To take his mind off the possibility of drowning or the slimy things that might be waiting in the wide, still pools, Wiglaf talks, as much to himself as to Beowulf. He first relates what he can recall of a saga he heard from one of Hrothgar’s scops—how a Danish princess, Hildeburh, married Finn, a Frisian king, and how much grief and bloodshed inevitably followed. But then Wiglaf forgets exactly how the tale ends—though he knows it has something or another to do with Jutland—and so switches to the daring feats of Sigurd Dragonslayer and his sword, Gram, and how, by tasting the heart’s blood of a slain fyrweorm, Sigurd came to know the language of birds.
“If I but had the heart of a dragon,” says Beowulf, “then perhaps I could learn what all these blasted crows are squawking about.” And he points at three of them perched on a flat stone at the center of one of the pools.
“Oh, that’s easy,” replies Wiglaf. “They’re only telling us we are imbeciles and fools, and that we will taste very good, once the maggots find us and we’ve ripened a day or three.”
“You speak birdish?” asks Beowulf, stopping and peering ahead into the fog.
“No,” says Wiglaf. “Only crow. And a little raven. It is a skill peculiar to the doomed sons of fishwives.”
At that moment there is a sudden gust of sea-scented wind, one of the few the two Geats have felt since beginning their long slog across the marches, and it briefly opens up a gap in the mists before them.
“Look there,” says Wiglaf, pointing north. Only fifty yards or so in that direction, the bog breaks off, as the land grows abruptly higher. And there is a steep bank at the edge of a steaming tarn, and atop the bank grow three enormous oaks, their gnarled roots tangled together like serpents slithering down to meet the water’s edge. There is a dark gap in the roots, and even from this distance, Beowulf can see that the water is flowing sluggishly into the gap and vanishing under the bank. Before much longer, they’ve reached the nearer shore of the tarn and can see that there is an oily scum floating on its surface, an iridescent sheen that seems to twist and writhe in the fading daylight.
“Dragon’s blood?” asks Wiglaf.
“The old man spoke true,” Beowulf replies and then begins picking his way along the edge of the pool toward the bank and the opening in the tree roots.
“A damn shame, that,” sighs Wiglaf. “I was starting to hope he’d made the whole thing up.”
Beowulf is the first to gain solid ground, a barren hump of rocky soil near the entrance of the cave. There is still a patch of snow here, blackened by frozen blood. The corpse of one of Hrothgar’s men lies half-in the tarn, half-out, mauled and stiff. It has attracted a hungry swarm of fish and crabs, and one of the crows is perched on its broken back.
“This must be the place,” says Beowulf, and he curses and throws a stone at the crow. He misses, but the bird caws and flies away. Beowulf draws Hrunting from its scabbard and turns away from the dead man, toward the entrance to the merewife’s den.
“Poor bastard,” says Wiglaf, when he sees the corpse. “Beowulf, you do not want to meet this water demon in her own element.”
“I know.”
“Do you want me to go in with you?”
“No,” Beowulf replies. “I should do this alone. That’s how she wants it.”
“Yes,” says Wiglaf, drawing his own sword and coming to stand at Beowulf’s side. “Which seems to me ample reason for me to go with you. You know that I will. You have but to ask.”
“I know,” Beowulf tells him.
Then neither of them says anything more for a time. They stand there watching the constantly shifting rainbow patterns playing across the dark water flowing into the cave, its entrance starkly framed by a snarl of oaken roots. Almost anything might be waiting for me in there, thinks Beowulf. Almost anything at all.
“It’s getting dark,” Wiglaf says finally. “You’ll need a torch. I wouldn’t mind having one of my own, to tell you the gods’ own truth.”
“Do you still have your tinderbox?” asks Beowulf. “Is it still dry?”
Wiglaf fumbles about inside his cloak and pulls a small bronze box from one pocket. The lid is engraved with a single rune, Sôwilô, the sun’s rune. He opens the box, inspecting the flint and tiny bundle of straw tucked inside. “Seems that way,” he tells Beowulf.
“The farmer, he said the water burns,” and Beowulf nods toward the oily tarn.
“Well, old Agnarr’s been right about everything else. Let me find a dry bough and we’ll see.” And Wiglaf climbs the bank to higher ground and hunts about beneath the oaks, returning with a sturdy bit of branch about as long as his forearm. Next he tears a strip of wool from the inside of his cloak and squats down beside the pool to soak it in the water.
“You’re a handy fellow,” says Beowulf.
“So they tell me,” laughs Wiglaf, but then there’s a loud splash from the tarn, and by the time he and Beowulf look up, there are only ripples spreading out across the surface. Wiglaf glances up at Beowulf. “Care for a swim?” he asks.
“A funny handy fellow,” Beowulf replies, keeping both his eyes on the pool. “Grendel’s dam is not the only monster haunting this lake,” he says, for now he can see sinuous forms moving about just beneath the surface, the coils of something like an eel, but grown almost large as a whale. Wiglaf sees it, too, and he takes the strip of wool from the water and scrambles quickly away from the shore.
One of the coils rises slowly from the water, its green-black hide glistening in the twilight before it slips back into the deep.
“Maybe Hrothgar’s grandfather lied about killing the dragon,” says Wiglaf. “Could be he only wounded it.”
“Finish the torch,” Beowulf tells him.
“Could be it had babies.”
“Finish the torch,” Beowulf says again, and he reaches for the golden horn of Hrothgar, still dangling from a loop on his belt. “You can keep the wee dragons busy while I take care of the she-troll.”
“I’ll make a lovely morsel,” snorts Wiglaf, tying the damp wool securely about one end of the branch. Soon, with a few sparks from his flint, the bough has become a roaring torch. “The water burns,” he says, and forces a smile, passing the brand to Beowulf.
“I will see you again, my friend Wiglaf, and soon,” Beowulf tells him, then, before Wiglaf can reply, Beowulf wades into the pool and disappears through the opening in the tangle of roots. Briefly, the hollow place beneath the trees glows yellow-orange with the torch’s light. When the entrance has grown dark again, Wiglaf moves farther away from the tarn, climbing back up the bank to sit out of the wind among the oaks. He lays his sword across his lap and watches the water and the things moving about just beneath it, and tries to remember the end of the story of Hildeburh and the Frisian king.
The passage below the trees is narrow, and Beowulf stands near the entrance for a time, the cold water from the tarn flowing slowly about his knees. The ceiling of the tunnel is high enough that he does not have to stoop or worry about striking his head. He holds the brand in his left hand, Hrunting in his right, and the torchlight causes the walls of the cave to glitter and gleam brilliantly. Never before has he seen stone quite like this, neither granite nor limestone, something the color of slate, yet pocked with clusters of quartz crystals, and where the roots of the trees have pushed through from above, they have been covered over the countless centuries with a glossy coating of dripstone, entombed though they might yet be alive.
Don’t tarry here, he thinks. Do this thing quick as you can, and be done with it. And so Beowulf follows the glittering tunnel deeper into the hillside, and when he has gone only a hundred or so steps, it opens out into a great chamber or cavern. Here the water spilling in from the tarn has formed an underground lake. He can only guess at its dimensions, as the torchlight is insufficient to penetrate very far into that gloom there below the earth. But he thinks it must be very wide, and he tries not to consider what creatures might lurk within its secret depths. The waters are black and still, and rimmed all about with elaborate stalactite and stalagmite formations.