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Her breasts.
    Unferth stood up and stretched out his arms.
    “Welcome,” he said.
    Wealhtheow woke first. On the edge of sleep, she had dreamt of a sow eating her farrow. She opened her eyes and saw that Grendel’s arm was gone from the hook in the rafters.
    She woke the king, and Beowulf too. Both shook their heads, as if to clear them of bad dreams.
    Beowulf said: “It seems we slept deep.”
    “Too deep for safekeeping,” said Wealhtheow. “Grendel’s arm has been stolen by some thief in the night.”
    Hrothgar started up with a shout. “That’s not the worst of it!” he cried. “Look, there, by the golden tapestry! Oh, Aeschere! Aeschere!”
    A man’s body lay, face to the wall, on theivory floor. He had a dagger in his back. He was dead.
    Beowulf bent over him.
    “It is Aeschere,” said Hrothgar broken-heartedly. Tears glistened on his cheeks and in the winter whiteness of his beard. His jutting jaw went slack with sorrow. “Aeschere! My best friend, dearer to me than my own hand. We were boys together. We went to war together. A splendid man—his mind as sharp as his sword. I loved him. He is dead. Only Grendel could have done this.”
    Beowulf was peering at the dagger between Aeschere’s shoulder blades. “I have seen this hilt before,” he said. “This is the dagger Unferth drew on me.”
    “Unferth! Unferth killed Aeschere while he slept! Why? Why?”
    “There is no why where Unferth is concerned,” said Beowulf. “He acts as a beast would, blindly. He’s at the mercy of his own evil, and hardly knows what he does.”
    “He shall die for this!” vowed Hrothgar. “Guards! Guards! Find the vile, treacherous coward Unferth in whatever dark corner he is hiding, and bring him straight to me!”
    But Unferth was not to be found. Danes and Geats searched everywhere, to no avail. All they discovered was a strange, sweet-smellingspoor that led twistingly into the fen.
    Beowulf said: “This much is clear—Aeschere is dead; Unferth is gone; Grendel’s arm has been stolen. Now, Unferth probably murdered Aeschere. It is his dagger, and the deed looks like him. But it’s unlikely we’ll ever know for certain because—”
    “What do you mean?” cried Hrothgar, eyes bright for vengeance. “We will find Unferth and torture the wretch until he confesses! He’s out there in the fen somewhere, drooling over the monster’s arm, mad and bad and—”
    “I was coming to that,” Beowulf explained patiently. “I don’t think Unferth took Grendel’s arm. His wrists weren’t strong enough to lift it down without dropping it and wakening us all. He was a weakling, in more ways than one.”
    Wealhtheow said, “You speak of him as though he were dead.”
    “I shall be surprised if he is not,” said Beowulf. “There is the matter of the spoor, you see. Something came out of the fen for Grendel’s arm, and whatever it was that came took Unferth too.”
    “And killed him?” asked Hrothgar eagerly. “He deserved it.”
    “Perhaps,” said Beowulf.
    Wealhtheow sighed, distressed by so much horror. “What do you think it was, the creature? Grendel?”
    Beowulf shook his head. “Grendel had no might left. I broke more than his arm. He is surely dead.”
    “Then who?” demanded the king. He was desperate to set out in search of someone or something in order to avenge poor Aeschere.
    “I do not know this country,” said Beowulf. “Perhaps you can tell me of other monsters who are known to haunt the fen? Something that moves in a twisty way, like a snake, and leaves a spoor that smells as sweet as mother’s milk?”
    Hrothgar frowned, and confessed himself at his wit’s end.
    “Something sly and noiseless,” prompted Beowulf. “Something more terrible than Grendel.”
    Wealhtheow caught her breath. She had remembered the stories of her childhood, the most loathly and ancient bugaboo her nurse had ever frightened her with. And at the same time she remembered Unferth’s fascinated talking on