The blood flowed over her hips and thighs of the prostrate woman in an angry gush.
Death, in Alysanne Stark's opinion, was rather irritating. She'd always misliked mess.
The moment Maester Walys had confirmed her suspicions that she was with child again, she had felt the blood drain from her face. She was too old, too weak from wild Lyanna's birth still, to bear another child.
To distract herself from the shadow rapidly creeping towards her from the corners of her chamber she catalogues her life. For if she can keep order as she always has, she can be in control (as she was in life).
To be in control of life and death. Alysanne lets out a bark of a laugh, scaring one of the poor fools her husband had left her to die with.
She was born thirty years ago on the island of Skagos. She had learned to speak, walk, and obey as all children do. By six, she had learned from the maester (his name...remember his name...too long ago...) how to read, write, and treat minor wounds. By eleven she could embroider her own dresses and ride better than her lady mother. By thirteen she was married.
One of the women (the steward's wife?), has thrown up on the rushes. If Alysanne weren't so incapacitated, she'd have her head for that.
Married at thirteen and widowed five years later, childless. She'd returned to her parent's home, ashamed but still with her dark, dark hair and eyes like ice.
Alysanne gasps, groping at the air with her lungs. I am of the North, ice is in my veins.
She'd lived on Skagos again until she was twenty-two, (her dead husband's fool brother had felt ready to be a lord). In those years, she learned more than most women ever know in a lifetime. The maester of her childhood told her she could've started forging a chain of her own.
There is pressure on her stomach now. She knows Maester Walys is binding her with bandages, and she smiles weakly (she knows it is his duty to pretend to save her).
Twenty-two was the year she met Rickard Stark at one of Winterfell's feasts. She had worn a green gown, and he hadn't cared that she was widowed or no longer a maiden. Her prudence and her eyes had been enough for him. She'd married him two years later, after their parents's ravens had fought and come to peace with the decision, hoping for the best for their only children.
The last six years had been the best of her life. Rickard was good to her (for both understood each other's boundaries), and kind enough (but not too foolishly chivalrous) to make her realize he was sincere. His seed took well in her, and all of their children had been born alive. Brandon, Ned, Lyanna, and now Benjen. Her watch has ended, her uncle would say.
Alysanne weakly turns her head forward (to face death eye-to-eye). She stares for a moment at the blood pooling out from the gash in her abdomen (poor Maester Walys's bandages had come undone). Though Rickard had raged at her decision, she'd known what to do since her pains began (for she had never lingered on a decision, and wasn't going to start now).
Save him, she'd said, He's meant for greater than me.
And if there was one thing Lady Alysanne Stark had been, it was practical.