Beowulf (3 page)

B
EOWULF
remembered the stern yet kindly features on the very farmost fringes of his memory. But Hrothgar was old now, the lines on his face were bitten deep as sword-cuts by years of grief, and the beard that jutted over the broad goldwork collar at his throat was grey as a badger's pelt.

‘So it is true,' the old man said broodingly, after a long silence. ‘I scarce believed . . . But there is that in your face that I should know again if you stood among a hundred warriors; aye, though you stood no higher at the shoulder, when last I saw you, than Garm my favourite hound. My heart leapt up within me when Wulfnoth my door-thane brought word that Beowulf, sister's-son to the Geatish King, sat waiting on my guest-bench to have speech with me—and most joyfully are you welcome, you and your comrades with you. But tell me what brings you here to my threshold as your father came. Have you too slain a man of the Wylfings?'

Beowulf shook his head, answering the sad flash of a smile that lit for an instant the old man's face. ‘Na, na, my lord Hrothgar. Seafaring men brought to Geatland word of the evil that has fallen upon the Danish King and his folk; and so we come, I and my sword-brothers, to offer our service and our strength against the thing that walks Heorot in the dark. Men say that I have the strength of thirty warriors in my grip.' He raised his arms as he spoke, and held them out to the old King in a gesture that was half proud and half pleading. ‘And it is yours, for my father's sake. Give to me and my comrades leave to sleep in your hall tonight.'

Hrothgar bent his face into his hands, then he raised it again, and looked long and earnestly at Beowulf who stood tall as a spear in his grey war-gear before him. ‘So you have come for friendship's sake,' he said at last, ‘for the sake of the bond that was between Ecgtheow your father and myself when the world was young. Yet think before it is too late; think of the hideous end that has come to every man who has stood in this place to pit his strength and courage against the Death-Shadow-in-the-Dark. Grendel's strength cannot be measured even against the strength of thirty men, for it is beyond the measuring of mortal strength. They also were young and strong, those other champions who have stood here before you, but youth and strength did not avail them. In the name of the old friendship that brought you here I bid you think, and be very sure, before the time for thinking is past.'

‘We have thought, all of us, and we are content to abide whatever the night may bring,' Beowulf said. ‘The outcome must be as Wyrd who weaves the fates of men may choose.'

The light of great hope kindled slowly in the King's face, and he straightened himself in the high carved seat. ‘So be it, then: I accept the aid that you bring me, Beowulf, son of Ecgtheow. Sleep in my hall tonight, but meanwhile do you and those who come with you feast with high hearts among my thanes.'

At this, a clamour of voices, fiercely joyful, arose from the warriors who had held their listening silence while Beowulf and the King spoke together; and room and welcome were made for the strangers on the crowded benches. Beowulf found himself sitting between Hrothgar's two young sons. Steaming boar's flesh and eel pie were set before him and a great mead horn thrust into his hands, and the feasting in Heorot roared up like a fire when dry birch bark is flung on to it.

But one man in all that thronged hall did not rejoice at Beowulf's coming. Hunferth the King's Speech-maker and Jester, sitting at his lord's feet, could not endure that any man should shine above himself. Bitter-tongued and envious, fierce-tempered in his cups, he waited until the noise of feasting lulled for a moment, then rose to his feet and spoke coolly and jibingly to the tall guest.

‘Tell us, now, are you that Beowulf of whom we have heard, who strove with Breca son of Beanstan in a wondrous contest upon the winter sea?'

Beowulf, who had been laughing with the King's sons, looked up and saw the speaker, standing below the High Seat, the bitter face flushed with drink, the glittering eyes and mocking smile. ‘So, that story has come ahead of me to the Danish folk,' he said.

‘Aye, it is a fine story, and we have heard it all.' Hunferth swayed a little and steadied himself. ‘We have heard how your friends and kindred begged you to forbear such folly, and how you would not heed them, but pushed off into the waves of the rising storm. Seven days and nights you pitted yourselves against each other, so men say. Yet in the end it was Breca who had the mastery. And should you not have thought, before you came here like a cock crowing on another's dunghill, that Grendel is like to be a fiercer and a stronger foe than ever Breca son of Beanstan could be?'

There was a moment's hush in the long hall: no sound save the crackle of flames on the hearths and the worrying of two hounds over a bone. Then Beowulf sprang to his feet, oversetting the mead horn and leaving it to drip unheeded on to the many-coloured pavement. He was a peaceable man, slow to wrath and swift to forget an injury; so peaceable that at first men had scorned him for it, until they learned the unwisdom of such scorn. But he could be angry, and he was angry now. ‘So, you have heard the old story; but it seems that you have heard it amiss, my large-mouthed friend. Maybe your ears were too full of heather beer for clear listening! It was a folly, even as you say, a youthful folly; we were boys, Breca and I, and never foes. We boasted against each other who could slay the most walrus without once putting in to land, and having boasted, we must make good our boasts. So we took each of us a small boat, and put out into the Whale's Road. Our swords we wore naked and beside we had long walrus hooks and spears, but the swords were for our own defence in case of need, not for use against each other; and five days we held our course side by side, but could not find the walrus that we had come to seek. And then, off the coast of Finland, a great storm arose and drove our boats apart, and when dawn came I was near to shore—aye, and I had found the walrus. They were all about me in the troughs of the waves; one, the greatest of them all, made for the boat. I speared him, but missed the life-place, and in our struggle and the weltering of the seas the boat was overturned and together, locked in battle, we went down and down into the icy depths. Then I had good use for my sword, for with it I contrived at last to end the creature's life, and so rose again, my breast bursting, to the light of day. The sea beasts were all about me, they rushed upon me with their white tusks bared to gash me limb from limb. But I had still my sword, and so at last I was wave-flung upon the sea-strand of Finland, and the bodies of nine great walrus with me. Breca, as I learned after, came also to the shore, but in a place far off from mine, and
he
did not find the walrus herd. Not Breca, therefore, but
I
was the victor in that contest!'

Beowulf threw back his head like a wolfhound when it bays defiance, and the fierce laughter rang in his voice. ‘I have not heard tell of any great deeds of yours, King's Jester, that give you the right to question mine! If you were a man more for doing and less for talking maybe your Hearth-Lord would have found his champion to rid him of the fiend Grendel ere this!'

A roar of laughter beat up from the crowded benches, and Hunferth's hollow face flushed more darkly than before. He made as though to hurl some other insult, but the sympathies of every man in Heorot were with the stranger, and he could only shrug his shoulders and smile as though the whole matter were a jest, and lounge down again on his stool at the King's feet.

Beowulf, quietly as though nothing had happened, settled himself once more upon the bench, righted the mead horn, and returned to his half-eaten barley cake.

So the feasting continued, and men grew fiercely merry, and the harper stood up to make music beside the King's hearth. Then the hangings of embroidered stuff that closed the doorway to the women's quarters were drawn aside, and a woman stood there with others behind her, a tall woman in a crimson robe, dark-eyed and dark-haired, with royal goldwork about her head, and in her hands a great golden cup.

She had no part with Hrothgar in Beowulf's early memory, for she was a second wife, and much younger than her lord, but looking at her, he knew that she must be Wealhtheow the Queen. She came forward, her women behind her, and the cheerful uproar lulled at her coming. She carried the golden cup first to Hrothgar, where he sat in his High Seat, saying in a clear voice that reached to the farthest end of the hall, ‘We have heard, even in the women's quarters, of the champions from across the sea who feast in Heorot this evening; and we have heard the brave purpose of their coming. Surely now our sorrows are almost over; therefore drink, my dear lord, and let your heart be lightened.'

And when the King had drunk, she carried the cup from one to another of the warriors, Geat and Dane alike, all down the benches, while one of her women coming behind with the mead jar refilled for her as often as the cup grew low. Last of all she came to Beowulf where he sat as guest of honour between her two sons. ‘Greeting, and joy be to you, Beowulf son of Ecgtheow; and all the thanks of our hearts, that you come so valiantly to our aid.'

Beowulf rose to his feet and took the cup as she held it out to him. ‘Valour is a word to use when the battle is over,' he said, smiling. ‘Give us your thanks, great Queen, when we have done the thing which we come to do. But this at least I promise you, that if we fail to rid you of the monster, we shall not live to carry home our shields.' And throwing back his head, he drained the cup and gave it again into her hands.

But now the shadows were gathering in the corners of the hall, and as the daylight faded, a shadow seemed to gather on the hearts of all men there, a shadow that was all too long familiar to the Danes. Then Hrothgar rose in his High Seat, and called Beowulf to him again.

‘Soon it will be dusk,' he said, when the young Geat stood before him. ‘And yet again the time of dread comes upon Heorot. You are still determined upon this desperate venture?'

‘I am not wont to change my purpose without cause,' Beowulf said, ‘and those with me are of a like mind, or they would not have taken ship with me from Geatland in the first place.'

‘So. Keep watch, then. If you prevail in the combat before you, you shall have such reward from me as never yet heroes had from a King. I pray to the All-Father that when the light grows again out of tonight's dark, you may stand here to claim it. Heorot is yours until morning.' And he turned and walked out through the postern door, a tall old man stooping under the burden of his own height, to his sleeping quarters, where Wealhtheow the Queen had gone before him.

All up and down the hall men were taking leave of each other, dwindling away to their own sleeping places for the night. The thralls set back the benches and stacked the trestle boards against the gable-walls, and spread out straw-filled bolsters and warm wolfskin rugs for the fifteen warriors. Then they too were gone, and Heorot was left to the band of Geats, and the dreadful thing whose shadow was already creeping towards them through the dark.

‘Bar the doors,' Beowulf said, when the last footsteps of the last thrall had died away. ‘Bars will not keep him out, but at least they may give us some warning of his coming.'

And when two of them had done his bidding, and the seldom-used bars were in their sockets, there was nothing more that could be done.

For a little, as the last fire sank lower, they stood about it, sometimes looking at each other, sometimes into the glowing embers, seldom speaking. Not one of them had much hope that he would see the daylight again, yet none repented of having followed their leader upon the venture. One by one, the fourteen lay down in their harness, with their swords beside them. But Beowulf stripped off his battle-sark and gave it with his sword and boar-crested helmet to Waegmund his kinsman and the dearest to him of all his companions, for he knew that mortal weapons were of no use against the Troll-kind; such creatures must be mastered, if they could be mastered at all, by a man's naked strength, and the red courage of his heart.

Then he too lay down, as though to sleep.