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Silver Tears of the Moon
The Plea
The sun had long gone down as Astrea Malbrooke kept talking. Baelor asked questioned and listened attentively, recognizing the truth behind her words, or at least what she believed was true. Of course, by the Andal law her plea should be satisfied without question. Her eldest girl was her father's heir. But Baelor knew too well that might made right. Not everyone in the Vale would bow to a woman if there was another option, their late lord's daughter or not. He had little idea just how things were in this part of the old Arryn kings' land. And there was another truth as well stealing through her well-thought wording: a part of the girl's problems were due to her, Astrea. The mother. Has she tried to introduce some Dornish ways there and been met with a refusal, Baelor wondered. A quick look at his mother told him that she had her questions as well, although Mariah didn't interrupt the young woman either.
Aegon and his newfound cousins were whispering among themselves but gave an ear to the conversations of the adults as well and Baelor wondered if Astrea had noticed. Could she be indifferent to the not so flattering picture that she was painting of their homeland?
"Do you think they should be listening?" he asked when she had paused to catch her breath.
She didn't think twice. "My daughters are quite young but I don't think I'm telling them something that they don't know, Your Grace. They lived it."
And they would have lived far more of it, Baelor thought. Her eldest daughter would have been wedded and bedded in no time at all if they hadn't left… "How did you leave?" he asked. "Don't tell me that your husband's cousin just let you go?"
She reached for the goblet of Arbor red that he had poured her. When receiving suppliants in private, Baelor usually had them seated, instead of having them stay on bent knee. He thought that a part of her fear, however well-disguised, might have faded but he wasn't sure.
"We left at night," she said and then checked herself. "We fled at night."
Clearly, she wasn't pleased to admit this demeaning detail but at least she saw it for what it was.
"Ser Polander knew that I had no friends at court and my grandfather's visit two years ago didn't lead to reconciliation with my family. The thought that I might come here despite being unwelcome never crossed his mind, so we weren't watched as closely as we should have been."
"And you were going where?" he asked.
She clearly didn't understand him. She gave him a look of confused violet eyes that under other circumstances might have been beautiful, alluring, haunting – but they were not. Her recent worries that she admitted freely and the ones from before that Baelor thought she was keeping to herself had turned her into an exhausted woman who had aged before her time. She looked as old as her sister should have been now.
"After you presented your plea to me," Baelor helped her out of her predicament. "I take it that you don't actually have the means to afford life at court?"
Embarrassment bloomed over the pale woman's cheeks. Had she been unable to secure that she'd be provided for in all her years of marriage? Baelor felt a surprising surge of pity. She had been supposed to be the living link between the two sides of the Red Mountains – and she was now an impoverished widow relying on his justice alone after having become estranged from anyone who, by the laws of nature, should have been her defender. At sixteen, she had gambled all she had on love – and she had clearly lost.
"My brother and I might not be on the best of terms," she finally said, "but he won't turn me away from Starfall. And my girls would be safe."
Of course, to a mother that would be paramount. When there was land to be won, men would happily bed an eleven-year-old and not think twice.
Silence wrapped the solar as snugly as darkness had the world beyond the walls of Riverrun and yet, again like darkness that was still broken by the light of torches and stars that shone unusually big, it was punctuated by the splash of the rivers, a sound that had been disturbing Baelor's thoughts ever since his arrival at the castle. But Astrea seemed to listen to it hungrily, soak it in, draw strength from it.
"Why didn't you turn to my brother to help you with me?" Baelor asked at last, genuinely interested. "No matter what had taken place before, he's a just man."
"He is," she agreed which was no answer at all.
She was nothing like the bright girl of promise, laughter and hopes Baelor remembered from his own youth, and like always when encountered with such a change, he felt a faint stinging of helplessness. A small light had been lost to the world and misery and war had claimed a new prize in the battle for people's realms.
The sudden cries of the children brought their attention to the window that they had opened to see better what was outside. Astrea gasped and stared eagerly. In the velvet blue of the sky dotted with hundreds pearls of stars, a small radiance was making its shooting way. A falling star. "Make a wish," Astrea urged the three children. "Quick before it's fallen!"
She was now smiling, holding her breath. Making her own wish. Was that what she had been taught at Starfall? That a wish made under a falling star would always be granted? In the candlelight, washed in her excitement, she looked like a beauty, years fallen off her, revealing the girl that she had been.
When the star died and the window was closed, she turned back, once again the beaten down woman who still fought back and ashamed by this moment of undisguised naivete.
"Do you have your request written down?" Baelor asked, pretending that nothing unusual had happened.
"I will," she said quickly. "I'll send it to you tomorrow, with all the details, Your Grace."
He nodded. "Would you find Lady Malbrooke a proper accommodation, Lady Mother?" he asked.
"Of course," Mariah said. "She can be placed with my ladies. I'll love having her." She smiled. "And Maekar was right. I think the girls would love to meet their cousins."
Baelor gave the children a quick look and saw that his mother was right. Children's ability to overcome grief and horrors always amazed him. Now the two girls looked as if they had never known fear – and Aegon was ready to take them to his sisters, the fact that he had no idea where they were installed not a moment's bother.
Astrea smiled. For a moment, her face was lit up by the lively charm that had made so many smile just by watching her. "I hope so," she said simply and rose to curtsey and leave. "Thank you, Your Grace."
"No," Baelor said. "I thank you." For, as he had listened to her eloquent plea and watched the pain of a past that he still didn't know try to emerge, only to be pushed back without her breaking her stride, he had been momentarily distracted from the grip of his own despair.
The chamber that she was placed in was a small one but it had a tiny window and two mattresses – one for her and another one for the girls. Elsbet tried to protest that she should have a bed for herself because she was bigger than her mother but for now, it was just an untruth. In two years, though… Astrea was just so grateful that no matter what happened from now on, in two years' time her daughter would be a girl flowering, possibly, instead of a veteran wife of the man trying to cheat her out of her inheritance.
Malena made the beds and when Astrea told her that she could go to sleep now, she collapsed on the floor and soon, the chamber resounded with her snoring. The girls muttered rebelliously for some time that they didn't want to sleep by candlelight but with their mother, that was a thing that couldn't be disputed. When Astrea startled awake in the dead of night, she needed to break from her resurging nightmare as quickly as possible and darkness made it worse.
She had thought that the girls' excitement upon meeting the King and their newfound cousins would keep them awake for a while but they went to sleep the moment their heads hit the pillow. Astrea closed her eyes and exhaustion claimed her almost immediately.
The next morning was devoted entirely to writing the plea with her case. She had everything fully formed in her head, so why was she always dissatisfied with what came under her pen? It was not expressive enough; it was too expressive; she placed too much value on the Andal law; she had only cited the Maiden of the Vale to exemplify her point. The pile of discarded parchments was getting higher and wider until Malena warned her that she'd be left without one. Perhaps Astrea should have written her plea while still at Golden Stream. But no, she couldn't have taken the risk to have her intentions discovered.
She was so focused in her work that she barely pay notice to the children's prolonged absence. But when she finally looked up, deciding to have a little break from her efforts, the silence at the other side of the door struck her as unusual. At court, the way she remembered it, there had been always life and noise in the Queen's apartments. Now, it all sounded as dead as the King. The old one. Though, truth be told, the new one didn't look much alive either. Not like the young man whom she had first seen at Starfall when she had been a child. Could a man who was dead inside give a new life to a realm that needed it so very much? She went to the window and stared at the swift river, now crowded with boats and barges interrupting the white shield the sun threw over it. She almost felt like at home.
A knock at the door had her rise to answer. The girls had finally come back. "Where have you been…" she started and then stopped, an invisible sword cutting her words in.
"Who were expecting?" her brother asked and when she didn't reply, added, "May I come in?"
Silently, she stepped aside. "I didn't know you were at court," she said, surprised at how calm her voice was. "How did you find me?"
"I only arrived this morning," he said. "The Queen told me that you were here, of course."
Even in her shock, Astrea noticed something curious. Maekar could have told him as well. When she had last seen them, they had been on very good terms. Had something happened to make them avoid each other?
"What are you doing here?" she asked, trying not to stare at him too hungrily, although it was hard with the memories pressing over her from all sides. Of course, he was much changed and grown older, yet she would recognize him everywhere. He…
"In your letter, you told me that you needed help," he said. "I figured out that having a letter sent there wouldn't be in your best interests."
His voice was even but he couldn't quite contain the disdain at there. And he didn't even know half of it. Glorious relief made her knees weak. No matter what would happen from now on, he'd have her back. And when his arms came about her, she listened to the river and knew that soon, soon, she'd be standing in her own home, listen to the Torentine singing its own enticing song.
"Did you write it yourself?"
Astrea gave the King a look of surprise. "I did, Your Grace," she said guardedly. Was the document not convincing enough? Not shaped up the right way? Perhaps she should have enlisted the help of a maester but where could she have found him? She certainly hadn't been keen on using Lady Tully's. Maesters were supposed to leave behind their old loyalties when forging their chains but she didn't even know what this one's loyalties had been.
He glanced at her before he resumed reading. Astrea swallowed, staring at the warm day outside. Being with the Queen's ladies was where she wanted to be, even if they would have kept prodding and needling her for any details of her sudden reemergence at court. She had once sailed smoothly over those waters, she knew how to deal with them. She didn't know what to expect of this man, this King. Perhaps she shouldn't have put such trust in his chivalric reputation or the biased memories of a young girl and even younger child. People still talked about her match as a great romance, after all. She breathed the aroma of the purple flowers placed all around in his solar and tried to keep her calm.
"It's very well written," he said finally, putting the parchment down, and the icy hand squeezing her heart relaxed a little.
"So you find it… convincing?" she breathed.
He smiled. "When you have the law on your side, it's hard not to. I'll take care to have your daughter installed as the lawful lady of Golden Stream, my lady… and Ser Polander won't be her guardian."
"Will you grant me this as well?" she pressed, ordering herself not to lick her lips, dry as they were.
"I can't see anyone worthier," the King replied and she wondered why she had thought that might be a problem. He was the son of the woman who would have ruled Dorne in her own right, after all.
She curtsied. "You're very magnanimous, Your Grace," she said simply but with deep feeling.
He didn't put an end to the audience and that surprised her. Instead, he pointed her at a chair at the opposite side of the table. "So, what are your plans now, my lady?" he asked. "Now that you have guardianship and the ruling of your husband's estate?"
"Ruling it," she said simply. "Taking care of my children." Surely those were worthy tasks?
"And nothing else? You're still a young woman."
She fell silent. No matter how benevolent he was, she couldn't tell him that she intended to take a lover as discreetly as possible if she ever needed one. No matter his looks, he couldn't be this Dornish. He'd be shocked. She's make her chances worse.
"Have you ever thought of a new match?" he asked.
"Sometimes," she replied carefully. Was this the price for his generosity? Giving her to someone he needed to win over? "Do you have someone in mind, Your Grace?"
'Yes," he said. "Me."
She stared at him, the stunned exclamation dying in her throat before she could voice it. She was even surprised that she hadn't thought about it before. She was actually the perfect match for him, up to the looks that could pass for Valyrian. Sure, her ancestry was hardly illustrious enough for a queen but it wouldn't be as great a problem as it might have been otherwise, Dyanna's match to Maekar paving the way. And there would be no danger for Maekar's sons to put a claim to the sons she'd give Baelor with the support of their mother's House. There was just one obstacle – just one but a giant one.
"I am very flattered, Your Grace, but there is something about me that makes me quite unsuitable."
He looked suddenly curious. "Nothing that the men and women of the Vale in my court told me indicated such a thing."
Because it was old and forgotten? Because, despite ruining her life, it had been something that happened ever so often? She looked him straight in the eye. "You need heirs, Your Grace. And I've already failed to keep my son alive."
His eyes became softer. "No more than I did," he said. "The Great Spring Sickness was something that was more powerful than any of us."
Astrea shook her head. "I am not talking about this son," she said. "I'm talking about my first one." She paused and then said it without preamble, throwing it at him as if he had been the one who had failed at keeping them safe. "When I finally gave birth to a son, we were all so joyous. It lasted for a few hours. Because then, I fell asleep with him in my arms." She swallowed. "I smothered my babe, Your Grace. They found him dead under my body as I slept, oblivious."
He went pale, drawing back instinctively. Just the reaction that she had expected! No matter how well-known such accidents were, people found little mercy in their hearts for such mothers. At the end of it, he wasn't so different. "Am I still the woman you'd want to give birth to your heirs?"
He didn't say anything – and he didn't need to, Astrea thought.