“The gods,” scoffs Wealthow.
“Or even your ghostly Jesus,” adds Beowulf. “Even he would have climbed down off his Roman cross for the love of such beauty.”
“That is heathen blasphemy,” Wealthow mutters.
Beowulf tries to laugh, but it’s a dry and humorless sound. “Aye,” he says. “For I am still a heathen king, and so I have not yet learned proper Christian blasphemy.”
“It is not too late. You do not have to go to meet this fiend as an unbeliever and unbaptized. The priest—”
“—will get none of me,” cuts in Beowulf. “Oh no, not that Irish sheepfucker. It is enough, I should think, that he has duped the better part of my kingdom with his talk of sin and salvation and heavenly life eternal. No, I will keep the gods of my father and his fathers before him. If there is any life awaiting me beyond this one, then I will be content to take my seat in Odin’s hall, should I earn that honor. Else I will find myself with Loki’s daughter in her foul hall on the banks of the Gjöll.”
“You still believe these things?” asks Wealthow.
“In more than sixty years, I have heard nothing better. Certainly not the ravings of your dear sheepfucking Irish priest.”
Wealthow takes a deep, resigned breath.
Beowulf swallows and scratches at his beard. “My lady, I do not wish to leave you with anger and bitter words,” he says. “I would have you know, Wealthow, that I am sorry, that I do regret the suffering I have visited upon you and my people. I was a fool.”
“You were a young fool,” she tells him, still trying to sound angry, but her voice has softened, losing its keen self-righteous edge.
“Now I am a sorry old fool,” Beowulf says. Then he pauses, lost for a moment in those eyes, lost in the memories of this strong woman who was herself only a girl when first he came to Heorot. “You should know, I have always loved you, my queen.”
“And I have always loved you,” she whispers, and smiles a sad and weary smile, then looks away so that he will not see the tears brimming in her eyes.
“She is only a child,” Beowulf says. “Do not be unkind to her when I am gone.”
“She is much more than a child,” Wealthow replies. “You should have recognized that by now. But do not worry yourself, husband. I mean her no harm. She knows that. She will always have a place here, if she so wishes it.”
“That is very gracious of you.”
Wealthow shrugs, then glances back to her king.
“I will miss you,” she says. “May you find whatever it is you seek.”
Beowulf smiles, wishing that he might know one last night with the woman he took as his wife and queen so many long years ago, that he might hold her and know the peace he once knew in the sanctuary of her arms.
“Keep a memory of me,” he says. “Not as a king and a hero, not as a demon slayer, but only as a man, fallible and flawed as any man. That is how I would be remembered.” And then the King of Heorot kisses his wife for what he knows will be the final time, and she does not flinch and does not pull away.
19
Dark Harrower and Hoard-Guard
In truth, Beowulf is glad for Wiglaf’s company. The king had ordered his herald and oldest friend, Weohstan’s son, to remain behind with those warriors charged with defending the keep and what little remained of the village, the thanes commanded to protect the lives of those who survived the dragon’s night raid. But Wiglaf protested, saying that the king should not ride out across the moorlands alone, and that one old man more or less would make little difference if Beowulf should fail and the fyrweorm return to Heorot. Better I ride at your side, Wiglaf said, and in the end Beowulf had relented. It is a grim prospect, to face death, but grimmer by far is the prospect of facing it in the wilderness alone. By the time the Geats rode out, the fires that had engulfed the village had mostly burned themselves out, leaving behind little to show that only the day before had stood a living, breathing town of men.
And now, looking once more out across the oily tarn, the peat-stained waters of Weormgræf, Beowulf is thankful he did not come here alone. In three decades, the place has changed in no way that he can detect. The poisoned surface of the lake still dances with that same unclean iridescent sheen. The grass still grows thick and brown around its boggy shores, and at this spot where the mist-bound land rises up into a steep bank crowned with three mighty oaks, the steaming lake still flows down beneath the earth, gurgling softly as it passes between the knotty roots of the three oaks. The air stinks of rotting vegetation and fungi, mud and peat and dead fish.
But this time, Beowulf and Wiglaf did not cross the ancient forest beyond the moorlands and then the wide and treacherous marches, picking their way on foot. There is another route, one not known in those faraway days when Grendel and its dam terrified the men and women of the horned hall. And so the two men have come on horseback, wandering bleak and rocky paths down to the lake and the three trees and the cave leading deep below ground. But as they near the trees and the water’s edge, their mounts whinny piteously and stamp their hooves against the gravelly soil and shy away from the Weormgræf.
“You cannot blame them,” Wiglaf says, then he leans forward and whispers something comforting into his horse’s right ear.
“This is the place,” says Beowulf, tugging hard at the reins of his own mount, pressing his heels lightly into the frightened horse’s ribs. “Long years has it haunted my dreams, Wiglaf. In nightmares, I’ve come here a thousand times. But never once did I suspect I’d have need to visit it again awake.”
Wiglaf pats the horse’s neck, then sits up straight in his saddle and stares out across the tarn. “It hasn’t changed,” he says. “It’s the same sorry piss hole it was the day you killed Grendel’s mother, a blighted waste fit only for demons and their kin.”
“But I have changed. I am no longer a boastful young man,” Beowulf mutters, half to himself. “Once, I might have called this night-ravager out to face me in the open. I might have faced it as I faced Grendel, naked and without any weapon but my own strength.”
Wiglaf turns his head and looks to Beowulf, who is staring at the three trees and the entrance to the cavern. His eyes are distant, and to Wiglaf he seems lost in unpleasant thoughts. For a while, there are only the sounds of the skittish horses, the wind, and a noisy flock of ravens watching from the oaks. When the King of the Ring-Danes speaks again, his voice seems to Wiglaf to have grown heavy as the cold air, as though every word is an effort.
“There is something I must say, my Wiglaf.”
“Yes, my lord?”
Beowulf takes a bracing, deep breath and exhales fog. Some part of him had wished that they would reach this place and find that the grasping, probing roots of the trees had long ago sealed the entryway, that the ground itself had collapsed, closing off the path leading down to those haunted subterranean pools.
“I have no heir,” he says. If I should be slain by this creature…” and he pauses and takes another deep breath. “…if I should die this day,” Beowulf continues, “then you shall be king, Wiglaf. I have arranged it with the heralds. They have been given my instructions.”
Wiglaf turns away, looking back out across the tarn. “Don’t speak of such things, my lord,” he tells Beowulf.
Beowulf sighs loudly and stares at the grim opening waiting for him there between the oaken roots. A sorrow has come over him, and he has never been a man at ease with sadness. He is holding the golden drinking horn, Hrothgar’s horn returned to Heorot by Unferth’s slave.