Beowulf

by Caitlin R. Kiernan

  “And I know,” she says, gazing directly into Beowulf’s eyes. “A man like you could own the greatest tale ever sung. The story of your bravery, your greatness, would live on when everything now alive is gone to dust.”

  And now Beowulf sees that where her blood has touched the iron blade it has begun to steam and dissolve, the way icicles melt in bright sunshine.

  “Beowulf,” she says, “it has been a long time since a man has come to visit me.”

  And then she pushes hard against Hrunting, shedding more of her corrosive blood, and the entire blade is liquefied in an instant, spilling onto the ground between them in dull spatters of silver. The hilt falls from Beowulf’s hand and clatters loudly against the rocks, and his fingers have begun to tingle. And he feels her inside his head, her thoughts moving in amongst his own. He gasps and shakes his head, trying to force her out.

  “I don’t need…a sword…to kill you.”

  “Of course you don’t, my love.”

  “I slew your son…without a sword.”

  “I know,” she purrs. “You are so very strong.”

  She reaches out, her fingertips brushing gently, lovingly, against his cheek, and already the gash in her palm has healed. Beowulf can see himself reflected in her blue eyes, and his pupils have swollen until his own eyes seem almost black.

  “You took a son from me,” she says, and she leans forward, whispering into his ear. “Give me a son, brave thane, wolf of the bees, first born of Ecgtheow. Stay with me. Love me.”

  “I know what you are,” mumbles Beowulf breathlessly, lost and wandering in her now. Somehow, she has swallowed him alive, and like Hrunting, he is melting, undone by magic and the acid flowing in her demon’s veins.

  “Shhhhh,” she whispers, and strokes his face. “Do not be afraid. There is no need to fear me. Love me…and I shall weave you riches beyond imagination. I shall make you the greatest king of men who has ever lived.”

  “You lie,” says Beowulf, and it requires all his strength to manage those two words. They are only a wisp passing across his lips, a death rattle, an ill-defined echo of himself. He struggles to remember what has brought him to this devil’s lair. He tries to recall Wiglaf’s voice, the sight of dead men dangling from the rafters of Heorot and the screams of women, the sea hag that visited him in a dream, disguised as Queen Wealthow. But they are all flimsy, fading scraps, those memories, nothing so urgent they could ever distract him from her.

  The merewife reaches down and runs her fingers along the golden horn, Hrothgar’s prize, Beowulf’s reward, then she slips her arms around Beowulf’s waist and draws him nearer to her. She kisses his bare chest and the soft flesh of his throat.

  “To you I swear, as long as this golden horn remains in my keeping, you will forever be King of the Danes. I do not lie. I have ever kept my promises and I ever shall.”

  And then she takes the horn from him. He doesn’t try to stop her. And she holds him tighter still.

  “Forever strong, mighty…and all-powerful. Men will bow before you and serve you loyally, even unto death. This I promise.”

  Her skin is sweating gold, and her eyes gnaw their way deeper into his soul, and Beowulf remembers when he swam against Brecca and something he first mistook for a herald of the Valkyries pulled him under the waves…

  “This I swear,” the merewife whispers.

  “I remember you,” he says.

  “Yes,” she replies. “You do.” And her lips find his, and all he has ever desired in all his life is for this kiss to never end.

  14

  Hero

  It is only an hour or so past dawn when Beowulf reemerges from the tangled curtain of roots and the tunnel below the three oaks growing there on the high bank beside the tarn. There is a gentle but persistent tug about his legs from the languid current, all that water draining away, flowing down the dragon’s throat, gurgling down to its innards. He stands watching the white morning mists rising lazily from the tarn, this dark lake so long ago named Weormgræf by people who had heard the lay of Beow’s triumph here or by travelers who had glimpsed for themselves its awful inhabitants. And at first, Beowulf thinks that he’s alone, that Wiglaf has given him up for dead, that Wiglaf and Unferth have ridden together back to Heorot to give the king and queen the news of his demise beneath the hill and to prepare for the merewife’s inevitable return. But then he hears footsteps and sees Wiglaf coming quickly across the rocky shore toward him.

  “You bastard!” shouts Wiglaf happily, and there is relief in his voice and sleepless exhaustion in his eyes. “I thought you’d swum away home without me!”

  “The thought crossed my mind but briefly,” Beowulf calls back, and then he splashes to the muddy edge of the tarn and hauls himself out of the oily water. He drops the heavy wool sack at his feet, the obscene lading he’s carried all the way back up from the merewife’s hall, and sits down beside it. It’s colder above ground than it was below, and there is the raw wind, as well, and he rubs his hands together for warmth.

  “I thought sure you had drowned,” Wiglaf says, standing over him. “The trees said no, you’d been eaten. There was a crow who swore you’d only lost your way and died of fright.”

  “And here I’ve disappointed the lot of you.”

  “I’m sure it couldn’t be helped.”

  Wiglaf squats in front of Beowulf, eyeing the woolen sack, which has begun to leak some sticky black substance onto the stones.

  “Is it done, then?” he asks.

  “It’s done,” Beowulf replies, and Wiglaf, yet more relieved, nods his head.

  “We’re going to have to walk back, you know,” Wiglaf sighs and turns to gaze out across the bog toward the distant forest. “You told him to wait until first light and no longer.”

  “A slight miscalculation,” says Beowulf. “Ah, well. Likely, it will not kill us. And think how surprised they will be to see us, after Unferth has told them we have perished in the night.”

  “Aye,” replies Unferth. “But I’ll not be carrying that,” and he points at the leaking sack.

  “You’ve become an old woman, Wiglaf,” Beowulf tells him. “But I think we’d already established that.”

  “There are no more of them? No more monsters?”

  “It is done,” Beowulf says again, and rubs at his eyes. “Heorot Hall is safe.”

  “And we can sail for home?”

  “Unless you’ve a better idea,” says Beowulf, and he gets to his feet again. Staring out over the still, black lake and its rainbow shimmer, he wonders if Wiglaf could get another fire going, and if the water truly would burn, as Agnarr said it has in times past, and if the flames might find the path down to the belly of the beast.

  “We should get going,” Wiglaf says. “With luck, we can make it back before nightfall.”

  “With luck,” Beowulf agrees, and soon they have left the tarn far behind and are picking their way back across the bog toward the ancient forest and the wide moorlands beyond.

  And, indeed, the sun has not yet set when the two Geats step wearily across the threshold of Hrothgar’s mead hall. They find Hrothgar there with his queen and Unferth and the small number of able-bodied men who yet remain in the king’s service. The corpses have been taken down from the rafters, and some of the blood has been scrubbed away. But the hall still stinks of the slaughter.

  “It is a miracle!” bellows the old man on his throne. “Unferth, he said—”

  “—only what he was bidden to tell you, my lord,” says Beowulf, and he unties the wool sack and dumps its contents out upon the floor. The head of Grendel thuds loudly against the flagstones and rolls a few feet, coming to a stop at the edge of the dais. Its eyes bulge from their sockets, clouded and empty, and its mouth is agape, the swollen tongue lolling from withered lips and cracked yellow fangs. Wealthow gasps and turns her face away.

  “It is dead, my lady,” says Beowulf. “Do not fear to look upon the face of Grendel, for it will bring no more harm to you or your pe
ople. When I’d finished with the demon’s mother, I cut off the brute’s head that none here could doubt his undoing.”

  “It is over,” says Wiglaf, standing directly behind Beowulf. “True to his word, my lord has slain the fiends.”

  Hrothgar’s disbelieving eyes dart from Wealthow to Unferth, then to Beowulf and back to the severed head, his face betraying equal parts astonishment and horror, awe and joy at the gruesome prize the Geat has laid at his feet.

  “Our curse…it has been lifted?” he asks, and glances back to Wealthow again.

  “You see here before you the unquestionable proof,” answers Beowulf, and he nudges Grendel’s head with the toe of his boot. “I tracked the mother of Grendel to her filthy burrow, far below earth and water, and there we fought. All night we struggled. She was ferocious, and it might easily have gone another way. She might have emerged the victor, for such was her fury. But the Fates weaving their skein beneath the roots of the World Ash decreed otherwise, that I should triumph and return to you this day with these glad tidings.”

  And now a cheer rises from those few of Hrothgar’s thanes there in the hall who have survived the attacks, and also from the women who have come to clean away the blood.

  “Son of Healfdene,” continues Beowulf, raising his voice to be heard, “Lord of the Scyldings, I pledge that you may now sleep safe with your warriors here beneath the roof of Heorot Hall. There is no more need of fear, no more threat of harm to you or your people. It is over.”

  “I see,” says Hrothgar, speaking hardly above a whisper. “Yes, I can see this.” But to Beowulf, the king seems lost in some secret inner turmoil, and the happiness on the old man’s face appears little more than a poorly constructed mask. There is a madness in his eyes, and Beowulf looks to Queen Wealthow, but she has turned away.

  “For fifty years,” says Hrothgar, “did I rule this country, the Ring-Danes’ land. I have defended it in time of war…and I have fought with the sword and with ax and spear against many invading tribes. Indeed…I had come to believe that all my foes were vanquished. But then Grendel struck…and I believed at last there had come among us an enemy that no man would ever defeat.” And Hrothgar leans forward in his seat and raises his voice.

  “I despaired…and my heart…my savaged heart abandoned all hope. And now I praise Odin Allfather that I have lived to see this head, torn from off that hateful demon and dripping gore…and to hear that his foul dam has been slain as well.” And then he turns to Unferth. “Take it from my sight, Unferth! Nail it up high, that all will see—”

  “No,” says Wealthow, turning to face her husband once more. “No, not again. Once already has this hall been profaned by such a hideous trophy, and I will not see it done again.”

  “Wealthow, my love—” Hrothgar begins, but she cuts him off a second time.

  “No. I will not invite some new horror into our midst by flaunting Lord Beowulf’s victory over the fiends. No one among us can say that there may not yet be others, watching and waiting their turn, and we will not provoke them. I will not have it, husband.”

  Hrothgar frowns and furrows his brow, running his fingers through his gray beard. He stares deep into the dead eyes of Grendel, as if seeking there some hindmost spark of life, some ghost that might yet linger, undetected by the others. But then the king takes a deep breath and nods, conceding to the will of his queen.

  “So be it.” He sighs and leans back on his throne. “Take it away…hurl it into the sea. Let us be done with it. Never let us look upon that face again.”

  Unferth nods to two of his thanes, and soon the severed head has been speared on long pikes and carried off to a balcony. Another cheer rises from the hall when the head of Grendel is flung over the railing to tumble and bounce down the cliff face and at last be swallowed by the sea.

  And the next evening, though the blood of those slain by Grendel’s dam has not yet been washed completely from the walls and floors and roof beams of Heorot Hall—and likely it never shall be—the feasting begins. The world has been rid of monsters, and finally the horned hall can serve the purpose for which it was built. Finally, the men of Hrothgar’s land can feast and drink there and forget the hardships and dangers of the hard world beyond those walls. And the feast honors Beowulf, son of Ecgtheow, and Wiglaf and the thirteen Geats who have died that this might be so. A long table has been carried onto the throne dais, and there the two men who braved the marches to slay the merewife and return with the head of Grendel sit in a place of distinction. The hall is alive with the boisterous din of merrymaking, with laughter and bawdy jokes and drunken curses, with song and the harpestry, with carefree, blissful celebration untainted by dread or trepidation. The cooking fire sends smoke and delicious smells up the chimney and out into the cold night. The fattest hog that could be found is hefted onto the king’s table, its skin steaming and crisp.

  Unferth is seated on Beowulf’s left, and he leans close, summoning the confidence to ask a question that has been on his mind since the Geat’s return from the wilderness, for the mead has given him courage.

  “Beowulf, mighty monster-killer. There is something I must ask. Hrunting, my father’s sword, did it help you to destroy the hag?”

  Beowulf lifts his mead cup, surprised only the question did not come sooner. “It…it did,” he replies, faltering but a little as he shapes the story he will tell Unferth. “Indeed, I believe the demon hag would not be dead without it.”

  Unferth looks pleased, so Beowulf takes up the knife from his plate and continues.

  “I plunged Hrunting into the chest of Grendel’s mother,” and he demonstrates by sticking his knife deeply into the ribs of the roast pig. “When I drew it free from her corpse”—and here he pulls the knife from the pig—“the creature sprang back to life…so I plunged it once more into the she-troll’s chest…” Again Beowulf stabs the roast pig. “And there it will stay, friend Unferth, even until Ragnarök.”

  “Until Ragnarök,” whispers Unferth, a note of awe in his voice, and he nods his head, then takes Beowulf’s hand and kisses it. “Our people shall be grateful until the end of time,” he says.

  Beowulf finishes off the mead in his cup; Unferth’s gratitude at his easy, convincing lie has provoked a sudden and unexpected pang of guilt, an emotion with which Beowulf is more or less unfamiliar.

  Better to tell them what they need to hear, he thinks, then catches Wiglaf watching him from across the table. And now Queen Wealthow is refilling his cup, and he smiles for her. She is seated at his right, and pours from a large wooden jug carved to resemble a boar.

  “I thought you might need some more drink,” she says.

  “Aye,” replies Beowulf. “Always.”

  “And the golden drinking horn. Do you still have it?”

  So now there’s need of another lie, but this time he has it at the ready and doesn’t miss a beat.

  “No,” he tells her. “I knew the greedy witch desired it, so I threw the horn into the bog, and she followed after it. And that’s where I struck…” Unferth is still watching him, and Beowulf nods in his direction. “…with the mighty sword Hrunting,” he adds, then takes a deep breath. “Once she was dead, I searched for it, but it was gone forever.”

  There is a faint glint of uncertainty in the queen’s violet eyes, and Beowulf sees that she is perhaps not so eager to believe as Unferth, that she might have ideas of her own about what happened at the tarn. But then Hrothgar is on his feet, coming suddenly up behind Beowulf and snatching away his plain cup, dashing its contents to the floor. He seizes Beowulf by the arm.

  “Then, my good wife,” bellows Hrothgar, “find our hero another cup, one befitting so great a man. Meanwhile, the hero and I must talk.”

  Hrothgar, already drunken and slurring his speech, guides Beowulf away from the table and into the anteroom behind the dais. He shuts the door behind him and locks it, then drains his cup and wipes his lips on his sleeve.

  “Tell me,” he begins, then pauses to belch
. He wipes at his mouth again and continues. “You brought back the head of Grendel. But what about the head of the mother?”

  Beowulf scowls and plays at looking confused. “With her dead and cold, lying at the bottom on the tarn. Is it not enough to return with one monster’s head?”

  Hrothgar stares discontentedly into his empty mead cup, then tosses it aside. It bounces across the floor and rolls to a stop against the double doors leading out to the balcony overlooking the sea.

  “Did you kill her?” he asks Beowulf. “And speak true, for I will know if you lie.”

  “My lord, would you like to hear the story again, how I struggled with that monstrous hag—”

  “She is no hag, Beowulf. A demon, yes, yes, to be sure, but not a hag. We both know that. Now, answer me, damn you! Did you kill her?”

  And Beowulf takes a step back, wishing he were anywhere but this small room, facing anyone but the King of the Danes.

  I know that underneath your glamour you’re as much a monster as my son Grendel, the merewife purred.

  One needs a glamour to become a king…

  “I would have an answer now,” says Hrothgar.

  “Would I have been allowed to escape her had I not?” asks Beowulf, answering with a question, and he suspects that Hrothgar knows the answer—the true answer. The old man backs away, hugging himself now and shuddering. Hrothgar wrings his hands and glances at Beowulf.

  “Grendel is dead, and with my own eyes have I seen the proof,” he says, and shudders again. “Not even that fiend could live on without his head. Yes, Grendel is dead. That’s all that matters to me. Grendel will trouble me no more. The hag, she is not my curse. Not anymore.”