So, I’m on holiday and I had time to pick up my fanfic writing. Here is another chapter of my Historical AU and it is mostly Ned/Cat. Catelyn tells Sansa about her father, and secrets get out. Also on AO3.
Catelyn stood on the battlement and looked at the wide valley below Winterfell. The emperor and his court would be visible long before they reached Winterfell. She wondered if Jon would be with the Emperor or if he had taken her advice and left to forget.
She put a streak of her hair that had been loosened behind her ear.
She heard a light footstep behind her and saw Sansa when she turned. The deathly pallor had left her face, but she still looked wane.
Sansa held Catelyn’s gaze, her arms crossed over her breasts in a gesture of defiance, taut as a bow string, but her eyes were softer.
“Will you tell me about my father,” she finally asked.
Thank God, she came.
Catelyn sighed.
“I don’t know what you expect. It is no happy tale. No tale of heroes.”
“I still want to know.”
“And you have every right, Sansa. I am sorry, I tried to deny it. I wanted to keep this from you. I wanted for you to be safe.”
The tension left Sansa’s body.
“I know,” she said.
“Do you need to sit? We can go to my room, but I’d rather have us stay outside. I wouldn’t want anybody to overhear.”
“I am fine.”
Catelyn looked out again.
“Isn’t it funny, that I came to love this place? When I first came here, I hated it.”
She closed her eyes.
“Your father was dead already, when Brandon took his new bride to Winterfell.”
Catelyn could see Ned before her inner eye, his features clearer than they had been in years.
“I was so young, innocent, carefree. I did not yet know what men can do.”
Her voice became a whisper.
“Brother Eddard came to us in spring. He was a young clerk not yet ordained as priest. He was on a pilgrimage to Rome, but my father persuaded him to stay and hone his daughter’s skills in Latin.”
“Eddard had just been robbed by the Lombards and my father promised him good payment for his troubles.”
Catelyn smiled wrily in memory.
“It was hard earned money. Lysa and I loved to prank him. He was not like the sour old man who had taught us the sums. I loved to tease him, and he was good-natured about it. He never lost his patience, neither with me nor Lysa, although Lysa was never interest in learning.”
“He loved his plants, and while I was mischievous in Latin, I could listen for hours to him talking about his herbs.”
“The book on herblore in our library”, Sansa exclaimed. “That was his?”
Catelyn opened her eyes and looked up.
“Yes, that was his. I should have had a copy made. But I did not want to part with it.”
Catelyn remembered the lessons in the walled garden in Riverrun. How Ned had touched her hand for the briefest of moments when he showed her how to cut the plants.
“Don’t take too much. If you cut them sparingly, they will regrow easier.”
She had become flustered, her heart beating irregularly, and yet had been oblivious why.
“When a year had passed, he stayed on. He had enough money by then, but he would not leave, and I did not know that I was the reason. We cared for the walled garden and did not realise that around us the world came apart.”
A sudden breeze loosened her hair and she caught the wilful streak and twirled it around her finger.
“I did not realise, why lessons in herblore were my favourite pastime, and Lysa was preoccupied with her own plans. She had set her eyes on Petyr of all people, on ambitious, scheming Petyr. He was handsome, but his heart was as black as midnight. I told you about his plans?”
Sansa nodded. Her face had an intent look, and her lips had parted slightly.
“When Lysa told me, she was pregnant, I got so angry. We fought and she accused me of losing my maidenhead to Ned.”
Lysa looked at her, haughtily, while Catelyn seethed with anger. “You are one to tell me. You and your herb lessons. If this is what you call it.” It was only then, that Catelyn had realised why she loved the lessons in herblore.
“What happened to Lysa’s child?”, Sansa whispered.
“I told you, that this is no happy tale. My father found out.”
Catelyn had to pause. She could still hear Lysa pleading, pleading, for the child, for herself, and then at the end just for everything to end.
“Lysa did not fall from her horse.”
Catelyn looked at her daughter whose face was a blur and mutely shook her head.
“Ergot.” Her voice sounded strained to her own ears.
“My father gave her too much, though. She lost the child, as he had intended, but she bled to death.”
The blood, Lysa’s fever, her chapped lips.
“Ned blamed himself for leaving that book of his open, easily accessible. He thought, that he could have given Lysa the right dosis.”
Catelyn angrily wiped away her tears.
“Ned was not to blame. Petyr was to blame, my father was to blame, but not him. He tried his best to save her.”
“Lysa’s death finally made me realise that I wanted Ned and him alone. I told him how I felt, and we decided to run away.”
Fevered kisses in the dark, skin on skin, whispering each other’s names, tasting each other’s tears, tears of mourning, tears of joy.
Sansa came closer, she reached out and Catelyn moved into her arms. She lowered her head on Sansa’s neck and wept. It felt strange, so very strange, to be finally weak after all these years, not to be the one who gave comfort, to mourn. When her tears finally stopped, she felt relieved.
Her voice sounded raspy, when she picked up the tale.
“It was a night in early December. I waited at the stables, but Ned never came. He slipped on the icy steps that led to his chamber and broke his neck. Or that is what I was told. I still think it was Petyr, although he never confessed.”
“My father discovered Petyr’s schemes. He sought the alliance with Winterfell to bring him and his ally Lord Walder down. When he gave me to Brandon as his bride, I was still numb from sorrow.”
She laughed.
“Brandon thought I was mourning Lysa, and I was, but all my tears were for Ned. Brandon did not want an unwilling bride whose face was wet with tears. He would not have wanted a bride that was with child already, but neither he nor I knew that.”
She had not been able to stop her tears, her horror of Brandon touching her. Brandon had been patient, understanding, but when he left to avenge her father, he made it clear, that he expected Catelyn to welcome him on his return.
Catelyn sighed.
“How,”, Sansa asked. “How did you kill him?”
“Foxglove.”
“But you drank from the same cup”, Sansa said.
“Wax dissolves in heated wine, but it will take a moment. When I put the spices in Brandon’s wine, I added beeswax balls that contained foxglove.”
Brandon clutching his chest, his face distorted in pain.
“It was risky, but I had nothing to lose. I had to protect you.”
“What would he have done, if you had told him?”, Sansa asked.
Catelyn closed her eyes again.
“The truth is, that I do not know. He might have been kind enough to let me live, to let my child live, he might have kept me, even accepted you, once it was clear, you were a girl. He surely would have expected me to give him an heir. He might also have killed me or you.”
“I sometimes regret, that I did not give him a chance, but I could not lose you.”
Sansa took her mother’s hand. “I don’t know what to say. You confessed being a murderess and yet….”
“And yet it is not easy? Believe me, Sansa, it rarely is. It is enough, if you do not hate me.”
Sansa’s eyes swam in tears. “I could not hate you, mother.”
“Even if I tell you as my last confession, that I killed Petyr as well?”
Sansa scoffed.
“That Petyr got his punishment coming.”
“And yet, I did not give him a trial.”
Catelyn pressed her daughter’s hand.
“I loved your father with all my heart. I love him still. And yet, if there is a God, I don’t know, if he will be merciful enough to let me meet him again, when I die. You father’s only sin was loving me. Mine are worse.”
Sansa pressed her hand in return.
“Magna peccatrix. This is, why you have that inscription on your tomb. You do have hope.”
Catelyn smiled. “A little”.
Sansa pressed her mother’s hand to her lips and then tried to tidy her hair.
“Surely, caring for your people, speaking justice for two decades should count for something?”
Catelyn chuckled.
“When I sit in judgement, I guess at what could have happened, at how respectable people can sin. I ponder my own sins and people look at me and just think that I know. I think I have been a good judicatrix, but I never had the right.”
“And I don’t have a right to Winterfell,” Sansa said. “Jon has a better right.”
Sansa put her hands on the walls and looked over the valley.
“I always thought that the truth would make decisions easier, that the truth would lead to a solution, that the truth would mean justice, but….”, her breath sounded laboured to Catelyn.
Sansa looked at her with a pained face.
“I do not know, what is right. It always seemed so easy to me, watching you rendering judgements. I realise now, that justice is more complicated than I thought.”
Her face looked determined.
“I just know, that I can’t marry Sam.”
“Why ever not?”, Catelyn asked, alarmed. “Sam is very nice.”
Sansa barked a laugh.
“That is why I would not want to marry him, under false pretence. Because he is nice. And have you seen him with Gilly, I mean, Meg?”
Catelyn froze. “What?”
“Do not fret, I do not love him. We just have to come up with some reason why I can’t marry him.”
Sansa pointed at the horizon.
“We can work out something after the Emperor’s visit.”
Catelyn’s eyes were not as sharp as Sansa’s younger ones. Following Sansa’s pointing finger she saw the faint glitter of armour and weapons.
Her heart sank. Charles would be in Winterfell on the next morrow.
The walk had been good, really good. They had talked and talked about everything revealing secrets about their past to each other and discovering they had so much in common it was as if they had been separated at birth. They felt comfortable and natural in each other’s company talking about their experiences and emotions as if they had known each other all their lives not the six months they had.…
Ah, drink me up
That I may be
Within your cup
Like a mystery,
Like wine that is still
In Ecstasy.
On this spring day I am lost in the mystery of your smile. It’s lopsided at times, higher on the right, giving you a mischievous look. Like the Cheshire Cat, it’s as if you possess information that I am unaware of. Sometimes I lose sleep over this mystery and search the…
When you tell your best friend personal information, and she tells everyone like it's some big joke, and you have to smile and joke along, because you don't want to look as pathetic as the information makes you feel.
Music and Artwork copyright Woodland! These do not belong to me! Visit their site: http://woodlandmusic.net/
Song: Conjure
Album: Secrets Told
Lyrics:
Bless us tonight,
a song of the ancestors,
invokes the cauldron,
of lost memories.
Conjure the heart,
Per l'amore della figlia,
the circle is called,
to the old walnut tree.
Deep in the night,
when the moon is high above,
she spreads the cards,
of passion and fate.
Within the dark,
whispering spells of love,
she conjures the heart
when the hour is late.
Bella dea,
bella Diana,
della stelle,
e della luna.
In the ruins of night,
hidden treasures,
wait in the dark,
for those who will seek.
Conjure thy heart,
drink of the wine of love,
at the altar of trust,
dare to believe.
Bella dea,
bella Diana,
della stelle,
e della luna.
Bless us tonight,
with adoration,
walk with her love,
in every step.
Conjure thy heart,
Per l'amore della figlia,
in the temple of night,
her flame is still kept.
