The firelight casts shadows across the ceiling of their room in the inn and Sansa stares up at them and thinks how sinister it looks, like dark figures rearing up to corner and to frighten her. She cannot sleep: all she can see when she closes her eyes is the terrible image of Mors, huge and drunk and mercilessly angry with grief and loss, hulking over the figure of a girl and lashing her with a hickory switch or a leather strap until she bleeds and screams and cries.
Not a word did he say…
She draws a quivering breath and bites her lips so she does not cry. She wants very much to cry: for the maid, for Mors' daughter, for Mors even…and for her lord. She would like to believe that he would have been braver, or more honorable; but then she remembers her own faults and how much pain they have caused: to herself, and to others.
Sansa, he had asked her when she had spoken of her guilt over her father's death, have you carried this with you all this time?
She wonders if he has been carrying this inside of himself, all of this time. She shuts her eyes tightly, and she feels herself shake and the tears leak out and run down the side of her face into her ears.
"Milady," Berena whispers next to her, "don't you feel angry at him now: it were so very long ago…"
Sansa swallows carefully and whispers back to her: "I am not angry at him; I- I feel bad for him, Berena. I feel bad for all of them."
"You've a kind heart, milady. Don't think he did not feel bad himself then: it were him who led many of the patrols that kept on looking for Mors' girl, and they went out most every day and night for near a moon's turn. Some of them went as far as the Wall too. Mors would somedays stumble out afoot, deep in his cups; he'd be meaning to search for his girl but they'd find him on their way back, passed out drunk in the snows. That'd be when he lost his eye too: a crow took'im for dead and pecked it out so didn't he just grab it and bite the darned thing's head off. But it were all for no good: the girl was gone and not comin' back. The morning the old lord had to call a halt to the search, the young lord up and walked out of the hall and out the gates of the castle. Found him in the godswood the next morning, near dead from cold and drink, he was." She pauses now and then almost sounds like she might laugh. "Didn't think you could kill an Umber with neither cold nor drink, but he came right close that time. T'was milady who nursed him back: she spent many a day, all day shut up with him until he were better. I expect they came to terms in that time, for he treated her with some respect after; and if he kept up with other women still it were on the quiet."
"She sounds like she was a fine, strong lady, Berena."
"She was that and all, milady. But it were good of him too: he learned how his words and deeds could hurt others, and he learned the hard way. He treated folks kinder after that and…spared a thought for them. It helped make him a better lord too, when the old lord passed on. Of course, he's still every bit an Umber: hale and hearty and he'll rail and shout and he's got a fierce pride and a fiercer temper, but he can be right kind and gentle too…as I expect you know," she seems to prompt Sansa.
When Sansa does not answer, the old woman sighs and continues whispering across the bolster: "We all of us make mistakes, milady, and some mistakes are worse than others and can't be fixed; but they can be learned from, and make us better…teach us to do what is right. The lord leaned that and changed his ways a'cause of it. I reckon that'd be the best anyone can do, milady."
"I think you are right, Berena," Sansa whispers tearfully. "I think that is the best we can ever hope for when we make such…such terrible mistakes: to change ourselves for the better; and pray that we do not hurt others again."
Though it is dark and shadowed, Sansa can tell that Berena is looking at her. "Goodnight," she whispers and sniffles before turning her back to her in the feather bed. She does not want to be with Berena, or her maid, or in this bed in this room in this inn so far from Last Hearth and her lord. She wants to be beside him this night: she wants him to hold her in his great arms and she wants to hold him back and to comfort him. She wants to feel safe and protected and believe that nothing bad will ever happen to either of them again; but instead they are far apart and facing a terrifying enemy that could keep them apart forever.
Please, she implores the gods, I want to make up to him what I did. I want to make him happy; he deserves to be happy…just…please.
She sleeps only fitfully that night, frightened that she will dream of Kings Landing again after so long. At table in the inn the next morning she is quiet and listless and picks sparingly at her plate of eggs and fried bread. Berena prompts her to eat.
"'Tis a long day ahead, milady, and we may not stop again 'til nightfall; best get your fill when you can."
"Eat, Mama," Serena smiles to her with a mouth full of eggs.
"I will, Serena; but you must not speak with your mouth full. My little bird will be a little lady, yes?"
Her daughter opens her mouth to answer again but then shuts it and nods instead. After she swallows, she looks around the hall of the inn and asks: "Where Da?'"
"Your Da…your father needed to stay at home, Serena; but we'll see him again," she tries to comfort her. Eddard looks up from his plate now to her, and she sees he is not convinced by her words. "I miss him too," she tells him.
Her children are restless in the sledge and so she tells them stories and sings to them and they all play at teaching Serena new words before they finally fall asleep from the steady rocking of the sledge with Sansa's maid snoring softly between them. Berena smiles wearily.
"I thought they'd never quiet down but travel be wearying, even on babes," she whispers. The wind is blowing coldly and sometimes gusts of sparkly snowflakes blow in through the gaps in the heavy curtains. They brush them from the cloaks and fur lap coverings.
"It is," Sansa acknowledges. "Berena?"
"Yes, milady?"
"I wonder…if I might…"
"Ask me what you like, milady. We've plenty of time to pass, and there's no secrets about what happened then; as I said before, it were only a long time ago."
"Yes," Sansa looks at her maid fast asleep, "but there is also talk in the castle and, well, I prefer-"
"I understand, milady."
"Thank you, Berena." She hesitates nevertheless before asking the question that haunts her. "What…what became of the maid…after she was…punished?"
'She were flung from the castle, though it were winter still. Someone handed over her cloak and her few things in a bundle and she were put out the gates with her bloody dress still on her back. Out she went, never to be seen nor heard from again, though some soldier who went to the Wall told tales that she were in Mole's Town but it were no mean feat if she made it so far on her own…unless she had a hand from a soldier or other man."
"Do you think it possible that my lord…that he may have found and helped her?"
Berena purses her lips and then shakes her head. "I wouldna know, milady; for if he did none spoke of it to be certain. She for sure never would'a found work in a castle again. Folks knew why the patrols were out, and ravens were sent out to mountain families to ask for word of the girl or any wildlings about. It were all too dire to keep secret," she relates to Sansa.
"Of course," Sansa agrees. "Even as a girl in Winterfell, the tale was still told, though it was meant to make us wary of wildlings and to keep us from wandering off alone, the girls especially."
"I fear there'd always be danger in that, milady; wildlings or no," the old woman states firmly.
Sansa looks across to Serena who is sleeping next to her maid; and thinks of how she would like her to fly away someplace safe but she wonders if such a place even exists in the world. "I- I fear that you are right, Berena."
The old woman smiles somewhat now. "The lord loves his little girl, milady: he won't stand for nothing to happen to her. Never fear in that."
Sansa smiles herself now. "He does, doesn't he? It is so very touching to see; and he is so good with her. Some men care naught for daughters, I have heard."
She remembers that she had once feared that she would only give Joffrey girls and not sons; and then she thinks of the Greatjon's daughters, and how they had welcomed her kindly and invited her to sit and sew with them when she was pregnant with Eddard, and how they had admired her skills with a needle. But they had both left soon after her arrival when the eldest was wed. Sansa had even helped her to finish her wedding gown. But she had not seen them since then, for she had not travelled with her husband to see them because she had been with child each time and the maester advised against travel in her condition. But she knew they did not lack affection for their father; and that he returned it in kind.
Berena sighs faintly. "The lord and his first lady had their first girl-babe sometime after all the trouble; and you can believe he felt blessed and curst together to have her. She were the first girl born to an Umber since Mors's girl, you see. That'd be when he truly started to respect milady: he knew nothin' about raising girls and so deferred t'her for the first time…and t'me too," she looks up at Sansa with a wry smile. "Not for the last time neither: he could see we knew what it were all about. Ask your Ma or Berena, he'd tell them; and not a word agin us were permitted. He'd chastise them only with firm words 'bout respect; he never raised a hand nor that great voice of his to those two girls, not never; and his sons were forbidden to as well. T'were milady that had the stronger hand with them; and by his consent." The old woman nods assuredly now, showing her approval of the Greatjon's fathering of his daughters.
Sansa smiles a wry smile of her own, and Berena only lifts her brow. "Forgive me, but it sound so much like the way my lord treated me when I came to Last Hearth…except for the- the bedding, of course," she blushes to remember.
The old woman makes a sniffing sound, and Sansa is not certain if she is amused or disgusted. "Aye, your bedding," she acknowledges now, "that were not a fatherly doing," she says somewhat sourly.
"He…he did try his best to be gentle. He thought…that is, there had been talk-"
"I know about the talk, milady; though it were clear that you were a maid when wed…and bedded. I tended you myself," she reminds Sansa.
"I know. I remember; and I am grateful to you. I know that you disapproved my lord's decision to…to forge ahead-"
Berena laughs once at that. "Forge ahead, did her? Did you pray to the Smith god from down South to protect you then? I told him you were too young, maiden or no; but most especially if you were not…" she purses her lips again.
"Yes," Sansa tells her, "he told me."
Berena smiles almost wistfully, and every wrinkle in her aged face draws upward and she looks upon Sansa with something close to tenderness.
"You must know, milady, with all I've told you, that you were what the lord had always wanted: a beauty with a gentle nature, dainty even with your height, and such a feminine and refined lady. A Stark of Winterfell too: a real Northern princess, you were. I think even a skinny stable boy could'a knocked him over when he saw you ride into the yard that day. He was right smitten with you."
Sans smiles gently and turns to look at her children, his children.
"It be a good thing that you learned to return his affection in time, milady; and though I expect he were always happy with you, he'd be much happier now…" she stops short because she knows that no one is terribly happy now. "I meant to say, milady, that I you also help him to be a better man, without him needing to hurt for it."
Sansa cannot but help thinking again to all the times that she has hurt, because she wanted things such as gentler siblings, a beautiful splendid life, to be a queen, and mostly to be loved with the love she had heard of in songs. She had wanted them so badly that she had failed to see what she already had. Now she wanted other things, but what she wanted most has to give: to give her service to her lord and his people, to give a good and safe and happy life to her children, and mostly she wanted to give love to her husband. And that was the most splendid life she could imagine.
Though this realization makes her both sad and happy, Sansa needs to work to keep the smile on her face. 'I- I hope that you are right, Berena. I should never wish to hurt my lord," and she turns back to her now that she can speak sincerely, from her heart: "You see, he makes me a better person too."