“All hail,” he says, and swallows, the words sticking like dust in his throat. “All hail King Beowulf!” And he places the golden circlet on Beowulf’s head, glad to be rid of the crown. In years to come, he will recall the way it felt in his fingers, the weight of it, the peculiar sense that it was somehow unclean. For a time there is only the howling of the winter wind, the waves battering themselves against the rocky shore.
