are cold against his chest and belly. He feels her nails rasping almost painfully at his skin.

  “My poor sleepy Beowulf,” she smiles. “Too much mead, too little rest. You are exhausted and confused.” And now she presses herself against him, straddling him, her strength taking him by surprise as she bears him flat against the floor.

  “First greed,” she says. “Then lust. Is this not what you would have, my lord? Is this not everything you yet desire?” And she kisses him again, and this time she tastes like the sea, like salt water rushing into the throat of a drowning man, like beached and rotting fish stranded under a summer sun. He gags and tries to push her away.

  “Give me a child, Beowulf. Enter me, and give me a beautiful, beautiful son.”

  And the air around Wealthow seems to shimmer and bend back upon itself somehow. Beowulf blinks, trying hard to will himself awake from this nightmare, terrified he may not be sleeping. She smiles again, and now her lips pull back to reveal the razor teeth of hungry ocean things, and her eyes flash gold and green in the darkness of the hall. Her gown has become a tattered mat of kelp and sea moss entangling a sinuous, scaly body, and Beowulf opens his mouth to scream…

  …and he gasps—one breath he cannot quite seem to draw, the space of a heartbeat that seems to go on forever, his pulse loud in his ears, the sea and all its horrors dragging him down—then he opens his eyes. And Beowulf knows that this time he is truly awake. His chest aches, and he squints into the brilliant morning sunlight pouring in through the open door of Heorot Hall, then shields his eyes with his right hand. He blinks, trying to clear his vision.

  The frigid air around him smells like slaughter, like a battlefield when the fighting is done or a place where many animals have been butchered and bled. The drone of buzzing flies is very loud,
and there’s a steady dripping from all directions, as though the storm returned in the night and the roof has sprung many leaks.

  And now there’s a scream, the shrill and piercing scream of a frightened woman. Beowulf peers out from behind the shelter of his fingers, and Yrsa is sitting nearby, pointing one trembling hand up toward the ceiling. Dark blood streaks her upturned face. Beowulf’s eyes follow her fingertips, and he sees that there are many dark shapes hanging from the rafters, indistinct silhouettes weeping a thick red rain.

  And then he realizes what those dreadful, dangling forms are.

  The bodies of Beowulf’s men hang head down from the roof beams of Heorot—gutted, defiled in unspeakable ways, each and every one torn almost beyond recognition. Their blood drips steadily down upon the tabletops and floor and the upturned faces of horrified women. Beowulf gets slowly to his feet, drawing his sword as he stands, fighting nausea and the dizzying sense that he is yet dreaming.

  If only I am, he thinks. If this might be naught but some new and appalling apparition, only a phantasm of my weary mind…

  He moves slowly through the hall, and now there are other screams and gasps as other women come awake around him and look upon what hangs there bleeding out above them. Soon the entire hall is filled with the sobs and curses of terrified women. And soon, too, Beowulf can see that every man who slept there has been slain, that among the men, he alone has been spared the massacre.

  There are footsteps at the doorway, and Beowulf swings about, raising his sword and bracing himself for the attack. But it’s only Wiglaf, returned from the beach. He stands framed in winter sunlight, gazing up at the ragged bodies. He has also drawn his sword.

  “In the name of Odin…” he gasps.

  “Wiglaf, what dismal misdeed is this?” Beowulf asks, and a fat drop of blood splashes at his feet.

  Yrsa has gotten to her feet, and she’s pointing toward Beowulf instead of the murdered men.

  “Liar,” she hisses. “You told us it was dead. You told us you had killed it.”

  “What? Is Grendel not dead?” asks Wiglaf, taking a hesitant step into the mead hall. “Has the fiend grown his arm anew?”

  Beowulf does not answer them, but turns about to look at the place where he nailed up Grendel’s severed arm. Nothing hangs there now, and his eyes find only the naked iron spike and the monster’s black blood dried to a crust upon the wooden column and the floor below.

  “He took it back, didn’t he?” asks Yrsa, her voice becoming brittle and hysterical. “He came here in the night and took it back! He walked among us while we slept. The demon is not dead. You lied—”

  “Shut up, woman!” growls Beowulf, watching a fat drop of blood that has landed on the blade of his sword as it runs slowly down toward the hilt.

  “Are you not thinking the same damn thing?” asks Wiglaf from the doorway. “The men are dead, and the arm is gone, and we did not see the creature die.”

  “We did not ever say we saw it die,” replies Beowulf, and he shuts his eyes, trying to think, trying to blot out all these atrocities, all the sights and sounds and smells. But she is still there in his head, waiting behind his eyelids, the grinning phantom from his dream, the thing that came disguised as Wealthow…

  Give me a child, Beowulf. Enter me now and give me a beautiful, beautiful son.

  A cold spatter of blood strikes Beowulf’s forehead, and he opens his eyes again, then wipes it away and stands staring at the crimson smear on his palm.

  “Find Hrothgar,” he says. “If he still breathes.”

  “It was not Grendel,” Hrothgar sighs heavily. He sits alone on the edge of his bed, wrapped in deer skins and frowning down at his bare feet, his crooked yellow toenails. His sword is gripped uselessly in both hands, the tip of the blade resting against the stone floor. There are four guards standing at the entrance to the bedchamber, and Queen Wealthow, wrapped in her bearskins, stands alone at the window, looking out on the stockade.

  “How do you know that?” Wiglaf asks the king, and Hrothgar sighs again and looks up at him.

  “I know it, young man, because I have lived in this land all my life and know its ways. I know it because it is something that I know.”

  “Fine,” says Wiglaf, glancing toward Beowulf. “But if it is not Grendel, then who is it? What is it, if not Grendel?”

  Hrothgar taps the end of his sword lightly against the stone and grimaces.

  “We would have an answer, old man,” Beowulf says. “They are carrying the bodies of my men from your mead hall, and I would know why.”

  “Grendel’s mother,” replies Hrothgar. “It was the son you killed. I had…I had hoped that she had left this land long ago.”

  Wiglaf laughs a hollow, bitter sort of laugh and turns away. Beowulf frowns and kicks at the floor.

  “How many monsters am I to slay?” he asks Hrothgar. “Grendel’s mother? Father? Grendel’s fucking uncle? Will I have to hack down an entire family tree of these demons before I am done?”

  “No,” says Hrothgar unconvincingly, and taps his sword against the floor a second time. “She is the last. I swear it. With her gone, that demonkind will finally slip into faerie lore forever.”

  “And you neglected to mention her before now because…?”

  “I have already said, I believed that she had deserted these hills and gone back down to trouble the sea from whence she came. I did not know, Beowulf. I did not know.”

  “Listen,” says Wiglaf to Beowulf. “Let us take our dead and take our leave and have no more part in these evil doings. If he is not lying,” and Wiglaf pauses to glare at Hrothgar, “then Grendel’s dam has claimed her wergild and has no further grievance or claim upon this hall. We can sail on the next tide.”

  “And what of her mate?” Beowulf asks Hrothgar, ignoring Wiglaf. “Where is Grendel’s father?”

  And now Wealthow turns away from the window, her hands clasped so tightly together that her knuckles have gone white. “Yes, my dear husband,” she says. “Pray tell, where is Grendel’s sire?” But as she speaks, her eyes go to Beowulf, not King Hrothgar.

  “Gone,” says the king, then wipes at his mouth and glances up at Beowulf. “Grendel’s father is gone, faded like twilight, not even a ghost. He can do no harm to man.”

  “Beowulf, he has already lied to us once.”

  “I never lied to you,” snaps Hrothgar, his face gone red, his cloudy eyes suddenly livid, and he raises his sword. But Wiglaf easily bats the blade aside, and it clatters to the floor.

  “Nay, I suppose you did not,” he says. “You merely neglected to mention that once we’d slain her son—”

  “Stop,” Beowulf says, and he lays a firm hand on Wiglaf’s shoulder. “You will not speak this way to the King of the Danes.”

  Exasperated, Wiglaf motions toward the window, toward the sea beyond. “Beowulf, please. Think about this. It is time we took our leave of these cursed shores. We have done what we came here to do.”

  Before Beowulf can reply, there are loud footsteps in the hallway outside the bedchamber, and Unferth enters the room. “Beowulf,” he says.

  “What now?” Wiglaf asks Hrothgar’s advisor. “Have you come here to gloat, Ferret Kinslayer?”

  Unferth takes a deep breath, disregarding Wiglaf’s taunt. “I was wrong,” he says. “I was wrong to doubt you before, Beowulf, son of Ecgtheow. And I shall not do so again. For truly yours is the blood of courage. I beg your forgiveness.”

  “Clearly, there is to be no end to this farce,” sneers Wiglaf, and he turns his back on Unferth.

  “Then I accept your apology,” Beowulf says quietly, and Wiglaf laughs to himself. “And you must forgive my man Wiglaf, as we have seen many terrible things this morning, and it has sickened our hearts.”

  “If you will take it,” Unferth says, “then I have a gift,” and he turns to his slave, Cain, who has been standing just behind him. The boy is holding a great sword, which Unferth takes from him.

  “This is Hrunting,
” Unferth says, and holds the weapon up for Beowulf to see. “It belonged to my father Ecglaf and to my father’s father before him.” The blade glints in the dim lights of the bedchamber, and Beowulf can see that it is an old and noble weapon. Unferth holds it out to him.

  “Please,” he says. “It is my gift to you. Take my sword, Beowulf.”

  Beowulf nods and accepts the blade, inspecting the ornate grip and pommel, gilded and jeweled and graven with scenes of battle. A prominent fuller runs the length of the sword, lightening the weapon. “It is fine, and I am grateful for your gift. But a sword like this…it will be no fit match for demon magic.”

  “Still,” says Unferth, “Hrunting may be more than it seems. My father told me the blade was tempered in blood, and he boasted it had never failed anyone who carried it into battle.”

  “A shame he cannot speak of its might from personal experience,” Wiglaf says, and Beowulf tells him to be quiet.

  “Something given with a good heart,” Beowulf says to Unferth, “that has its own magic. And it has a good weight to it, friend Unferth”

  “I’m sorry I ever doubted you.”