Beowulf

by Caitlin R. Kiernan

  17

  Fire in the Night

  Sleeping safe beside King Beowulf, Ursula is dreaming of the very first time she laid eyes on Heorot. She was still only a child when her family gave up their farm on the hinterlands. Her brother had been taken by wolves one summer, and thereafter her mother’s mind became unhinged. She would wander alone at night across the moorlands, risking her own life, and nothing her husband could do or say would persuade her that the dead boy would never be found. So they came to Heorot, where Ursula’s father found work in the stables and, in time, her mother accepted the loss of her son. In the shadow of the keep towers, behind walls no wolf could breach, Ursula grew to be a woman.

  In the dream, she is standing in the back of her father’s rickety wagon as it bumps and shudders along the rocky road leading to the village gates. She beholds the world with a child’s eyes, and though she has heard tales of Heorot and the mead hall of mighty King Beowulf, she did not imagine anything half so grand as this. Surely even the gods and goddesses in Ásgard must envy such a magnificent edifice, and, as the keep looms nearer, it seems as though she is slipping out of the world she has always known and into the sagas and bedtime stories her mother has told her.

  “Papa, are there trolls here?” she asked.

  “No trolls,” he replied. “There was one, long time ago, when I was still a young man. But it met its end in the coming of King Beowulf from Geatland.”

  “Are there witches?”

  “No witches, either,” said her father. “There was one, an evil hag from the bogs, but she, too, was slain by good King Beowulf.”

  “What about dragons, Papa? Are there dragons here?”

  And upon hearing this third question, her father shrugs and glances up at the leaden sky. “I am only a farmer,” he tells her. “What would I know of dragons? But I wouldn’t worry, child. Hrothgar, who was king before Beowulf, he slew the last dragon in these lands before I was born, or so my own father always said.”

  And then she turns to her mother. In the dream, her mother’s eyes are bleeding, and there are black tufts of feathers sprouting from her arms.

  “What about the wolves, Mama?” she asks.

  “No wolves,” replies her mother. “Not here, for the walls are too high, and the warriors kill any wolves that come too near.”

  “What if the wolves grew wings?” Ursula asks her mother, who scowls and grinds her teeth.

  “Wolves cannot grow wings,” her mother answers. “Don’t be such a silly child.”

  “They might dig tunnels deep below the ground,” Ursula suggests. “The dwarves might help them dig tunnels under the walls of Heorot.”

  “The dwarves are no friends to the wolves,” her mother says. “Do not forget how they forged the chain Gleipnir, thin as a blade of grass, yet stronger than any iron. And the wolves could never do such a thing all on their own.” And then her mother coughs out a mouthful of black feathers and blood.

  “What if the wolves came by sea?” asks Ursula. “What if the wolves built ships and learned how to sail the whale’s-road?”

  “The cliffs are too steep,” her mother says, spitting more feathers. “And Lord Beowulf’s archers are always watchful of the sea for invaders and wolves in boats.”

  “You worry about dragons,” says her father, giving the reins a sudden tug. “Worry about trolls and witches, girl, but say no more this day of wolves.”

  “Then may I worry about bears?” she asks her father.

  “You are a bear,” he says. “You are Ursula, our little bear, and bears should not fear their own.”

  “I am a bear,” she says very softly, speaking only to herself, and her mother, who has become a raven, caws and flies away toward the sea. Her black wings seem to slice the edges of the sky, so that soon it has begun to rain. Not drops of water, though, but drops of blood that spatter on the fields and road. Her father tells her not to worry, that her mother will be better soon.

  But then the dream has changed, as dreams are wont to do, and Ursula is grown and wandering the moorlands alone, just as her mother did years before, searching in vain for a stolen boy. The sky above her has been torn asunder, ripped to hang in blue-gray strips, and she knows that the time of Ragnarök must at last be upon Midgard. The monster wolf Fenrisulfr has at last grown so large that when he opens his mouth, his snout brushes the stars aside and his chin drags upon the earth. He has broken free of the dwarves’ chain and escaped his island prison of Lyngvi, and soon will the son of Loki devour Odin Allfather, before it is cut down by Odin’s son, the silent god Vi?ar. Ursula wants to look away, wants to turn and run back to the keep, but she cannot take her eyes from the sight of the Fenrisulfr, filling up all the tattered sky. His teeth are as mountains and his shaggy silhouette blocks out even the light of the sun. His jaws drip steaming rivers to scorch the world.

  “I don’t want to see the end,” whispers Ursula, wishing now that the wolves had also taken her when they took her brother, that she would not have to live to see the Twilight of the Gods and Loki’s children set free to bring about the end of all things. The ground shakes beneath her feet, and everywhere she looks, the heather and bracken writhes with serpents and worms and maggots.

  “It is only a golden drinking horn,” Beowulf tells her, but he sounds frightened, and never before has Ursula heard fear in his voice. “Something I lost. That is all.”

  “My father,” she says, “told me that Hrothgar took it as a trophy when he defeated the dragon Fafnir.”

  “That may be so,” Beowulf sighs. “I could not say.”

  All around her, there is the terrible rending and splintering of the brittle spine of the world, wracked by the thunderous footsteps of Fenrisulfr as he marches past Heorot to keep his appointment with Vi?ar. The two towers of Beowulf’s keep crumble and fall into the sea, and the sky has begun to rain liquid fire.

  “It is very beautiful,” Ursula says, admiring the golden horn in Beowulf’s hands.

  “The gods always knew that chain would never hold the beast,” her father mutters as the gates of the village come into view. “The beard of a woman, a mountain’s roots, a fish’s breath…such a waste.”

  “It means nothing to me,” says Beowulf.

  “It was your prize for killing Grendel,” Ursula replies. “It was your reward.”

  “My reward,” Beowulf whispers. “No, my reward was to die an old man and never ride the fields of Idavoll with the glorious dead. My reward was a frigid, Christ-worshipping wife and a pile of stones beside the sea.”

  Fenrisulfr turns and stares down at her, and his eyes are gaping caverns filled up with fire and thick, billowing smoke. He sees her and flares his nostrils.

  “Father,” she says. “Look. He is eating the sky alive.”

  “No wolves,” he replies. “Worry about your dragons, little bear. Or you’ll end up like your poor mother.”

  And she stares up into the furnace eyes of Fenrisulfr, seeing how little difference there is between a wolf and a dragon, on this last day, that they may as well be one and the same. A dragon devoured her brother, and King Hrothgar raided a wolf’s golden hoard.

  King Beowulf places a dagger to the soft spot beneath his chin, but she feels the blade pressing against her own throat. And then the dream breaks apart in the instant before Ursula can scream, the final instant before she dreams her death and her king’s suicide, before Fenrisulfr swallows her and all of Heorot with her.

  She lies naked and sweating and breathless beside Beowulf, and when she looks at him, he’s clutching the golden horn to his chest, muttering in his sleep, lost somewhere in the labyrinth of his own secret nightmares. She watches his restless sleep and slowly remembers what is real and what is not. When she is finally certain that she is awake, Ursula rises from the bed and pulls on her furs and fleece-lined boots and very quietly leaves the king’s bedchamber.

  A spiral stairway leads up to the causeway connecting the two towers of the keep, and Ursula hugs herself against
the chill air and climbs the granite steps. After the dream, she needs to see the sky and the sea and the moonlight falling silver on rooftops and the land beyond the village walls. She reaches the landing, a short hallway leading out to the causeway, and the air here is even colder than it was in the stairwell, and Ursula wishes she were wearing something beneath her furs.

  She passes a tapestry, very old and neglected, torn in places and in need of mending. But even in the dim hallway, she can recognize the scene depicted there, Beowulf tearing the monster Grendel’s arm from its shoulder. She keeps walking, and soon she has reached the place where the hall opens out onto the causeway and the winter night. She takes one step out into the moonlight, then she stops. Queen Wealthow is standing on the bridge, only a dozen or so yards away, clothed in her own fur cloak. She does not turn toward Ursula, but stares up at the twinkling stars.

  “Another restless night?” she asks Ursula.

  Terrified, Ursula can only manage to nod, and then the queen turns toward her. In the darkness, Ursula cannot be certain of Wealthow’s expression, but there is no anger in her voice.

  “It’s all right, girl,” the queen says. “I’m not an ogre. I’m not going to eat you.”

  Ursula takes a few hesitant steps nearer Queen Wealthow. In the light of the moon and stars, the queen’s hair seems to glow like spun silver.

  “He has bad dreams,” says Ursula. “They’ve been coming more often, and tonight they are very bad.”

  Wealthow sighs and her breath steams.

  “He is a king,” she says. “Kings have a lot on their conscience. They do not have easy dreams.”

  Neither do I, thinks Ursula, wondering what sort of dreams queens have, what private demons might have brought Wealthow out into the night. Ursula glances at Wealthow, at the stars spread out overhead, then down at the stones beneath her feet. She wishes she could turn and flee back into the tower, back down to Beowulf’s bed. The air smells like salt, and she can hear the waves against the rocks.

  “Sometimes,” she says, “he calls your name in his sleep, my Lady.”

  “Does he?” asks Queen Wealthow, sounding distant and unimpressed.

  “Yes, my Lady,” replies Ursula, trying not to stammer. “I believe he still holds you in his heart.”

  Wealthow cocks one eyebrow and stares skeptically at her husband’s mistress. “Do you indeed?” she asks. Ursula catches the bitter note of condescension, and for a moment neither of them says anything else. The silence lies like ice between them, like the empty spaces between the stars, until Ursula finds her voice.

  “I often wonder. What happened…”

  “…to us?” asks Wealthow, finishing the question.

  Ursula only nods, wishing she could take back the question, dreading the answer.

  Wealthow watches her a second or two, then turns back to the stars. “Too many secrets,” she says.

  And then, from somewhere across the moorlands, there is a low rumble, and at first Ursula thinks that it is only thunder, though there is not a single wisp of cloud anywhere in the sky.

  “Did you hear—” she begins, but Wealthow raises a hand, silencing her. And only a heartbeat later, the southern sky is lit by a brilliant flash, a hundred times brighter than the brightest flash of lightning, brighter than the sun at midsummer noon. Ursula squints and blinks, her eyes beginning to smart and water.

  It’s only the dream, she thinks. I’m still asleep, and this is only the dream, for after the white flash, a brilliant yellow-red-orange stream of flame erupts and rains down upon the homesteads beyond the gates of Heorot. The fire pours across the landscape like a flood, and the causeway rumbles and sways.

  “God help us,” says Wealthow, and then she takes Ursula roughly by the arm and leads her back into the tower.

  18

  Scorched Earth

  In his dreams, Beowulf has watched the fire fall, the sizzling gouts spewed forth from fanged jaws and splashing across the roofs and winter-brown moors. Everything become only tinder for the dragon’s breath, everything only fuel for the greedy flames. Sleeping, he has been shown the burning of homes and fields and livestock, has seen the outermost walls of the village seared and still the fire came surging forward, coming on like the tide, enveloping and devouring everything it touched. She has shown him everything, so much more than Beowulf could have possibly seen with waking eyes. He has seen the night split wide by this holocaust, and he has looked deep into the eyes of Death.

  In the courtyard below the two grand towers of Heorot, King Beowulf stands and watches the stream of refugees fleeing the smoldering wreckage of the village, believing there may yet be some sanctuary to be found within the castle keep. But she has shown him everything, and he knows there will be no place to hide when next the sky begins to burn. The lucky ones have died in the night. Beyond the walls of the keep, an immense gray-black column of smoke and ash rises high into the sky to meet the winter clouds.

  “By the gods,” whispers Wiglaf. “I have seen war, and I have seen murder and atrocities, but never have I seen such a thing as this.”

  Beowulf does not answer, and he would shut his eyes if he thought it would drive these desperate, hurting faces from his mind. The freezing air reeks of smoke and brimstone and cooked flesh, and what snow still lies within the courtyard has been sullied with a thick covering of sticky black soot.

  “I have even seen the work of demons,” says Wiglaf, “but this…”

  “How many?” asks Beowulf, his mouth gone almost too dry to speak. “How many are dead?”

  “I cannot say,” replies Wiglaf, shaking his head. “I have been all the way to the village gates and back, but…I just don’t know, my lord. Too many.”

  The procession of the burned and bleeding, the broken and maimed, files slowly past, and most are silent, struck dumb by their pain or grief or the horrors they have witnessed. Others cry out, giving voice to their losses or injuries or dismay, and still others pause to look up into the face of their king. Faces slick with blood and fever and seeping blisters, faces filled with questions he does not know how to answer. Those who can yet walk stagger or shuffle or stumble along, but many more are carried into the keep by thanes or by the strongest of the survivors.

  “It came out of the night sky,” a wide-eyed woman says. There’s a baby clutched tight in her arms, and Beowulf can plainly see the child is dead. “Our houses and farms, it burnt everything.”

  He knows no words to comfort her. He has no words to comfort any of them. Wealthow is nearby, moving among the wounded, handing out wool blankets. The red-robed priest is with her, but he seems lost, and his lips mouth a prayer that seems to have no end. Beowulf wonders what consolation Christ Jesus and the god of the Romans has to offer, what salvation they might bring to bear against this wanton terror and destruction.

  As much as any god watching on from Ásgard, he thinks. Little, or none at all.

  Then Wiglaf takes hold of his shoulder and is saying something, simple words that Beowulf should understand but can’t quite wring the meaning from. And then he sees for himself and so does not need to be told—old Unferth in the arms of one of his guards, Unferth scorched and steaming in the cold morning air, his charred robes almost indistinguishable from his flesh. His beard and almost all his hair have been singed away, and there is only a crimson welt where his left eye used to be. The wooden cross still hangs about his neck, gone as black as the scalded, swollen hand that clings to it.

  “My son,” murmurs Unferth, and so Beowulf knows that he is alive. “His wife and my grandchildren. All of them dead. All of them burned in the night. But not me, Beowulf. Not me.”

  “You saw what did this?” Beowulf asks him, and Unferth grimaces, exposing the jagged stubs of teeth reduced almost to charcoal.

  “The dragon,” replies Unferth. “I saw…the dragon. Your dragon, my lord.”

  Beowulf glances up at Unferth’s guard. There’s a wide gash on the man’s forehead, and his face is bloodied, but
he seems otherwise unharmed. “Did you see it, as well?” Beowulf asks the guard.

  “I cannot say what I saw,” the guard replies. “But they are all dead, my sire, just as my Lord Unferth has said. I do not know how we alone escaped.”

  “My son,” Unferth says again, then he coughs and there’s a sickening rattle in his chest. “Because that wretch Cain found the golden horn, yes? You had an…agreement with her. But now…now, you have the horn again, don’t you? Now…the pact is broken.”

  “He is delirious,” says the guard, and Beowulf sees that the man is weeping now. “His reason is overthrown. I can make no sense of the things he says.”

  “You have the damned horn,” snarls Unferth and a fat blister at one corner of his mouth bursts and oozes down his chin. “So the agreement is now ended…and my son…my son is dead.”

  “What agreement?” asks Wiglaf. “Unferth, who said these things?”

  Unferth’s remaining eye swings about wildly for a moment, then comes to rest on Wiglaf. “You must know…surely you know, good Wiglaf. Or has the King kept his secrets from you…all these years.”

  “He is delirious,” the guard says again. “He does not know what he’s saying. Lord Unferth is dying, my king, and I should find the priest.”

  “Sin,” sneers Unferth, and now that one eye, cloudy and bloodshot, glistening with pain, comes to rest on Beowulf. “Sins of the fathers. That’s the last thing I heard…before my family was burned alive, the very last thing I heard…before their screams. The sins, Beowulf. The sins of the fathers.”

  “Who said this?” Beowulf asks. “Tell me, Unferth. Who said these things?”

  “He did,” Unferth whispers, his voice shrunken now to hardly the faintest whisper, and Beowulf has to lean close to hear. “The pretty man with golden wings. He said it. You have a fine son, my king.” And then Unferth closes that mad and rolling eye, and Wiglaf points the guard toward the priest, still standing with Queen Wealthow and still muttering his futile pleas and supplications. When the guard has carried Unferth away, Wiglaf runs his fingers through his hair and takes a deep breath.