“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.”

And now a cheer rises from those few of Hrothgar’s thanes there in the hall who have survived the attacks, and also from the women who have come to clean away the blood.

“Son of Healfdene,” continues Beowulf, raising his voice to be heard, “Lord of the Scyldings, I pledge that you may now sleep safe with your warriors here beneath the roof of Heorot Hall. There is no more need of fear, no more threat of harm to you or your people. It is over.”

“I see,” says Hrothgar, speaking hardly above a whisper. “Yes, I can see this.” But to Beowulf, the king seems lost in some secret inner turmoil, and the happiness on the old man’s face appears little more than a poorly constructed mask. There is a madness in his eyes, and Beowulf looks to Queen Wealthow, but she has turned away.

“For fifty years,” says Hrothgar, “did I rule this country, the Ring-Danes’ land. I have defended it in time of war…and I have fought with the sword and with ax and spear against many invading tribes. Indeed…I had come to believe that all my foes were vanquished. But then Grendel struck…and I believed at last there had come among us an enemy that no man would ever defeat.” And Hrothgar leans forward in his seat and raises his voice.

“I despaired…and my heart…my savaged heart abandoned all hope. And now I praise Odin Allfather that I have lived to see this head, torn from off that hateful demon and dripping gore…and to hear that his foul dam has been slain as well.” And then he turns to Unferth. “Take it from my sight, Unferth! Nail it up high, that all will see—”

“No,” says Wealthow, turning to face her husband once more. “No, not again. Once already has this hall been profaned by such a hideous trophy, and I will not see it done again.”

“Wealthow, my love—” Hrothgar begins, but she cuts him off a second time.

“No. I will not invite some new horror into our midst by flaunting Lord Beowulf’s victory over the fiends. No one among us can say that there may not yet be others, watching and waiting their turn, and we will not provoke them. I will not have it, husband.”

Hrothgar frowns and furrows his brow, running his fingers through his gray beard. He stares deep into the dead eyes of Grendel, as if seeking there some hindmost spark of life, some ghost that might yet linger, undetected by the others. But then the king takes a deep breath and nods, conceding to the will of his queen.

“So be it.” He sighs and leans back on his throne. “Take it away…hurl it into the sea. Let us be done with it. Never let us look upon that face again.”

Unferth nods to two of his thanes, and soon the severed head has been speared on long pikes and carried off to a balcony. Another cheer rises from the hall when the head of Grendel is flung over the railing to tumble and bounce down the cliff face and at last be swallowed by the sea.

And the next evening, though the blood of those slain by Grendel’s dam has not yet been washed completely from the walls and floors and roof beams of Heorot Hall—and likely it never shall be—the feasting begins. The world has been rid of monsters, and finally the horned hall can serve the purpose for which it was built. Finally, the men of Hrothgar’s land can feast and drink there and forget the hardships and dangers of the hard world beyond those walls. And the feast honors Beowulf, son of Ecgtheow, and Wiglaf and the thirteen Geats who have died that this might be so. A long table has been carried onto the throne dais, and there the two men who braved the marches to slay the merewife and return with the head of Grendel sit in a place of distinction. The hall is alive with the boisterous din of merrymaking, with laughter and bawdy jokes and drunken curses, with song and the harpestry, with carefree, blissful celebration untainted by dread or trepidation. The cooking fire sends smoke and delicious smells up the chimney and out into the cold night. The fattest hog that could be found is hefted onto the king’s table, its skin steaming and crisp.

Unferth is seated on Beowulf’s left, and he leans close, summoning the confidence to ask a question that has been on his mind since the Geat’s return from the wilderness, for the mead has given him courage.

“Beowulf, mighty monster-killer. There is something I must ask. Hrunting, my father’s sword, did it help you to destroy the hag?”

Beowulf lifts his mead cup, surprised only the question did not come sooner. “It…it did,” he replies, faltering but a little as he shapes the story he will tell Unferth. “Indeed, I believe the demon hag would not be dead without it.”

Unferth looks pleased, so Beowulf takes up the knife from his plate and continues.

“I plunged Hrunting into the chest of Grendel’s mother,” and he demonstrates by sticking his knife deeply into the ribs of the roast pig. “When I drew it free from her corpse”—and here he pulls the knife from the pig—“the creature sprang back to life…so I plunged it once more into the she-troll’s chest…” Again Beowulf stabs the roast pig. “And there it will stay, friend Unferth, even until Ragnarök.”

“Until Ragnarök,” whispers Unferth, a note of awe in his voice, and he nods his head, then takes Beowulf’s hand and kisses it. “Our people shall be grateful until the end of time,” he says.

Beowulf finishes off the mead in his cup; Unferth’s gratitude at his easy, convincing lie has provoked a sudden and unexpected pang of guilt, an emotion with which Beowulf is more or less unfamiliar.