Guthric ignores the slight and continues, giving voice to thoughts he has so long kept to himself. “He would have needed it to appear as though he had bested this demon hag at great personal loss. So, he loses the prize he won for killing Grendel. And your ancestral sword, I might add. He gives up a horn and gains a kingdom. It seems a fair enough trade to me.”

“The horn was his already,” insists Unferth, clutching tight to the golden horn, now that he has lost his stick. “I keep telling you that. Are you deaf as well as a fool?”

“Father, listen to me. We will do as you wish. We will take this thing to King Beowulf, but first I would like to show it to someone else.”

“Who?” asks Unferth, raising one bushy gray eyebrow suspiciously.

Guthric takes a deep breath of the freezing air and glances about at the crowd moving slowly toward the mead hall and the night’s coming celebration. There is a troupe of actors, mostly dwarves, and they’re carrying a grotesque contraption made of furs and bones and leather, and Guthric realizes it’s meant to be the monster Grendel. A puppet or costume the actors will use to reenact that glorious battle between Beowulf and the fiend.

“A seer,” says Guthric. “A wisewoman I have spoken with before.”

Unferth looks horrified, then begins to scrabble out of the wagon to retrieve his walking stick.

“A seer? A witch is what you mean!” he says. “Have you learned nothing from the teachings of our Christ Jesus, that you would traffic with witches and have me do likewise!”

“I wear your cross,” replies Guthric.

“It is not my cross, and it means nothing, if you do not believe in what it represents. You profane God, wearing the cross and meeting with witches.”

Guthric scowls and lets go of the reins. He grabs his father’s cloak, hauling him back into the sleigh. “She is not a witch,” he tells Unferth. “She is only an old woman—older even than you, Father—who knows many things.”

“Because she consorts with spirits and demons,” sneers Unferth, still without his staff. “Because she keeps counsel with evil beings who wish to deceive us all.”

“I only want to show her the horn,” says Unferth. “Then we will go to the king, as you wish.”

“This is madness,” hisses Unferth. “We are wasting time, and now you would have me seek out the company of a witch and let her look upon this treasure which should be seen by Beowulf and none other.” Unferth has begun excitedly waving the horn about, and several passersby have stopped to gawk at the old man.

“You seem to think everyone in Heorot deserves a good look,” says Guthric, and Unferth immediately hides the horn beneath his robes once more.

“There is not time for this madness,” Unferth says again, though he seems to have exhausted himself, and much of his anger and panic seem to have drained away.

“Father, the damned thing has been lost for thirty years. I suspect another few hours will make no difference, one way or the other.”

“You do not know,” sighs Unferth.

Guthric glances back at Cain again. “Retrieve your master’s staff,” he says. “It has fallen from the sleigh.” When Cain nods forlornly at the iron shackles about his ankles, Guthric merely snorts. “You cannot run, but you can walk well enough to do as I have asked. Now, Cain, do as I have said and get Father’s staff, or I swear that I shall beat you myself.”

“Yes, my lord,” mumbles Cain, managing to clamber down from the sleigh.

“I knew you were never a true convert,” says Unferth. “But I did not know that you consorted with sorcerers and witches.”

“I consort with those who can tell me what I need to know,” replies Guthric, and again he looks toward the troupe of dwarf actors and their hideous Grendel suit. Something to frighten children and old men, an offense to thinking men and nothing more. One of the dwarves has set the immense head down upon the snow and is busy with the straps that seem to work its fierce jaws, which appear to Guthric to be nothing more than an absurd composite of bear teeth and boar tusks. A child points at the head and runs back to its mother, sobbing. The dwarves laugh and roar at the child. One of them works the phony jaws up and down, up and down, chewing at the air.

Better be a good boy, Guthric. Better be good and say your prayers, or Grendel will come in the night and gobble you up! How many nights had he lain awake, fearing the sound of Grendel’s footsteps or a misshapen face leering in at the window of his bedchamber?

And all at once Guthric is seized with a desire to put an end to this pathetic charade, to draw his sword and hack away at the dwarves’ puppet until nothing remains but dust and string and tatters. Nothing that can frighten children or keep alive the falsehoods that put a foreigner upon the Danish throne.

“Cain!” he shouts. “What the bloody hell is taking you so long?” but when he turns back toward his father, he sees that Unferth is holding on to his oaken staff and that Cain has already climbed back into the sleigh.

“How can I persuade you not to do this?” asks Unferth, staring down at the stick in his wrinkled hands.

“You cannot, Father. Do not waste your breath trying. You shall see, it’s for the best. And then, when my questions have been answered, we will go to see King Beowulf in his horned hall.” Unferth gives the reins a hard tug and shake, and he guides the sleigh away from the main thoroughfare and down a narrow side street.

And so it is that the old man and his son find themselves standing outside a very small and cluttered hovel wedged in between the village wall and the muddy sprawl of a piggery. At first, Unferth refused to enter the rickety shack, fearing for both his immortal soul and the welfare of his mortal flesh. The whole structure seems hardly more than a deadfall in which someone has unwisely chosen to take up residence, a precarious jumble of timber and thatch that might well shift or simply collapse in upon itself at the slightest gust of wind. But Guthric was persistent, and the snow was coming down much too hard for Unferth to remain behind in the sleigh with Cain (covered now with a blanket and tied fast to his seat).

The crooked front door is carved with all manner of runes and symbols, some of which Unferth recognizes and some of which he doesn’t, and a wolf’s skull—also decorated with runes—has been nailed to the cornice. When Unferth knocks, the entire hovel shudders very slightly, and he takes a cautious step back toward the sleigh. But then the door swings open wide and they are greeted by a slender woman of indeterminate age, neither particularly old nor particularly young, dressed in a nappy patchwork of fur and a long leather skirt that appears to have been stained and smeared with every sort of filth imaginable. Her black hair, speckled with gray, is pulled in braids, and her eyes are a bright and startling shade of green that makes Unferth think of mossy rocks at the edge of the sea.

“Father,” says Guthric, “this is Sigga, the seer of whom I spoke. She was born in Iceland.”

“Iceland?” mutters Unferth, and he takes another step back toward the sleigh. “Then what the hell is she doing here?”

“I often ask myself the same thing,” says Sigga, fixing Unferth with her too-green eyes.

“Well, then tell me this, outlander,” growls Unferth. “Are you some heathen witch, or are you a Christian? Do you offer your body up to evil spirits in exchange for the secrets you sell?”

Hearing this, Sigga grunts, some unintelligible curse, and shakes her head.

“I’m sorry,” Guthric says, frowning at his father. “My father takes his conversion very seriously.”

“I keep to the old ways,” Sigga tells Unferth, standing straighter and her eyes seeming to flash more brightly still. “And what I do with my body is no concern of yours, old man. I know you, Unferth, Ecglaf’s son, though you do not now seem to remember me. I midwifed at the birth of your son, and I did my best to save his mother’s life.”