to keep him home, with me, safe, alive. He managed to fling me wide and battered the door down. I sank to the floor and wept.
It took moments, far too many moments, to collect myself, but I managed to rise and shake off the worst of the grief and fear. Regardless of the outcome, my boy would be hurt, so I set a tea of elderberry and cicuta for pain to steep. I prepared bandages and a tiny precious amount of honey to aid against infection. I scrubbed and heated the fire iron, to cauterize any deep wounds.
Then I prayed to uncaring, unresponsive gods that Grendel would come home to me in condition good enough that I could tend him, heal him, and take us elsewhere as soon as may be.
An echoing bellow of rage and pain, accompanied by catcalls and jeers, mocked such prayers. The hateful villagers would not be cheering so were it Beowulf who cried out in such a manner. Grief battled with rage, but I took small comfort in the boos and hisses. Grendel had either scored a fair hit or managed to escape. Multiple shrieks of fear echoed, followed by a tumult of muted voices. The distant sounds faded, and I surmised that Grendel had, at the least, escaped. The darkness of the night meant I dared not try to find him, or risk losing him completely. I waited.
A countless eternity later, I heard pained weeping and a querulous “Momma?” in the dark. I ran to the sound to find my son, grievously injured and missing an arm. I shouldered up under his good arm and helped him the last distance home. Once there, I took stock of the wounds.
The arm was no clean cut of a sword, but instead showed signs of having been mostly torn off. The stump was a ragged, oozing mess with dripping blood and exposed bone. I did not, could not cry, not while Grendel looked at me with fearful eyes. “Will I be okay, Momma?”
I lied. So help me, I lied to him. Had I spoken the truth, I would have been unable to ease his suffering. “As okay as I can make you, my love,” I said. I set about doing what I could. The state of the arm was such that cauterizing was nigh impossible, and the bandages I had prepared were insufficient. Once I had it cleaned, bound, and covered, I helped him drink the tea. I settled him as best I could.
I pressed a kiss to his forehead, and he asked me for a song. I acquiesced, as a few more minutes would make little difference in the scheme of things. He, thankfully, fell asleep into a restless, pained slumber. I drew my cloak around me, and gave him one last worried look before slipping out of the hut to head for the village.
I could afford no dignity. Perhaps Edda knew some herbs, and I would beg and abase myself before Hrothgar for the slightest of mercy. Grendel and I would retreat to the cave and subsist as we could.
The village was active, and I approached carefully, hood masking my face for the little good it would do. All of them knew me.
There was much commotion at the great hall, and I watched from far behind the crowd, hidden behind the hawthorn bushes.
I saw what they did and my head spun. Was this real and not some horrific dream?
Grendel’s arm hung from a nail above the hall’s broad doors. A trophy to hate and fear.
I overheard Hrothgar announce, “They will sing of this deed for a thousand years.”
And that’s when the rage took me.
I could perhaps forgive Beowulf for killing Grendel. It had been the fairest fight of all. Grendel did only what the gods had made him to do. But Hrothgar boasted of the deed, of the killing of my poor, darling boy. He memorialized it with blood trophies.
Hrothgar would not boast of the killing of a favored dog taken over by the madness. Yet he would boast of the killing of my son.
Any man would avenge his son, his brother, his father for that shame. My son had none of those to