They left Dragonstone numbering in the thousands, but came back from Blackwater only in the hundreds. King Stannis was among the ones who came back, aged and damaged beyond what Cressen thought possible. Defeat could do a lot to a man, even the best of them, but King Stannnis' sudden and rapid deterioration was not fathered solely by defeat, the maester was convinced.
She did it. The red woman. With the same bewitchment that turned harmless the poisoned wine he had offered her. Cressen had drunk first, Melisandre after him. But neither of them had come to any harm. They had both walked away as if they had only shared a goblet of innocuous drinks, not one laced with poison and certain death.
"I know what you did, old man," she whispered to him as he was leaving the feast, shaken to the core by what he had witnessed. "I saw it in my flames, as clear as day, while you were still hatching the plan in your head. My king will need us both in the battles to come, so I spared your life for his sake. But stand in my way once more, and I will not be this merciful." Her voice was soft and melodious, but the warning had been clear nonetheless. Another attempt on her life would be futile. And fatal, but not to her.
He had failed, Cressen grieved. Failed Lord Steffon. Failed Stannis. Failed even Renly, the young boy he remembered playing at being a wizard, a rain god, a dragon king. Renly who was now a dead king. A dead king who never sat on any throne. Slayed by his own brother, they said. Not in the field of battle or in single combat, as was in the nature and order of war, but under the cover of darkness and the night, with sorcery and treachery.
The night is dark and full of terrors, the red woman was fond of saying. It had been thus for Renly, the youngest of Lord Steffon's three sons he had entrusted to Cressen's care.
A kinslayer was cursed by gods and men both. King Stannis' defeat at Blackwater was a punishment from the gods, the King's men whispered.
King Stannis should not have sent the Lady Melisandre back to Dragonstone. His defeat was a punishment from R'hllor, the Queen's men insisted.
The king spent his days and nights brooding in the Chamber of the Painted Table, speaking to no one, seeing no one. Not even his wife. Or his Hand. Or his two maesters, the young and the old.
No one except the red woman. She was by the king's side always, whispering poisonous words made to sound as sweet as honey, Cressen was certain. He was not grateful to her for sparing his life. It was a far, far greater punishment to live, to see it all, to know it all, yet to be entirely powerless to do anything to change the course of events, incapable of anything except watching and waiting, full of dread and sorrow. Cressen spent his days and nights brooding too, in his room that was now a self-imposed prison, albeit one without guards.
"Your words and your counsel could still prove valuable to His Grace, maester. You have always been the only one he paid any heed to at all." Young Maester Pylos tried to coax Cressen out of the depth of his misery, to interest him in the goings-on of the castle, to bring him back to the land of the living once more.
"What good have my words and my counsel ever done anyone?" Cressen lamented. "I have served House Baratheon since the day I left Oldtown, and my words have not prevented them from all dying."
"King Stannis is not dead," Pylos pointed out gently.
The king might not be dead, but the boy Cressen had watched growing from seedling to man was gone. Lost amidst the rubble of his destroyed convictions and principles. A stranger sat brooding in the Chamber of the Painted Table, a man Cressen scarcely knew or recognize.
A man bewitched by a sorceress, Cressen had fervently believed in the beginning. Had desperately wanted to believe, in fact. No, had desperately needed to believe. If only the red woman is dead, he had thought, then all would be well. Everything would be back to the way it was, to the way it should be, and Stannis would be Stannis again.
He was not so certain of that now.
He had plenty of time to think and to ponder, sitting in his room all those months with naught a visitor except Pylos. To see the things he had willfully blinded himself to, to listen to the sounds he had willfully deafened himself to. It did not take long after all for the Lady Melisandre to convince Stannis to embrace her god, to go down the path of destruction. Even a bewitchment needed a seed to grow. In truth, the seed was already planted long before the red woman ever set foot on Dragonstone, Cressen finally had to admit to himself, reluctantly.
The seed was planted the first, second, and countless subsequent times Stannis stood under his older brother Robert's ever-growing shadow. The seed was watered with the deaths of Lord Steffon and his lady wife, nurtured with the Siege and the loss of Storm's End to Renly, and grew with years of serving Robert loyally while receiving no recognition, gratitude, or even any semblance of brotherly affection.
The red woman did not start the fire; she was merely the spark that ignited the ember that had been waiting to be lit for years.
How had he not seen it coming? Cressen despaired. He who loved that sad, sullen boy the most, who had been willing to lay down his life to save Stannis from the clutch of the red woman.
I was wrong. It is not from her he needs saving, Cressen thought.
But how do you save a man from the stranger he had become? How do you save a man from himself?