“No, I will speak no more of this,” Hrothgar says, and he turns and unlocks the door and steps back out into the mead hall, and Beowulf follows him. When Hrothgar reaches the feasting table on the dais, he takes a place behind Wealthow’s chair, and at the top of his voice, he addresses the hall.
“Listen!” he roars. “Listen to me, all of you! Because Lord Beowulf is a mighty hero. Because he killed the demon Grendel, and laid its mother in her grave. Because he lifted the curse from off this accursed, beleaguered land. And because I have no heir…”
Hrothgar pauses to take a breath, beads of sweat standing out on his forehead. The harpist has stopped playing, and the scop has stopped singing. Most of the hall has fallen silent and turned toward the dais. Beowulf glances at Wealthow, and she wears the mien of a frightened woman.
“Because…” continues Hrothgar, even louder than before. “Because all these things are true—and no one here among you may dare to say otherwise—I declare that on my death I leave all that I possess—my kingdom, my riches, my hall…and even my queen…It all goes to Beowulf.”
Unferth rises, confused, and he glances nervously from Beowulf to Hrothgar. “But,” he stammers, “my lord, surely you—”
“I have spoken!” bellows Hrothgar, and Unferth sits down again. “There will be no argument. When I am gone, Beowulf, son of Ecgtheow, shall be your king!”
And then, for the space occupied by no more than half a dozen heartbeats, a shocked silence lies heavy over the hall, a silence like storm clouds, but then it breaks apart and all those assembled under Heorot begin to cheer.
“My husband,” says Queen Wealthow, her voice almost lost in the throng’s hurrahs and hoorays, the cries of “Long live Hrothgar” and “All hail Beowulf,” the whistling and clapping of hands. “Are you sure you know what it is you’ve done?”
But the king of the horned hall does not reply, only winks knowingly at her as though they share some secret. And so she glances to Unferth, who sits, hands folded on the table before him, silent, his jaw set, his teeth clenched. She knows that in earlier times, before Grendel and the coming of the Geats, that Unferth, son of Ecglaf, had believed with good cause that he would one day wear the crown and rule the kingdom of the Ring-Danes. She, too, had believed he would be Hrothgar’s successor to the throne.
Hrothgar bends down and whispers in his lady’s ear. His voice is thin, like high mountain air or old paper.
“I have had my days in the sun,” he tells Wealthow. “I have had my nights with you, sweet queen, and taken my pleasures. Now, I would see another in my stead. And in my bed, as well. One who is truly worthy of these honors. One you may find both more suitable and less loathsome.”
Many of the people in the hall have begun to climb onto the dais, crowding in around Beowulf, offering their congratulations and generous tributes to his bravery and future reign. He smiles, but it’s an uneasy, uncertain smile, too filled up with the dizzying shock one feels when events turn too quickly, when dreams seem as real as waking thought. He glances to Wiglaf, but Wiglaf is staring deep into his mead cup, some peculiar sadness on his face, and he does not see Beowulf. And now the merewife’s promises come back to him again, and might not that have only been a dream? Her hands upon him, her lips so cold against his?
Love me, and I shall weave you riches beyond imagination. I shall make you the greatest king of men who has ever lived.
And now Hrothgar, son of Healfdene, grandson of Beow, turns to face him, and the old king bows, but only very slightly, and there is another deafening cheer from the hall. Then Hrothgar turns away and walks back toward the door leading to the anteroom behind the dais and then to the balcony beyond.
Queen Wealthow, feeling a sudden chill, a peculiar unease, turns to watch her husband as he takes his leave of the celebration. But she tells herself that whatever disquiet she feels is only a natural reaction to Hrothgar’s startling abdication and nothing more. She watches him pass through the fire-lit anteroom and out onto the balcony, and Wealthow tells herself he needs some time alone, and so she keeps her seat and does not follow him.
Out on the balcony, the north gale whips at the old man’s beard and at his robes, the breath of a giant to fuel high white waves. He faces the sea, and at his back lies his home and wife, all his lands, his kingdom and everything that he has ever done. All brave deeds and every act of cowardice, all his strengths and weaknesses, his victories and defeats. All he has loved and hated.
“Enough,” he says. “I will go no farther.” But the wind takes the words away and scatters them like ash. Hrothgar reaches up, removing the circlet from his head, that crown of hammered gold first worn by his great-grandfather, Shield Sheafson. He sets it safely in the lee of the low balustrade, so the wind will not carry it away.
“I will not see Ásgard,” he says. “It is not meant for the eyes of men like me,” and then Hrothgar steps over the balustrade and lets the abyss take him. Perhaps he hears Wealthow screaming and perhaps it is only the wind in his ears.
And in the instant before the fall has ended and he strikes the rocks, Hrothgar glimpses with watering eyes something slithering about beneath the fast-approaching waves, something plated round with glittering scales, a gilded woman with the sinuous tail of an eel, the unmistakable form of the merewife.
And only seconds later, Wealthow stands at the edge of the balcony, staring down at his body shattered there on the sea-licked granite boulders far below. By the time Beowulf reaches her side, by the time Unferth and Wiglaf and others from the hall have seen for themselves that Hrothgar is gone, she’s stopped screaming. She has stuffed the knuckles of one fist into her mouth and is biting down on them to choke the sound in her throat.
And then all the sea appears to draw back, gathering itself into a towering, whitecapped surge, a wave high enough to reach the fallen king’s body. It rushes forward, a crashing, frothing shroud for a broken corpse, and when it retreats, it takes Hrothgar away with it, and he passes forever from the eyes of man. Then the waves are only waves again, and the wind is only wind.
Wealthow takes her hand from her mouth. There’s blood on her knuckles, tiny wounds born of her own teeth. The wind is freezing her tears upon her cheeks. “He must have fallen,” she says, knowing it’s a lie. “He was drunk, and he must have fallen.”
Unferth has put one arm protectively about her shoulders, as though he fears she will follow her husband over the ledge. But now he sees the circlet lying where Hrothgar set it, and he releases her and stoops to pick it up. It seems unnaturally heavy in his hands, this dull ring of gold that might have been his, that he might have worn had Grendel’s assault upon Heorot never begun. If he had been the man who slew the monster and its mother. But it is so very heavy, heavier than it has any right to be. Unferth turns to Beowulf and Wiglaf and the thanes who have shoved their way through the anteroom and out onto the balcony. They are all watching him, wide-eyed and silent. Unferth holds the crown up so all can see, and he looks Beowulf in the eye.
“All hail,” he says, and swallows, the words sticking like dust in his throat. “All hail King Beowulf!”
And he places the golden circlet on Beowulf’s head, glad to be rid of the crown. In years to come, he will recall the way it felt in his fingers, the weight of it, the peculiar sense that it was somehow unclean. For a time there is only the howling of the winter wind, the waves battering themselves against the rocky shore. But then Wealthow turns and looks upon her new king.