“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 people. 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.”