AN: warning for mention of septic miscarriage
...
When Sansa wakes again, it is Berena who sits in the chair and knits by the light of the heart fire. Sansa watches her for a while, thinking that the practice looks interesting if rudimentary. Servants and commons knit woolens; high-born girls and ladies sew with fine stitches and do fancy needlework such as embroidery. She remembers when she was expecting her first child, how the Greatjon had her choose from bolts of fine wool and even velvets brought from White Harbor for her gowns. Northerners did not usually care for finery but he had seemed to like to make gifts to her. Her gowns were made for her, and still are; leaving her the choice of cuts and colours, though she finishes them with her own embroidered embellishments. Now she sews and embroiders her daughter's little dresses and she stitches the Umber sigil or bold borders in Umber colours on her son's tunics. But Young Eddard wants to wear furs like his father and Sansa lets him, and smiles to see it. Though he is a big boy for his age and has the look of an Umber, his head of auburn curls remind her of her little brother Rickon.
As she is watching her, Berena glances her way and rises when she sees that Sansa is awake.
"Can I bring you anything, milady?"
Sansa nods. "Water, please."
The old woman helps her to sit up and holds the pewter cup for her as she drinks thirstily. "The maester is like to come in the morning and check your arm and leg, milady."
Sansa's bound limbs feel even stiffer than the rest of her body and now that she is awake, she finds the splints uncomfortable. But she knows her fever is gone and her pain is less, so much less than it had been.
"Berena, do you know who found me?"
"I only know it was a soldier from the garrison. The lord had every man looking and was ready to send them out into the winter night beyond the castle walls when old Mors…beggin' your pardon, milady: the lord's uncle Mors, he remembered you was always asking after the stores in the north tower. That'd be where they found you, milady."
The winter stores, Sansa thought now, and she feels ashamed because she would ask about the stores in the tower to know if she could visit there and be with Lord Jon without being discovered.
"I- I fell…" she begins to say.
"Aye, milady: that's what they say. Do you remember what happened? The maester said you mightn't."
"I- Yes, I remember falling," she says and then she lies. Will I never be done with lying? "I thought they were to bring stores and then I remembered it was not that day and so turned around to go back… My foot caught in my gown," she is whispering to recount what happened now, because it frightens her still. She remembers her terror, the sickening instant she realized that she could not stop herself, that she would be hurt, possibly killed; but mostly she was certain then that she would be caught in the tower and her shameful secret found out. Just when I had resolved to do right. But Mors' memory, and her own lies, had saved her, in every way.
She looks at Berena now. "I could not stop myself falling: I knew it would be very bad…somehow…I just knew."
"T'was very bad, milady," the old woman agrees quietly. "But you're mending now; and that's what matters."
"Was…" she hesitates but she needs to know. "Was my lord…was he…"
"He was," she says simply. "Never thought to ever see fear in that man's face until they told him they couldn't find you, milady; and then again when they did find you."
"But why would he think to send men outside the walls at night, and in winter? I would never have ventured beyond the walls without escort. My lord commanded so when I came to live at Last Hearth."
"Wildlings, milady," she tells her almost as though she were simple. "They was able to come near very recently, remember? And Mors always thinks it'd be wildlings at fault for anything; but a missing woman…well, he went on so long and so loud that you must've been carried off that the lord almost looked to believe him. You know about Mors' girl, milady?"
Sansa nods; even as a girl at Winterfell, everyone knew that once an Umber girl that been abducted by wildlings and never seen again. She closes her eyes to think of her husband's ordeal. He feared that I had been carried off by wildlings. Though she supposes that believing that she was with another man who was a wildling is better than knowing she had been with his own son. Now she remembers that Berena said that the maester would come in the morning.
"Is it night? Where is my lord?"
"He sleeps in your old chamber, milady; he is too big for any pallet we brought and so he slept sitting up in this chair until you woke earlier."
She smiles faintly to remember. "Like a bear," she murmurs to herself.
The old woman smiles at that as well. "Aye, milady; I expect he can be very much like a bear…and so you should be his maiden fair, then."
Sansa smiles wider now but then winces at the pain. "May I…could you bring me my looking glass, Berena."
The old woman pats her hand and shakes her head. "Best you wait a bit more, milady: you're still swollen and bruised on one side though it's much less than it was. Your eye was swelled shut and you was all purple and blue. You took quite a beating when you fell, I'd say, milady."
I have taken beatings before this, she thinks stubbornly, and an entire king's court looked upon me. But Berena is holding out something to her, something that is not her looking glass.
"A water skin I left to freeze outside, milady: wrap it in this linen and hold it to your face and it will bring the swelling down and ease the pain a mite. And I'll brew you more willow bark tea anytime you feel the need too," she tells her kindly.
Sansa takes it slowly and her eyes begin to brim with warm tears. "You must think me a horrible monster to ask about my face when…when I…" The tears course down her cheeks now and she cannot stop them any more than she can stop the renewed sobbing that shakes her shoulders and wracks her body with more of the same deep, dull pain she had felt the first time she cried to learn that she had lost her child.
"There, there," the woman says soothingly as she rubs Sansa's back and holds her gently. "I couldn't never think ill of you, milady. You were a pretty maid and now you're a beautiful woman and you want to stay that way…doubtless you believe that's why people love you; but it's not. You're sweet and gentle and kind-hearted; and you're brave and you do your duty by your family and your people, and you do it well. But you'll be pretty again soon enough; why, even with that bruising your looks put many a lady to shame. Now, now," she soothes her again.
"Buh-but, but I lost my buh-buh-babe," she blurts miserably through her huffing sobs, "and it was all my fuh-fuh-fault."
"Nay, milady: an accident is no one's fault so don't you be blaming yourself for it. I know how you love your children. I know this is a hard blow for you. Mourn your babe, milady: that is right, but don't be thinking there was aught you could have done different 'cause there weren't."
"M-my- my lord is so sad," she whispers hoarsely. She can still see his sad face.
"As is right, milady: it was as much his babe as yours. But men bear these losses better; and though he mourns as well, I expect he was far more worried to think he'd lose you."
"But why would he thuh-thuh-think that? Wuh-was I so very buh-bad as that?"
Berena puts her strong old hands on her shoulders to steady her and speaks plainly: "The fever was bad, milady: it came on quick and held strong Fevers can be deadly dangerous for a woman who has just birthed or lost a child. You remember from the birthing chamber: that after the babes came out there was the rest? It needs to leave the body as well, else it rots and turns to poison inside you."
"P-poison," she repeats dumbly. "You…you gave me something to drink…" She looks at her now.
The old woman nods though she seems surprised that Sansa knows this. "Aye, milady, it was moon tea…to help what did not bleed out leave your body. I feared the death of you if I hadn't; and a slow, wretched death it can be, I know."
Sansa thinks again. "Did my lord know this?"
"He did, milady, and he helped me too, as did the Lord Jon. We needed three to sit you up and hold you and get it in you. They left so I could tend you after, and they kept watch for the maester… He's a good enough man with most sickness and the soldiers' wounds milady, but like many he knows little of women compared to a midwife and mother who's seen all. Your lord trusts me with that; some men don't," she states simply.
Sansa instinctively believes her words to be true. She knows that there are men who prefer to believe all women are stupid, or at least that they cannot possibly know as much or more than men. Joffrey said I was stupid; he certainly would not have let me be tended had I fallen ill, much less have helped. He would have enjoyed watching me die and thought himself well rid of me.
"My lord and Lord Jon?" she asks now.
"The lord and I thought to send for your maid to help when Lord Jon came to see about you, milady; he had rode to the village before supper and only just returned. He was a comfort to his father, he was; and told him the gods would not be so cruel as to take you now. When the lord asked him why 'now', he flushed and stammered like a green boy to say that he'd heard talk in the village tavern that the lord and his young lady were…were…making each other very happy of late, milady," she finishes delicately.
"Oh," Sansa flushes herself now. It was not enough to order them from the hallway, it seems: my lord can be heard peaking in the yard if not all the way to the village. She is embarrassed but strangely pleased as well. But when she thinks again that both her husband and her lover…former lover…needed to help to save her life, she is suddenly overwhelmed and though Berena is kind she wishes to be alone.
"Might I trouble you for the willow bark tea now, Berena? I- I feel quite…"
"Right away, milady," she bustles despite her age. "Shall I send your maid to sit with you?"
Sansa shakes her head. "I thank you but, no. I will be fine."
But she is not fine. I know how you love your children, the old woman had said, and she did truly. But young Eddard had been conceived on a night of fear and pain with man who, though her husband, was a near-stranger; and she had carried him when feeling desperately lonely and unloved. She had not wanted to be married, or a mother, or at Last Hearth; she had wanted to be a girl in Winterfell again, if only for a little longer. And Serena, her little bird daughter, had been got out of duty and carried with an attempt at a contented acceptance that had, in truth, been closer to a dull resignation. They had been at one time her only happiness; and even that happiness had not been enough to keep her from the arms of another man.
The child she had lost had been her first truly wanted child. Though it brought the fear and shame of her deceit along with the possible taint of bastardy, she had nevertheless had felt the joy that it may have been her lover's; and then she had felt the hope that it may yet have been her husband's, and that she could begin to somehow redeem herself by giving him a son or daughter that would make them both equally happy. Now the fear and the shame remained while the joy and the hope were all lost, as surely as her babe was lost.
He was a comfort to his father, he was; and told him the gods would not be so cruel as to take you now.
The gods had not taken her, as Lord Jon had promised his father; but they had taken her babe and that seemed crueler still, for Sansa knew her failings were no fault of the babe's. But the gods could not have taken her without the child, and so they had killed it to punish her and then made it turn to poison inside her.
Love is poison. Cersei had told her that, Cersei who watched her own son die and then died herself and Sansa had believed that it was the punishment of the gods.
The gods are just, she had thought when she had seen those who had killed her father and had tormented her executed. How could she think them just then and cruel now? She had been left to suffer not only the loss of her babe but the sadness of two men, one of whom was its father, and the knowledge that no good had come of her weakness and terrible trespass. Now there was only sadness and loss and pain and her terrible, horrible guilt and grief. My fault…again.
"The gods are just," she whispers to herself now. But justice can be so cruel.