At First Light(Dr. Evan Wilding #1)(53)

“It’s only a guess at the moment,” he said again to the lurking shadows, which lay deep enough along the walls to harbor a murderer. “I’ve no doubt made mistakes. But still, your poem speaks its own strange language.”

Ginny twitched her head left, then right, as if searching the room for another human.

“Your poem is also difficult,” Evan continued. “There are words and lines I don’t yet understand. You are a trickster. Exactly like any Old English poet worth his weight. But”—he picked up his glass and raised it in a mock salute—“what you gave us isn’t gibberish.”

He turned down the requiem mass until it was only a whisper in the background and tapped a button on his small audio recorder. He read the lines aloud. First the Desser runes and then Talfour’s.

2 Thus from my bothy I came homeland’s ward for cattle of riding

3 to sacrifice the innocent at night she takes back her sons and daughters

4 who rived and tholed and peeled her flesh like ripe fruit

9 blessing giver my blood-feud stillbirths your further crimes

10 Listen up! Mighty men I undo and unto earth I send

11 Their water weighted corses. I am a dam-ned scop

12 A death driven mere plague, the brume that binds up evil.

13 A weary warrior wailing with wyrded wergild,

14 A slayer of the bone halls breaking Fjorgyn.

15 You know why! Over the sun swimmer home I came

16 For mine! Mine mine gone. Bowel buried, busted by big bosses

17 That war crime, sword shaker, heart of my bawn entombed.

18 Making me bodulfr war wolf and lendreg and ageclaa, all, bearing the ??.

19 What of this bone cage? This skin sinner is ox of riding.

20 By Skollfud’s light I laid him low. Wight is he and soon wight.

21 In warding I reward. Into his mouth of hearing I poured my mead.

22 Tell me! By Mani’s lait I laid it out. Prick me this. But

23 His honey maker held still, so I held tight, strong as nnn men.

24 He felt the weight of his wight, knew wyrd is wicked.

25 With his mirror I did mirror mere to mere

26 His thole was thus that he thanked the hel guard

27 When wailing the word weaver arrived a bletsian.

The word bletsian died away, swallowed by the chant for the dead.

The drapes stirred as the heater kicked on. Outside, the trees shook their needled robes.

“Now, to some of the more difficult phrases,” Evan said, still recording so that the police would have access to his thought process if needed. “Skollfud’s light, for example. By Skollfud’s light I laid him low. Not, as Rhinehart suggested, by skull food lait. Skoll is the name of the wolf in Viking poetry who will one day devour the sun goddess. So perhaps the killer named the sun Skoll’s food. And since we know Talfour was placed by the river just before dawn, let’s assume the killer meant morning’s light, not daylight or evening.”

He could hear Addie pushing back, questioning him. Why didn’t he just write morning, then, if that’s what he meant? she’d ask.

Because, he’d answer. Old English poets loved riddles. They performed tricks with their words. Note how cleverly the killer took something generally considered positive—a sunrise—and turned it into a violent metaphor of a wolf devouring a goddess.

A poet? Addie would ask.

Indeed. Make no mistake . . . our killer is a poet. Perhaps an indifferent one. But a poet nonetheless.

He circled back to line eighteen, with its anagrams. Almost immediately, he cried, “Yes!”

Ginny fluttered awake. Annoyed at his outburst, she shook her wings.

Now on his feet, Evan made his way to the bookcase still carrying the recorder. “But the Old English style of this poem confirms my suspicions. Lendreg is most definitely an anagram for the monster Grendel.”

He gazed at the shelf that held his books of medieval poetry.

“For any listeners unfamiliar with Beowulf, it’s the tale of a Viking hero who slays a terrible monster named Grendel. Later, Beowulf kills Grendel’s mother, the second monster of the saga. And at the very end of the story, he slaughters a dragon and is himself mortally wounded. Heroic and tragic, all at once.”

Ginny lifted a foot, studied the razor-sharp talons like a woman admiring her pedicure.

“Important for our purposes, Grendel is an aglaeca, a word that also appears in the killer’s poem. It means monster. But ironically, the word is related to the later Middle English word egleche, which means brave and warlike. A contradiction that is, perhaps, indicative of our killer’s mindset.”

Evan stopped recording and raised his gaze to the windows, vaguely aware of the mist twining through the hedges in the knot garden and banking against the dormant lavender. Had he heard something? But it was only the chant for the dead, looping through a second time.

Once again, he tapped the “Record” button.

“Moreover, we have the word bodulfr. This word isn’t an anagram. Bodulfr is the Icelandic word for war wolf. In the interest of saving time, I’ll skip over the etymological variants that lead us from boldulfr to Beowulf. You’ll have to trust me on that linguistic point. The important thing we need to know is that the killer is telling us he is both monster and monster slayer.” He paused. “What are we to make of that?”

Ginny failed to look impressed by Evan’s philological prowess.