Stags and wolves, part 3
Sansa had looked forward to meeting her Arryn cousins, especially with how Mother would often tell of her own childhood with aunt Lysa and hoping to become friends with them. Yet, as that horrible sewing lesson had shown, Celia and Amanda were…unlike what she had imagined them to be. Not in the manner that Arya could be at times, but she still found herself unable to keep up with what Lysa's daughters saw as suitable activities for young ladies.
"I only wanted to try making up for causing them to react so strongly when I asked about Harrold Hardyng, by doing something they enjoy…"
Normally, Sansa was not the biggest fan of horse riding, mainly because of how her clothing would smell of the horse alongside that she always got sore afterwards and this full day in the saddle did not help her understand why Arya loved it so. But their Arryn cousins were, if possible, even worse about horse riding than her sister as they rode around and laughed in joy while chasing the others. Even little Ronnel showed surprising skill in riding for his young age by riding the pony all by himself, and aunt Lysa proudly bragged about that her only son had first been riding in a saddle, safely seated with an adult to hold him steady, from the moment he had been able to sit upright by himself without any support.
"Are you alright, Sansa? I do not think they meant to be mean when commenting that your riding skills were horrible for someone your age, when you said that you normally only ride around the courtyard..." Arya wondered carefully, spotting how her sister tried to hide how she walked in a funny way after the whole day on horseback.
"I am fine," Sansa lied through her teeth, trying to not reveal her stiff legs and aching thighs as she planned to request a hot bath to get rid of the horse smell and soothe her muscles. These were two other reasons why she did not like horse riding, the pain and why she always felt like this after riding.
On the other hand, Celia and Amanda were in a much happier mood now when they finally had gotten a chance to ride again.
"Only riding around the courtyard, and rarely doing it despite that travel is best done by horse riding, walking on your own two feet, by ship or rarely a wagon? What is that ignoble teacher to septa telling cousin Sansa on how to be a proper lady, actually?" Celia wondered aloud, indirectly revealing what everyone from the south happened to think of septa Mordane after that awful sewing lesson some days príor.
"Yes! Does Sansa think that one of those…." Amanda mentally searched for the right word, "large carriages called wheelhouses will be useful here in the North for travel when there will be even more snow in winter, or in the desert of Dorne? Or that she will be married to a husband who can afford his wife to travel in such a thing whatever she leaves the castle or keep that his family owns?"
Thanks to the water mirrors of House Martell, the two Arryn sisters had seen wheelhouses used at the royal court in King Landing. While seeing that the wheeled vehicle was useful for more comfortable travel for handicaped or ill persons, heavy pregnant women and small children, they still were not impressed by that so many noble southern noble families used the wheelhouses as a way of showing off their wealth. Even the royal family of Rohan would ride while travelling unless they needed to use a carriage like Queen Mother Morwen, who had a legal excuse in her hip being broken once and she sometimes felt pain if she rode in a saddle too long!
"Yes, yes, your cousin is given silly ideas about what a daughter of her social status should act like. That septa really needs to be replaced by someone who knows how to handle children with different personalities and that favoritism is not a great way of teaching students," Rhoyne agreed with her two changes, walking behind them back to their guest chamber while Lysa carried Eorl, who understandably was tired after the ride and even had fallen asleep in her arms. But they were pleased, this had been one of the better days of the stay at Winterfell.
~X~X~X~X~X~X
Up in the solar belonging to the Lord Stark:
Benjen Stark, First Ranger at the Night's Watch, had changed a lot in the passing years since the Rebellion that ended with his second brother as the new Lord Stark because of the horrible deaths of their father Rickard and Brandon. Nowadays, he would sometimes look back at that fateful day when Lyanna had sought a way out of her unwanted marriage and desiring as hell to beat up his younger self for giving her the suggestion that started it all:
"Go to Prince Rhaegar Targaryen and ask him for help in breaking the betrothal to Robert Baratheon. As the Crown prince and future King, he is already outranking Father and Robert, right?"
How often had not Benjen seen her in his nightmares, riding away as the last time he saw her alive, and how she would fall off her horse into a coffin while her clothes was being burned and the flesh fell off her bones as a symbol of how the Targaryen prince had been the reason behind the death of the only Stark daughter? Far too often for him to ignore that they had been so ignorant of how selfish they had been when making that plan, Lyanna desiring to keep her freedom and Benjen not wanting his sister to move south though marriage.
"For the last time, Ned, you must make a decision on Jon's future before it is too late! He will be counted as a man in four years, and you know as well as I that there is no way he will stay at Winterfell with both Catelyn and princess Argella as the Lady Stark!"
At the moment, Benjen tried to push his remaining living sibling into a direction that was needed for their nephew though Brandon. There was no way that Jon would be welcomed to stay all his life at Winterfell, that Benjen had realized not long after his arrival to see how the royal visit turned out. Sure, the King had his offspring outside marriage as well, but that did not mean that his legitimate children would be fine with bastards around them, especially if they walked around in a manner that reminded more of a trueborn child.
"He is Brandon's natural son, and I plan to give him a keep with some belonging villages to rule over and the funds to make his own House. Without the Ironborn around, we can finally create more noble Houses here in the North, which Jon could do even as a bastard, if I gave him a new House name to call his own. The equivalent to a landed knight in the south, a very minor House, yes, but still with blood ties to House Stark."
That was true, a keep to call his own home, and the chance to become a bannerman to his cousin Robb as an adult. It was not too bad, actually, for a bastard who had been born after the death of his sire and only his clear Stark resemblance to his father's family revealed the blood connection.
"Fine, but I think it is best fixed before Robb marries the princess. After all, a southern princess would have connections and far more social power even before her marriage, which would be hard to defend him against if Jon displeased her in a way that not even Robb could mend…"
Suddenly a knock on the heavy oak door was heard, and Robert arrived with his oldest daughter behind himself:
"Good that you were already here, Ned! Argella said that she had a list of things she would like to tell you, something she wanted to fix before the wedding in four years!"
Seeing that it was best for him to leave, Benjen bid the King and princess his goodbyes, telling his brother that he would check on how things were for the younger royal children in the court yard near the training area of Winterfell.
"Lord Stark," Argella spoke up in a strong voice while laying down several parchments on his writing desk, "I am well aware of my duty to be a good daughter and marry the spouse chosen for myself by Father, but there are a few things that I feel the need to address already now before they turns worse."
For some reason, Ned got a little unnerved by the steady, light blue glare that went straight into his own eyes. It felt like looking into an ancient soul, far older than the female body it currently had. And if it was something Argella had been blessed with, it was a strong voice that no one could resist listening on.
"I will only say this once, Lord Stark, and you better listen; Right now, your three older children are a joke for their birth status. Robb acts and thinks as if the Ironborn were still around with his duty to fight them and keep them away from the shores of the North, with no further plans for his eventual reign as Lord Stark. That is not acceptable of a future Lord Paramount, who also shall wed a royal princess. The lessons with septa Mordane are forming Sansa into an alarmingly naive maiden who thinks life is like a fairy tale already at this age, which risks making her blind to the cruel sides of life. Despite that she is still in the beginning of being schooled, Arya has a poor habit of being rebellious in the lessons to teach her how to be a lady and not keeping her mouth in check so she comes off as rude, especially with her favorite word seeming to be "stupid", which does not give a good impression for any future suitors for her hand in marriage."
Piece by piece, Argella told Ned of various negative consequences that could possibly happen, if Robb, Sansa and Arya did not improve in the areas that she had mentioned; a Lord Paramount who risked to become a laughing stock because he did not know how to deal with southern visitors like when Lyonel was the King and came to visit his twin sister. Sansa possibly being used as a pawn by others if she did not start seeing behind her romance ideals and failing to see dangers when she trusted the wrong persons. And did Lord Eddard really want Arya to get written down in history as a new version of Lyanna, especially confirming the image his late sister had among many southern nobles based on them witnessing her dumping wine on Benjen at Harrendal, an ill-behaved and rude girl who seems to have no manners at all?
"I am sorry, Lord Stark, but to an outsider, your children are all sheltered and naive about the world outside their home. It must be corrected now, before any lasting damage can happen when it is too late and they are too set in their current behavior. Unless you want to become remembered as a father who sheltered his children from the real world, you need to take actions. Yes, I understand that the loss of your father, brother and sister nearly 13 years ago was horrifying, but you can not always use their fates as an excuse in how to treat your own children as if they were made of glass. Sooner or later, all five of your children will be adults and hopefully all married with your own families, meaning that they will not remain young and innocent forever…"
Suddenly, she stopped talking, staring out through the open window behind Ned and Robert as if there was something she had noticed. Then, as the King looked over his shoulder to see what it was that had caught her attention, in the following moment Argella's eyes narrowed in anger when she saw something to confirm her private guessing from the past days and then Elinor was heard screaming in a surprisingly loud voice:
"HANDS OFF MY BROTHER, DAMN BASTARD!"
Despite her many layers of skirts against the cold and being far from her expected adult height, Argella dashed out from the solar with a speed none of the two adults could match. As Robert took one last glare through the window before following after his daughter, he noticed something odd:
"Is that Lyonel dressed up like Argella in one of her other dresses and having a fist fight with your Snow nephew?!"
Down at the courtyard:
For onlookers, it all had the clear appearance of Jon Snow somehow losing all common sense and actually running straight at princess Argella, with the clear intent of using his fists to beat her. Only for him to get caught in a pair of surprisingly strong hands before the closed fist even touched the face as she quickly turned around and tossed Jon over her shoulder, throwing him to the half-muddy ground and starting to beat the daylight out of the Stark nephew.
"What are you staring at?! Surprised that Argella and I am enough alike to still be able to share the same clothing?" Lyonel asked a shocked Jon, when the clear Baratheon face below the beaded hood revealed the Crown prince's noticeably shorter hair rather than the long hair which the real Argella would have tied up in a long braid. In truth, the royal twins had been very suspicious of how Jon Snow often stared straight at Argella, without hiding the resentment in his eyes when she spent so much time with Robb. So today, Lyonel had borrowed an extra dress of his sister and walked around with Elinor to act as a bait in case Jon would finally try to do something he really should not.
"Get your hands off Lyonel, ill-bred bastard! Father, Father! That Snow bastard tried to attack Lyonel in the belief that he was Argella!"
Elinor was less likely to get into a physical fight like her older twin siblings, but she could draw attention to the scene and summon more witnesses, among them Lord Edmure Tully, lady Lysa Arryn and several others from the royal party.
"What in the names of the Old Gods is going on here?! Jon, what are you doing?! Have you lost your fucking mind all suddenly?" Benjen Stark yelled in fury and not so little fear as well, realizing that there was no way of saving his nephew from suffering some form of punishment for raising his fists against the Crown prince of all people, not since Jon somehow had managed to rip apart the bodice of the dress that Lyonel wore, and if the real Argella indeed had been the one to wear the dress, it would have been impossible to miss some form of sexual assault towards her.
"Lyonel!" Robert called as he arrived, looking between his oldest son and daughter to check so he did not see wrong, "explain to me why you are dressed up like your sister and why this happened."
As Lyonel obeyed, and Elinor, the two Arryn sisters and even septa Holly and septa Rhyone confirmed what they had noticed a lot over the visit so far, the King did his best to not close his fist to personally beat up Jon. There was no mistake that the Snow boy was jealous over that he no longer could be with Robb as he used to, and that Argella was a living proof of the future that the pair had tried to ignore earlier: that Jon would be replaced by the Baratheon princess as the most important person for Robb as a adult though their marriage, and Jon was unwilling to accept that reality.
"Clegane, Tarth. Break his hands for injuring the Crown prince."
"Yes, your majesty."
"No!" a horrified Arya yelled from somewhere in the crowd when Brienne dragged the protesting Jon over to Sandor who stood a nearby tree stump intended to be cut into firewood, "Jon has done nothing wrong! Father, stop them!"
But no pleading helped, and as Catelyn had to hold Arya back lest she do something that got her punished as well, her cousin got all his fingers broken as Sandor borrowed a heavy hammer from the forge to do the deed. As Jon kneeled over from the raw pain in his hands, Robert turned to Benjen;
"First Ranger, I want you to bring your baseborn nephew with you to the Night's Watch and have him join them. If this is how he intended to act against Argella now before he has started to enter manhood or Argella have entered womanhood, then I can not trust him around her in four years when she is a grown woman and able to carry children to Robb Stark."
The present adults did not miss the unspoken meaning behind the words Robert spoke. If Jon actually ended up raping Argella and she fell pregnant then there would be no way of telling who the father was, even if she had slept with Robb in the marriage bed before the sexual assult. And a child with uncertain paternity would never be able to inherit Winterfell and the North as next Lord Stark if it was a boy, and a daughter would be hard to marry off in a good match for the same reasons.
"I shall do so, my King," Benjen said in a voice which revealed his raw disappointment of how Jon had acted. His nephew had just crushed all the plans Ned had for his future, all because he let his emotions and feelings control him, as well failing to recall his history lessons that attacking a member of the royal family would always end in punishment. Just like Lyanna, a small voice in the back of his head whispered as Benjen grabbed the back of Jon's tunic to pull him away from the scene, just like your sister. She refused to accept the coming changes in her life, and look at what this refusal led her; an early grave.
Ned had not said anything, but those who saw his face, could read his emotions surprisingly well in this moment despite that he normally was a bit stoic. His plain disbelief over what Jon had attempted to do, and fear for what this would result in further along, as his bastard nephew loudly protested against his fate and pleading for Lord Stark to do something to change it.
~X~X~X~X~X~X
True enough, when Catelyn went to find her siblings about an hour later when she had finally calmed down a very upset Arya, so did she see her sister and brother being busy in the middle of packing. Even Celia, Amanda and Eorl were trying to help collect clothes and the sort.
"Even if Benjen Stark is bringing that Snow boy away, I am not staying here anymore. My daughters want to return home to Dorne and I refuse to risk that something may happen to my son since he is the only male Arryn left in the direct line," was all Lysa offered as explanation to the packing, pretending to use Eorl's false paternity as a reason to get away from Winterfell. She had seen Eddard Stark trying to talk with Eorl at times, and feared that either he or the King would notice the lack of resemblance to Jon Arryn on her son's face.
"And I want to return home before Lyneese gives birth. I have secured three Northern betrothals to the Frey girls in our care, so we can wait with some other attempts of match-making for a year or so," Edmure added, asking his squire to check so there would be none of his clothing forgotten in the large laundry of Winterfell.
"But...but…" Catelyn started, yet she failed to find any convincing words that would make her siblings stay at least a few more days. Her hope that her children would become friends with their cousins was broken since the three Arryn children would return to Dorne and the Tully children were far too young to even be much fun for the older Stark siblings. And in this moment, she could see how much Lysa or Edmure had changed over the years as well. For Catelyn, who was used to act as the anchor in the Tully family after the death of her mother Minisa when she was only ten years old, this was a harsh wake-up call to the reality that her fond memories of their childhood at Riverrun would never be recreated with the next generation. There was a too wide age gap between Robb, Sansa and their young Tully cousins Axel and Minisa, and Arya had proven herself too much of a tomboy for Celia and Amanda Arryn to form a true friendship with. There could have been some hope with the younger children since all of them, Bran, Rickon, Axel and Ronnel, were boys sans little Minisa, if only the travel distances between Winterfell, Riverrun and the Eyrie meant an awfully long time to make a journey.
And then later that evening, during the noticeable less than cheerful dinner, came the next blow for House Stark:
Somehow Argella and Lyonel had convinced Robert that Robb, Sansa and Arya should spend the next two years at the royal court, to "learn manners and proper company of other nobles around their own ages", as the King said. Normally, this was a great honor, but given what had happened earlier today, Ned and Catelyn did not find any true joy over this order. Robb, already unhappy over that Jon was being ripped away from his life without ever coming back, looked like he wanted to be anywhere else than in the Great Hall at the moment, Sansa looked like she wanted to believe that the visit would be a good memory with time, and Arya naturally protested in manner that once again proved that she was being unruly.
When her husband came to give her a kiss for the night before he went to his own bedchamber, Catelyn admitted some of her unease about everything:
"Bran and Rickon are too young to leave home, so they will remain here. But Ned, I am scared! Things are happening outside our control, and our children will be homesick for Winterfell…"
"I will travel with them south. Perhaps I can see why Robert has changed, and get a better image of what is going on in the Westerlands," Ned promised his wife, hoping that things would resolve itself over time. As long as he had Robb under watch so he did not do anything that could endanger the royal betrothal to Argella, and finding a good husband for Sansa, things would go well.
"Cat. I have sent a message to Maege Mormont this afternoon with a raven. I want Arya to become betrothed to her youngest child, her only son Liam, who is only a year younger than her, and that our second daughter ends up as the next Lady of Bear Island by marriage. I...am afraid of seeing history repeat itself if she ends up marrying south."
Lyanna had been too willful for her own good, and she had ended up dead before her time as a result. Sixteen years of age was nothing compared to the long life his sister could have had otherwise, and she had barely begun to live for real when death claimed Lyanna in childbed.
"I understand, Ned. Then try to find Sansa a good suitor who will treat her well, please? She would be heartbroken if she ended up as a young widow because of some folly love for taking parts in tourneys and the sort."
Wars was not the only way to make newly-wed brides and wives into widows, Ned had to agree. Fatal accidents happened all the time, and he had heard enough tales of promising knights being killed in tourneys.
"Yes, a boy that is not too young or too old. But not a widower, Sansa deserves to be a first-time bride to her husband."
That was all Ned could promise for now.
But in the guest chambers where the royal children slept, something happened that night:
"That bastard boy was not Tar-Minyatur reborn, I hope?"
Prince Aemon had sneaked out from the chamber he shared with the peacefully sleeping Myrcella and Tommen, but his eyes were glowing amber in the night darkness, just like how it would be when Rhaenys had her body temporarily taken over by her previous life Mara, the princess of Kemet.
"No, he was not," Lyonel commented with the voice of Khamûl's second son Meryre, and showing similar glowing eyes, "but I shall admit that his behavior of jealousy reminded a lot of him."
"Better to not take any risks. Boys like him have no idea how pampered they are, unless spelled out to their faces."
Argella and Elinor had also come out in the corridor, and their glowing eyes revealed that their past lives were dominant at the moment. For the two Baratheon princesses was the current selves of princess Bintanath and Isetnofret of Kemet, two younger half-sisters to Mara though other mothers in the royal harem.
"You looked pretty nice in the dress, Meryre. Worked very well from behind when no one saw your face," Aemon smirked in a manner he never did in public, to which he got the response:
"Shut it, Ramses. All four of us here were married when we died, so naturally we would play more attention to the behavior of boys and girls that is close to a certain age. That bastard boy is lucky that he was not one or two years older."
Hearing footsteps coming closer, they hurried back to their guest chambers for sleep. Tomorrow they would finally leave this northern, removed castle and return south, closer to where they would sense the aura of Mara at times.
But one person remained awake for a little longer. It was Brienne, who looked south with a strong instinct to return home. When she opened her eyes to look at the moon, her pupils were glowing amber.
"Sister Mara. We are all sensing that something terrible has fallen upon our father after our deaths. Please, let us try and help you and your descendants in what will come."
Brienne was a woman in this life, but she was the reincarnation of Meryatum, one of the princes of Kemet. It was why she had felt so strongly drawn to the royal children as well Mya Stone, Eric Storm, Shireen and Rhea Baratheon in a manner the normal Brienne could not explain. A sibling bond from a past life they did not know about.
~X~X~X~X~X~X
The journey to the Wall was, to say it simply, miserable for Jon Snow, not the least because his broken hands needed a long time to heal and he needed help with nearly everything he normally would be able to do himself, such as being fed like a baby when he could not hold the food in his bandaged fingers or tying up his trousers when needing to answer the call of nature. Uncle Benjen had not sugar coated his words about how lucky he was for not getting his hands actually cut off for striking the Crown Prince, and how Ned had hoped to give him lands and a keep to call his own.
"You have no one else than yourself to blame for this situation, nephew! And do not think that I will agree to you becoming a ranger, not after showing so plainly that you take things for granted!"
And when they finally arrived to Castle Black, was Jon forcefully reminded of what had happened not fully seven years ago; that all Ironborn boys between the age of ten and sixteen had been spared from death unlike any older brothers and other male adult relatives while their younger brothers below the age of ten and female relatives had been scattered across Westeros to become serfs, but instead sent to the Night's Watch to add to their numbers.
"Stop staring at the lads, boy! They may be Ironborn, but they are all black brothers and hard-working since they know that they could have been beheaded and their headless bodies thrown into a ditch somewhere to become food for crows and gulls."
Jon found himself dragged down in the massive kitchens of Castle Black, where stewards were busy with various duties that would be done by similar staff in a normal castle, keep, manor or reasonably well-off house.
"You will be given an honorary title: First Scullion! And you better start working at once, all those plates shall be needed again at dinner and repeat after each meal."
After dumping Jon near a massive pile of unwashed plates and pots where some slightly older boys already were cleaning them in a big, water-filled barrel with sand, Benjen went back to the upper levels to report to Lord Commander Jeor Mormont about what had happened at Winterfell during the royal visit. Muttering under his breath about how unfair all this was, Jon tried to ignore the pain of his half-healed fingers as he took a plate and tried to copy the working movements of the others.
If Jon had known that he would spend most of the following two decades working as a scullion before finally rising in the kitchen hierarchy to be trusted with serving food at the tables when it was mealtimes, he would have been even more unhappy about the path his life had taken.
~X~X~X~X~X~X
Author note: Given how important horses are in the Rohirric culture and everyday life, I imagine that Eorl was riding in the saddle, in front of Tirwald or Lysa, from the moment that he was able to sit up. Gotta start early if he is to become a true man of Rohan
In canon Sansa does not seem to ride horses that often, so it is simply possible that she may enjoy outdoor activities such as picnics and other social events, but is one of those people who
Yes, in this AU poor Benjen carries the guilt of giving Lyanna the idea to seek up Rhaegar. He had no idea what that suggestion would end up costing House Stark, and joined the Night's Watch as a sort of self-punishment a few months after that Ned had returned home as the new Lord Stark
Liam Momont is the gender swapped version of Lyanna Momont, and I imagine that Ned really does not want Arya to marry south because he is haunted by nightmares that she will try to run away and dying tragically young like her aunt did
The order of stewards is the largest of the three orders of the Night's Watch and they are responsible for an assortment of critical functions, providing vital day-to-day services for their brothers on the wall. They hunt and farm, tend horses, gather firewood, cook meals, make clothing, maintain weapons, and bring the supplies needed by the Night's Watch from the south
A scullion is the male version of a scullery maid, who was the lowest-ranked and often the youngest of the female domestic servant
In case anyone wonders; Jon is NOT going to become Lord Commander of the Night's Watch in this AU. His official history of taking the black after attacking the Crown prince, the next King of Westeros, will not be ignored by Jeor Mormont, Benjen and the other commanders, and his knowledge that the late Brandon Stark is his father as well that he was raised as a true-born son alongside Robb despite that he was born to a baseborn mother whose father is from House Blackwood here, have given Jon some serious entitlement mannerisms that is coming off as him rubbing his family connections in the face of those less lucky in life. So Jon will be struck at the lowest rank for most of his life, to teach him humility, break his pride and that a privileged upbringing alongside a lone-wolf attitude is not always going to help him win friends or allies