Beowulf by Robert Nye

each other.
    “He must be dead.”
    “Dead.”
    “Yes. He must be dead.”
    Just then, with a loud shout, Beowulf burst through the fiery scum at the pool’s top.
    He held Grendel’s head up high.
    His men were too astonished to raise a cheer. Some fell on their knees and offered thanks to God. But they cheered enough when they had helped the weary Beowulf from the water. The fen rang with their shouts of joy. The rain stopped. The sun came out. The waters of the lake subsided. Even the horses were inspired with the general happiness. They came round and poked at the monster’s head with their muzzles. None was more curious than Beowulf’s own mount, the white mare with the black mane.

    It took four men to bear Grendel’s head down to Heorot. They stuck their long spears in from different angles and carried it between them. Beowulf rode directly behind. Everyone sang.
    Hrothgar and Queen Wealhtheow saw the happy triumphal procession afar off, and came galloping to greet it on sun-colored horses. They both wept for joy when Beowulf told them all that had happened.
    “Aeschere is avenged,” said Hrothgar. “Heorot is saved.”
    Wealhtheow, her blue eyes thoughtful, asked Beowulf what he had done with Unferth’s head.
    “Lady, it was buried,” Beowulf said.
    The queen touched his hand where her ring still blazed on his finger. “Beowulf,” she said, “you are worthy of your great adventure.”
    The king agreed wholeheartedly. He stretched out his arm and pointed to Heorot, its golden roofs intact and sparkling in the sun. “Every man that lives or will live in time to come in this land of Danes will honor and praise your name, O Beowulf. Thank you, thank you, from the bottom of my heart.”
    Queen Wealhtheow thanked Beowulf too. She noticed that his answering smile was alittle twisted, as if with pain. “Are you wounded?” she asked him, all concern.
    Beowulf’s grin broadened. “Not by the monsters,” he replied.
    “By what, then?” demanded Hrothgar, anxious to give the hero the best attention that it was in his power to give.
    “By myself,” said Beowulf.
    “Wounded by yourself?”
    “By my own bad,” said Beowulf. He threw back his head and laughed in the sun, then winced. “Please don’t think of me as some sort of saint. That would make me as monstrous as Grendel, although in the other direction. Majesty of all the Danes, sweet Wealhtheow, you see before you a hero who has come through many kinds of high adventures only to fall foul of his own weakness.” He opened his mouth and poked one square-tipped finger in. “All this excitement has given me a toothache!”

XII
B EOWULF G OES H OME
    Next morning, Beowulf was woken by a hoarse sound, repeated over and over. It was like something grim and cheerless that has suddenly found within it a will to sing. He looked out the window and saw a raven, black as soot, perched in the branches of a tree. The raven’s breast was swollen with musical ambition, and its eyes were like little sparks. It flapped its wings vigorously and hopped up and down on a withered bough. Every now and again it managed an untuneful note.
    Beowulf smiled, and gazed to the east where dawn was in the wind. “Sing on, raven,” he said. “Welcome morning as you can. You sound like my toothache, but welcome’s no worse for that.”
    Strange to tell, the raven now managed three ascending notes of great purity. Then itshook its wings as though casting off night forever, took a couple of awkward steps, and flew away. At once, all the other birds began to sing. Beowulf touched his jaw in wonder. His toothache was gone.
    Long light spilled across the fen. Beowulf considered it with a lump in his throat. This was not his country. He wanted to go home.
    He went to Hrothgar and told him so.
    Hrothgar was sad. He said: “Beowulf, I love you as my own son. Why not stay here forever, where your fame is?”
    But Queen Wealhtheow did not seek to make him change his mind in this