Better to tell them what they need to hear, he thinks, then catches Wiglaf watching him from across the table. And now Queen Wealthow is refilling his cup, and he smiles for her. She is seated at his right, and pours from a large wooden jug carved to resemble a boar.

“I thought you might need some more drink,” she says.

“Aye,” replies Beowulf. “Always.”

“And the golden drinking horn. Do you still have it?”

So now there’s need of another lie, but this time he has it at the ready and doesn’t miss a beat.

“No,” he tells her. “I knew the greedy witch desired it, so I threw the horn into the bog, and she followed after it. And that’s where I struck…” Unferth is still watching him, and Beowulf nods in his direction. “…with the mighty sword Hrunting,” he adds, then takes a deep breath. “Once she was dead, I searched for it, but it was gone forever.”

There is a faint glint of uncertainty in the queen’s violet eyes, and Beowulf sees that she is perhaps not so eager to believe as Unferth, that she might have ideas of her own about what happened at the tarn. But then Hrothgar is on his feet, coming suddenly up behind Beowulf and snatching away his plain cup, dashing its contents to the floor. He seizes Beowulf by the arm.

“Then, my good wife,” bellows Hrothgar, “find our hero another cup, one befitting so great a man. Meanwhile, the hero and I must talk.”

Hrothgar, already drunken and slurring his speech, guides Beowulf away from the table and into the anteroom behind the dais. He shuts the door behind him and locks it, then drains his cup and wipes his lips on his sleeve.

“Tell me,” he begins, then pauses to belch. He wipes at his mouth again and continues. “You brought back the head of Grendel. But what about the head of the mother?”

Beowulf scowls and plays at looking confused. “With her dead and cold, lying at the bottom on the tarn. Is it not enough to return with one monster’s head?”

Hrothgar stares discontentedly into his empty mead cup, then tosses it aside. It bounces across the floor and rolls to a stop against the double doors leading out to the balcony overlooking the sea.

“Did you kill her?” he asks Beowulf. “And speak true, for I will know if you lie.”

“My lord, would you like to hear the story again, how I struggled with that monstrous hag—”

“She is no hag, Beowulf. A demon, yes, yes, to be sure, but not a hag. We both know that. Now, answer me, damn you! Did you kill her?”

And Beowulf takes a step back, wishing he were anywhere but this small room, facing anyone but the King of the Danes.

I know that underneath your glamour you’re as much a monster as my son Grendel, the merewife purred.

One needs a glamour to become a king…

“I would have an answer now,” says Hrothgar.

“Would I have been allowed to escape her had I not?” asks Beowulf, answering with a question, and he suspects that Hrothgar knows the answer—the true answer. The old man backs away, hugging himself now and shuddering. Hrothgar wrings his hands and glances at Beowulf.

“Grendel is dead, and with my own eyes have I seen the proof,” he says, and shudders again. “Not even that fiend could live on without his head. Yes, Grendel is dead. That’s all that matters to me. Grendel will trouble me no more. The hag, she is not my curse. Not anymore.”

To Beowulf, these are the words of a man fighting to convince himself of something he knows to be otherwise. They stare at each other in silence for a long moment, then Hrothgar takes the golden circlet from off his head and frowns down at it.

“They think this band of gold is all there is to being king. They think because I wear this, I am somehow wiser than they. Braver. Better. Is that what you believe?” he asks Beowulf.

“I could not say, my lord.”

“One day,” says Hrothgar, placing the crown once more on his head, “one day you will, I think. One day, you will understand the price—the terrible price—to be paid for her favors, and for the throne. You will know how a puppet feels, dangling on its strings…” Then he trails off and chews at his lower lip.

“My Lord Hrothgar—” Beowulf begins, but the king raises a hand to silence him. There’s a mad gleam shining in the old man’s eyes, and it frightens Beowulf more than the sight of any terror that might yet lurk in bogs or over foggy moors.

“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?