She sat in a chair sipping tea, and looking up at the window. Her face seemed at peace for she was able to get everything she wanted: a house, a bakery where she worked alongside her son and even her daughter got married to a knight.
If anyone had came to her twenty years ago, and told her that she will be leading a comfortable life, she would have simply laughed. She was a lowborn, a bastard who never knew her father, only her maid mother's rough hands who worked as a midwife, and with whom she worked upon her eighth nameday in a lord's home.
She led a humble life, and loved a humble man, the homely cook's hand who aspired to open a bakery one day. They lived day by day, and after her daughter's birth, she was assigned as the little lady's wet nurse, and even succeeded her mother as the town's midwife.
All was well, until the day her husband fell ill. She gave up her position in order to take care of him, but the illness still took his life few moons afterwards. Death changed her life drastically; it made her a widow, an indebted widow. And the fact that there was another life inside her drowned her more in debts.
By the time she gave birth to a healthy boy, she lost everything she owned even the little cabin she called her home, and even that was unable to cover her debts. Hopelessness plagued her, that was until she was summoned to the new lord's house.
She was asked to assist the lord's maiden sister; she was with a child out of wedlock. Her pay was good but not enough, though her work was easy and the sad lady was kind. Several moons later, the heartbreak lead the lady to an early labor. She gave birth to a stillborn, a daughter. Therefore, she knew her help was no longer needed.
That same day, she was surprised to encounter the lord's younger brother, the one she hasn't for years ever since he left for someplace called King's Landing. And she was more than surprised, when he approached and told her he will pay her a huge sum if she accepted to work for him. Two days later, they went to a tower and there she assisted another lady.
The unfortunate events that followed made her gain everything including freedom from debts, while her silence took everything from a babe, the last boy she nursed, and the one she would never forget. Her thoughts were suddenly interrupted by a high voice "Mother! I am with child!"
She stood up to embrace her daughter, and the joy made her think for the first time in her life, that maybe this new child will make her forget about that boy, that the nightmares, the regret and the guilt will finally disappear. Her grandchild represented hope for her.
" That boy was also the hope of a whole realm" another voice reminded her.
