Beowulf

by Caitlin R. Kiernan

  “The Wolf of the Bees, he would never find me down there,” Grendel laughs, then coughs, and his breath fogs in the night. “Let him try, Mother. Let him drown here in the reeds and come to sleep beside my bones. I will gnaw him in dead dreams.”

  “You cannot lie down here,” his mother replies, though he cannot see her anywhere. “Come back to me,” she says. “I would have you here with me.”

  But Grendel sits a while longer there beside the frozen pool, tracing odd, uncertain shapes in the fresh snow and his cooling blood. The shapes would tell a story, if his thoughts were still clear enough for that, a happy story in which he killed the Beowulf, in which he took the horned hall for his own den and was never again plagued by the noise of men and their harps and flutes and drums. With an index finger, he tries to draw sharp teeth and a broken shield, but the falling snow erases everything almost as quickly as he can trace it on the ice.

  It would cover me, too, he thinks, if I only sit here a little longer.

  “Come home,” his mother sighs, her voice woven somehow invisibly into the wind. “Come home, my Grendel.”

  And so Grendel remembers the cave, then, his mother’s pool and her white eels, and dimly he realizes that he’s been trying to find his way back there all along. But first the pain distracted him, and then the mists, and the spiteful trees, and the dark spatter of his blood across the ice. He gets slowly to his feet, and the unsteady world cracks and shifts beneath him. Grendel stands there clutching the damp stump where his stolen arm used to be, sniffing the familiar air, and he squints into the snowy night, struggling to recall the secret path. Where to tread, where not to tread, the shallow places where there are steppingstones and the places where there are only holes filled with stagnant, tannin-stained water.

  They will not have him, these haunted fens. He will not die here, beneath the sky where carrion crows and nibbling fish jaws and the Beowulf might find him. Become more than half a ghost already, Grendel takes a deep, chilling breath, gritting his teeth against the pain, and sets out across the bog.

  “Come back,” the mists call, but he ignores them.

  “We have reconsidered and will have you, after all,” mutters the old forest, but he ignores it, as well.

  “We are the same, you and I,” calls the moorlands from very far away. But Grendel knows he could never find his way back there, even if the jealous trees would deign to let him pass.

  And before long he has reached the other side, only losing his way once or twice among the rushes and rotting spruce logs. Soon, there is solid ground beneath him again, and Grendel stumbles over the dry and stony earth and into the mouth of his cave. It does not seem so terribly cold here in the shadows, out of wind, sheltered from the falling snow. He staggers to the edge of his mother’s pool and collapses there, his blood seeping into the water and staining it the way the peat moss stains the marshes. His mother is waiting, and she buoys him up in her strong arms and keeps the hungry eels and crabs at bay.

  “Do not cry,” she says, and kisses his fevered brow with cool lips.

  “He hurt me, Modor,” sobs Grendel, who had not known he was sobbing until she said so. “Mama, how can that be?”

  “I warned you,” she says. “Oh, Grendel, my son. My poor son. I warned you. You must not go to them…”

  Grendel opens his eyes, which he’d not realized were shut, and gazes up at the dripstone formations hanging like jagged teeth from the ceiling of the cave.

  “He killed me, Modor,” Grendel sobs.

  “Who killed you, Grendel my son. Who? Who was it did this awful thing to you?”

  Those are the fangs of the world serpent, thinks Grendel, blinking away his tears and staring in wide-eyed wonder at the sparkling stalactites overhead. I am lying now in the maw of the Midgard serpent, Jörmungand Loki-Son, and soon he will swallow me, and I will be finished, forever.

  “Who took your arm, Grendel?” asks his mother.

  “The Wolf of the Bees,” replies Grendel, and he shuts his eyes again. “He tore my arm away…it hurts so…”

  “The Wolf of the Bees?”

  “It is a riddle, Mother. Who is the Wolf of the Bees?”

  “My son, there isn’t time for riddles,” she tells him, stroking his face with her graceful, long, webbed fingers, her golden nails.

  “I am so cold,” Grendel says very quietly.

  “I know,” she says.

  “He was only a man…but so strong…so very, very strong. He hurt me, Mama.”

  “And he shall pay, my darling. Who was this man?”

  “He told me his name in a riddle. He said, ‘I am ripper and tearer and slasher and gouger. I’m the teeth of the darkness and talons of the night. I am Beowulf,’ he said.”

  “Beowulf,” she says, repeating the kenning. “Wolf of the bees.”

  “He was so strong,” Grendel says again, and he wonders if it will be this cold in the serpent’s belly at the bottom of the ocean. “I’m so cold,” he says again.

  “I know,” his mother replies. “You are tired, my sweet son. You are so awfully tired. Sleep now,” and she covers his eyes as the last shimmer of life escapes them. “I am here. I will not leave you.”

  And now his eyes are as empty as the eyes of any dead thing, and grieving, she bears him down along the roots of mountains and into the depths of her pool. The eels taste his blood, but wisely keep their distance. She drags his body along the spiraling course of that flooded granite throat, that sea tunnel scabbed with barnacles and fleshy anemones, blue starfish and mussels and clusters of blind, wriggling worms. Following some tidal pull ever, ever down into lightless halls where her son was born, chambers that have never known the sun’s chariot nor the moon’s white eye. And she carries the name of his killer on her pale lips, Beowulf, etched there like a scar.

  11

  The Trophy and the Prize

  From the safety of their bedchamber, the king and queen have listened to the battle between the Geats and the monster Grendel. Wealthow standing alone at a window and Hrothgar lying alone in his bed, they have heard such sounds as may pass through wood and stone and thatch. Cries of anger and of pain, the shattering of enormous timbers and the sundering of iron, sudden silences, the shouts of men and the howls of a demon. They have not spoken nor thought of sleep, but have only listened, waiting for that final quiet or some decisive noise, and now they hear the glad voices of weary men—the victory cheer rising from Heorot. King Hrothgar sits up, only half-believing, wondering if perhaps he’s fallen asleep and so is only dreaming these muffled cries from joyous, undefeated warriors.

  “Is that a cheer?” he asks his wife. “Could that be a cry of victory?”

  She doesn’t make reply, but only stands there at the window, looking out on cold and darkness, anxiously clutching a scarf, nervously wringing the cloth in her hands. It was a gift from the king, a precious scrap of silk from some land far away to the south, some fabled, sun-drenched place where it is always summer and dark-skinned men ride strange animals.

  And now the door bursts open, banging loudly against the wall, and the king’s herald, Wulfgar, rushes into the room. Delight and relief glow in his eyes like a fever.

  “My lord!” he gasps, winded and panting. “My lord Hrothgar! My lady! It is over! Beowulf has killed the demon! Grendel is dead!”

  “Praise Odin.” Hrothgar sighs and clutches at his chest, at his racing heart. “Call the scops, Wulfgar. Spread the word! Tomorrow will be a glorious day of rejoicing, the likes of which this house has never seen!”

  “I will, my lord,” answers Wulfgar, and he disappears again, leaving the door standing open.

  Hrothgar stares at the empty doorway a moment, still waiting to awaken to the news of Beowulf’s death, to the sight of Grendel crouching there above him. He climbs out of bed and slowly crosses the room to stand with Wealthow. She’s stopped twisting the scarf, and there are tears in her eyes, but she’s still gazing out the window at the night. He places a hand gently on
her shoulder, and she flinches.

  “Our nightmare is over,” he says, and his hand moves from her shoulder and down toward her breast. “Come to bed, my sweet. Be with me in this hour of triumph.”

  “Do not touch me,” she says and roughly pushes his hand aside. “Nothing is changed. Nothing.”

  Hrothgar chews impatiently at his lower lip and glances back to their bed. “My kingdom must have an heir. I need a son, Wealthow.” He turns back to her, and Wealthow takes a small step nearer the window. “The terror that haunted us is passed, and it is time to do your duty.”

  “My duty?” she scoffs, turning on him and letting the scarf slip through her fingers and fall to the floor between them. “Do not speak to me of duty, my lord. I will not hear it.”

  “You are my wife,” Hrothgar begins, but she silences him with the wet glint of her eyes, with a cold smile and an expression of such utter contempt that he looks away again, down at the brightly colored swatch of silk where it has settled on the stone floor.

  “You are a wicked old man,” she hisses. “And now that fortune and the deeds of greater men have delivered you from this ordeal, this calamity, you would bed me and have me bear your child?”

  Hrothgar walks back to their bed and sits down again, staring at the palms of his hands. “Wealthow, may I not even enjoy this moment, these good tidings after so much sorrow and darkness?”

  She turns to the window, setting her back to him.

  “You may take whatever joy you can find, my lord, so long as you find it without me.”

  “I should never have told you,” he mutters, clenching his fat and wrinkled hands into feeble fists. “It should have ever stayed my secret alone to bear.”

  “My Lord Hrothgar is so awfully wise a man,” laughs Wealthow, a sour and derisive laugh. And then there is another, different sort of sound from the direction of Heorot Hall—the heavy pounding of a hammer.

  “What are you doing?” asks Wiglaf.

  “I would think that’s plain enough for anyone to see, dear Wiglaf,” replies Beowulf, and he goes back to his grisly work. He’s standing atop one of the long mead tables, using a blacksmith’s hammer to nail the monster’s severed arm up high on one of Heorot’s ornately carved columns. An iron spike has been driven through the bones of its wrist, and every time the hammer strikes the spike, it throws orange sparks.

  “Fine. Then let me ask you this,” continues Wiglaf. “To what end are you doing it?”

  Beowulf pauses and wipes sweat from his face. “They will want proof,” he replies. “And I am giving them proof.”

  “Would it not have been proof enough it you’d left it lying on the floor where it fell?”

  Beowulf laughs and pounds the nail in deeper. “Are you turning squeamish on me, Wiglaf? You are starting to sound like an old woman.”

  “I am only wondering, my lord, if King Hrothgar and Queen Wealthow will be pleased to find you have adorned the walls of their hall with the dismembered claw of that foul creature.”

  Beowulf stops hammering and steps back, admiring his handiwork hanging there upon the wooden beam. “I do not find it so unpleasant to look upon. How is it any different from the head of a boar, or the pelt of a bear, or, for that matter, the ivory tusks of a walrus?”

  “My lord,” says Wiglaf, exhausted and exasperated. “It is hideous to look upon, so like the arm of a man—”

  Beowulf turns and glares down at him from the tabletop. “Wiglaf, you stood against the fiend yourself. It was no man.”

  “I did not say it was a man, only that in form it is not unlike the arm of a man.”

  Beowulf laughs, then wipes his face again and looks at the hammer in his hand, then back to the arm hanging limply from the beam. “I will have them see what I have done this night. I will have it known to them all, so there can be no mistake. Tonight, heroes fought beneath the eaves of this place…this Heorot…and a great evil was laid low. Four men died—”

  “Yes, Beowulf. Four men died,” says Wiglaf, hearing the knife’s edge of indignation in his voice and wishing it were not there. “And still they lie where they fell, because you are too busy with your…your trophy.”

  Beowulf laughs again, and this time there’s something odd and brittle in that laugh, something Wiglaf has heard before in the laughter of madmen and warriors who have seen too much horror without the release of death.

  “As I said, Wiglaf. You sound like a worrisome old woman. I do not hear Hondshew or Már complaining,” and he uses the hammer to motion toward the corpses on the floor. “We will send them on their way soon enough. Odin Langbard shall not close the doors of his hall to them just yet, nor I have forfeited their seats at Allfather’s table.” And then Beowulf laughs that strange laugh again and goes back to hammering the spike deeper into the column.

  The laugh pricks at the hairs on the back on Wiglaf’s neck and arms, and he wonders if perhaps some darkness was released with Grendel’s blood, some spirit or nixie that may now have found purchase in Beowulf’s mind. Thick blood still leaks like pitch from the monster’s arm, and who can say what poison might lie therein? What taint? The blood flows downward, tracing its way along the grooves and lines carved into the wood. Wiglaf recognizes the scene depicted in the carving—Odin hanging from the boughs of the World Ash, Yggdrasil, pierced through by his own lance. Nine nights and nine days of pain, to win the wisdom of nine songs that would grant him power throughout the nine realms, and the gift of the eighteen runes and a swallow of the precious mead of the giants. The blood of Grendel winds its way slowly about the limbs of the tree and the shoulders of a god.

  “So be it. You have always known best,” he tells Beowulf, and Beowulf nods and strikes the nail again, causing the entire arm to shudder and spit another gout of that lifeless ichor.

  “You are tired, Wiglaf,” says Beowulf. “And maybe you are disappointed that you have not this night found your own hero’s death.

  “As you say,” Wiglaf replies and turns away from his lord’s awful trophy to look instead upon the mutilated corpses of his four fallen countrymen. Olaf and the others have laid each man out on his shield and covered him over with his cape. And, in truth, he feels no disappointment at all that he is still among the living, and if he is ever to find his path to Valhalla, it will have to be upon some other battlefield. He glances back at Beowulf, busy with his hammering and still laughing to himself, and sees that Grendel’s blood has reached all the way to the gnarled and twisted roots of Yggdrasil.

  In the last hour before sunrise the snow changed to rain, a steady, drenching rain to turn the thoroughfares and commons of Hrothgar’s stockade from thick and frozen muck to gray lakes and gray rivers divided one from another by stretches of even grayer mud. The water pours from off rooftops and gurgles through rainspouts, as though the sky has found some reason of its own to mourn this day. But Wiglaf and Beowulf and the other Geats built the funeral pyre before the rain began, stacking cords of cured pine soaked in pitch and drenched in whale oil, and the fire burns high and bright and hot despite the downpour. A white column of smoke rises up to meet the falling rain, and the wood crackles loudly, and the puddles hiss and steam where they meet the edges of the pyre. Beowulf and his ten remaining thanes, the survivors of their battle with Grendel, stand in the shadow of the blaze, the rain dripping from their woolen capes. A handful of curious villagers loiter farther out, watching as the flames consume the corpses of Hondshew and the others.

  “They were great warriors,” says Beowulf, and Wiglaf nods.

  “And they suffered a most foul death,” Wiglaf replies. His eyes have begun to tear, and he squints and pretends it’s only from the smoke or only rain that’s gotten into his eyes.

  Beowulf doesn’t look away from the pyre. “They have found the deaths that all brave men seek, and now they are einherjar. Together they have passed as heroes through Valgrind, welcomed by Bragi and the Valkyries. Today, they will ride the wide green plains of Ásgard, readying themselves for that tim
e when they will join the gods and do battle against the giants in Ragnarök. And this night, while we are yet cold and weary and wet, they will feast at Odin’s table in Valhalla, and on the morrow wake gladly to the call of the rooster Gullinkambi, then once more will they ride the fields of Idavoll. They will not die old men, sick and bedridden.”

  “Is that what you believe?” asks Wiglaf, glancing at his lord.

  “It is what I know, Wiglaf,” replies Beowulf. “I have heard no better story. Have you?”

  Wiglaf watches the fire. The funeral scaffold collapses in a flurry of red-hot embers, and whatever remains of the dead men tumbles into the heart of the pyre. “I have not,” he says.

  “Then mourn the living,” sighs Beowulf. “Mourn old men who cannot fight their own battles, not the glorious dead who have fallen victorious against so terrible a foe.” And Beowulf glances toward the open door of the horned hall, still stained with Grendel’s dark blood.

  “I’ve got their knives,” says Wiglaf, and he takes four daggers from his cloak. “We’ll carry them home…for their widows.”

  Beowulf clenches his teeth together, looking for words that aren’t there, remembering again the sound of the creature’s voice, that it asked him to spare it.

  “They will not be forgotten,” he tells Wiglaf, and takes him by the shoulder. “The scops will sing their glory forever. Come, before we catch our death. Let us drink to their memory. I want you to raise the first cup.”