Inside Catelyn's bedchamber, Ned opens the room's high narrow windows. A blast of cold night air blows into the chamber. On the bed, Catelyn pulls the furs up to her chin. Ned breathes deeply, taking the cold into his lungs, staring out into the dark. Then he turns back to face her.
"I'll refuse him," Ned said.
"You cannot," Catelyn pleaded him to reconsider. "You must not."
"You said yourself I could tell him 'no'," Ned continued to go on with his refusal. "I'm a northman. I belong here, not down south in that rats' nest they call a capital."
"He would make our daughter Queen," Catelyn added of what she has plan for Sansa marrying Joffrey.
Ned turns away, facing the darkness again. She softens and is about to go to him when a loud knock comes at the door.
"I gave orders not to be disturbed,"
From the other side of the door, a sentry answers. "It's Maester Luwin calling, my lord. He insists."
Ned slips on a heavy robe. "Send him in."
The door opens and Maester Luwin enters. He waits until the door is shut behind him before speaking.
"My lord, pardon for disturbing your rest," Luwin respectfully apologized. "I have been left a message."
"Been left? By whom?" Ned asked, concerned of this message.
"There was no messenger, my lord," Luwin explained. "Only a carved wooden box, left on a table in my observatory while I slept. This was concealed in a false bottom." He draws a tightly rolled paper from his loose sleeves. Ned holds out his hand.
"Let me have it, then," Ned insisted
"A thousand pardons, my lord," Luwin added more to this message. "The message is marked for the eyes of the Lady Catelyn alone."
Ned isn't used to being denied by anyone below the rank of king. He considers the old man for a second and steps aside, allowing Maester Luwin to place the paper on the bedside table. Luwin bows and begins to retreat.
"Stay," Ned insisted.
Catelyn looks at the blue wax moon-and-falcon seal on the paper with foreboding. "It's from my sister. Something's wrong. Why would she hide the letter? They said she left the capital right after he died."
"Open it," Ned said.
Catelyn breaks the seal. Her eyes move over the words. For a moment, she is confused- then a smile flits across her lips. "She took no chances. When we were girls, we had a private language."
"Can you still read it?" Ned asked.
"Yes..." Catelyn nodded as her smile disappears as she reads.
Catelyn wraps herself in one of the bed furs and pads toward the hearth. She tosses the paper in the fire and watches to make sure it burns through.
"She says Jon Arryn was murdered," Catelyn sounded shaken by this. "By the Lannisters. By the Queen.
The accusation shocks Ned. He tries to rationalize it away.
"Your sister is sick with grief," Ned stated. "She doesn't know what she's saying."
"Lysa isn't easy, but she's never been a fool," Catelyn described about her sister.
"This is madness," Ned sighed.
"You say you love Robert like a brother," Catelyn reminded of his relationship with the King. "Would you leave your brother surrounded by Lannisters?"
Ned looks to Maester Luwin, hoping for a different opinion.
"The Hand of the King has great power, my lord," Luwin described the authority. "Power to investigate. And to punish, if need be."
"You must go south with him," Catelyn deeply insisted for her husband to take on the role as Hand of the King and solve the case of how Jon Arryn was murdered by the Lannisters. "Become his Hand and learn the truth."
"I am not your dog to command, my lady," Ned tried to refuse.
But Ned's words are belied by the resignation in his face. She is right and he knows it. He sits heavily in a chair beside the hearth.
"My father went south once, to answer the summons of a king," Ned remembered. "He never came home again."
"A different time," Luwin recalled the tale. "A different king."
Ned says nothing, watching the flames devour the wood.
