The Chamber Below the Dreadfort
Chapter Two: The Marriage
Above the hoofbeats and steady breathing of the horses, her husband rides in silence, eyes far-off but not unaware. Sansa remembers his stolen kiss, with tongue and teeth, sharp and tender. It hinted to her the future she so dreaded in her last engagement. Now, she finds her nervous excitement returning. They were joined before a septon—Sansa grew up with her mother's gods as much as her father's, and Ramsay does not seem like a person who cares.
She remains a maiden—her mother and brother would not consider a bedding in a warcamp. It came not at their brief stop in Winterfell, for her heart was sick with memories and she slept near her mother. Her future lay at the Dreadfort, the Bolton's fierce hold, towering above the Weeping Water. The place where she will bear her children.
Though she stays carnally innocent, her mind slinked from girlhood the night of her wedding. Her brother gave her a boisterous wedding feast, drenched in wine and music. If the Lannisters had been planning an attack, they would have thought Robb's host was twice its size.
Sansa and her new husband shared a cup of wine, as custom. She knows she drank more than he did, though he refilled it every time she neared the dregs. Ah, it made for a warm evening. Whatever the odd circumstances and her unusual match, she had the gift of seeing Robb dance with his lithe Volantene queen, and her mother smiling in spite of her worries.
Her necklace hung heavy on her throat. A family heirloom, explained her new father-in-law after Ramsay clasped it around her neck. The silver loop was short, almost a choker, and covered by a ring of dark rubies. One of her brother's bannermen, deep in his cups, slurred that she was the most beautiful bride to have her throat cut on her wedding night. Lord Bolton's frigid stare made him quickly return to his wine.
Later in the feast, she remembers Ramsay's solid form more than his voice. He spoke relatively little, though a small smile never left. She leaned against him more than she meant, laughing at some jest she cannot remember. At some point he tucked his arm low around her waist and kept her close, his fingers sometimes winding in the chestnut hair that fell free down her back. Sansa remembers wanting to giggle—in her wine-soaked state, she knew it was because they sat across from her mother. Now, she wearies of their mutual dislike.
From time to time he would look at her, silent only in voice. His eyes were alive, narrowed in lust, though she does not know if it was lust for his bride or just her flesh and title. At the time she did not care and smiled back, emboldened by drink and the carmine jewels encircling her throat. She was no one's meat, but the heir of Winterfell, though likely not for long.
She watches Lord Ramsay out of the corner of her eye. He smells of leather and the forest. Not unpleasant, but she notices it after her long stay in King's Landing. It is how she knows when he tries to surprise her. He moves as softly as snowfall, but she can always smell the leather. And too, she has developed a good sense eyes at her back. It seems to amuse him though, so she pretends to be pleasantly startled.
First they arrived in Winterfell, Robb having already sent a few workers so it would at least be habitable. Lady Catelyn will oversee the rebuilding. The Young Wolf wants her away from the war, as much as he feels comforted by her presence. Sansa held in her tears when they rode through the gates. Though she knows Theon burned anything that could hold a flame, the charred sight still sends a shudder through her, and her reins bite into her soft gloves.
Ramsay steers his horse closer, a hulking red stallion that pins his ears at everything. A clanking, monstrous bit keeps him civil near Sansa's palfrey. As he takes in the burned stead with his impassively expressive gaze, she realizes he has never seen the seat of the North without char and ash.
"I wish you could see Winterfell as it was, not this…" The word comes strained off her lips. "Burned shell."
He looks over and offers a smile. "We will be back. I'm sure your mother can make it respectable soon."
Sansa thinks he sounds like a commoner but speaks with schooling, mimicking his father or otherwise. Sometimes it drops, his words knocking together, like someone she would hear in a marketplace or her brother's army. She still prefers his insouciance to deceptive niceties.
And she supposes she is still girlish enough to appreciate a mystery. For every word Ramsay speaks, his eyes say a dozen more. Yet his face is hard to read, a pale mask where two odd eyes stare out. He is older than her, but she cannot tell by how much. Or whether he tolerates or genuinely likes her. And sometimes, with his sharp and hungry looks, he unsettles her.
His terseness fades when they approach the Dreadfort. The stallion mouths his bit, reins loose at his neck. Her husband smiles and she sees pride in his eyes.
"When did you first come here?"
He looks over, sharp as a saber, but finally shrugs and softens. "As a child. My father knew I was his. I came here for good three years ago."
Ah. She knows that is close to when Domeric died. As her brother thought, Lord Bolton took in his bastard when he had no other heir. What will happen when his Frey wife gives him sons? Bolton swore to Robb that Ramsay will remain his heir, but if he dies, will his highborn bannermen feel the same? She should have thought of this before she agreed, before she…oh, that is why he wanted you. A king's sister to strengthen his claim.
"Is that the Weeping Water?" she asks, noting his appraising gaze. She hears the murmur of the currents.
He tells her small pieces about his home. Half-accurate history, its prized kennels, the command it holds over the eastern North. He even mentions his mother, who he says entranced Lord Bolton with a song. Sansa cannot imagine his father entranced by anything, but she keeps her thoughts to herself.
The Dreadfort earns its name. The battlements are sharp and serrated; the stone is dark. Hounds bark from a kennel. She shivers when they pass under the gate, cold in its shadow. It is only late morning, the grass still wet with dew. He lifts her from the saddle once they reach the courtyard and introduces her to the old steward standing nearby. The door grinds closed behind her and she blinks through the dim. The Dreadfort has windows and torches, but weeks on the road have accustomed her to sunlight.
Sansa does not know what to expect or what is expected her. When he leads her up flights of stone stairs, to one of the highest floors, and ushers her into a bedchamber, she realizes he plans to have her, on a grand bed made of ebony and vermillion lacquer. Her shiver and twisting belly comes unbidden. Until the morning after Blackwater, she looked at her wedding night as something only survivable because she was expected to bear children. And yet she remembers her wedding feast, belly burning with wine, thinking how silly her brother was for delaying her consummation.
Her eyes are already closed when her husband kisses her, tasting her fear. But is a brief kiss before he pushes away, hands on her shoulders.
"I have the Dreadfort to see to. Wander wherever, except the kennels." He smirks, rakish. "My bitches are jealous."
"But…"
He chuckles and his grip tightens, making her squirm on the edge of discomfort. "Soon. Did I wed a harlot?"
She flushes. Some doubt she returned from King's Landing a maid. Rumors whispered instead of voiced, for fear of Robb's fury or her great uncle's fists. He leaves her standing there, wishing he stayed, confused as to what she should even do.
Sansa feels adrift in this new place, as different from Winterfell as her birthplace is from King's Landing. Winterfell never made her feel the weight of all the stone above her head. Servants soon arrive with things to unpack. Sansa has no idea if this is their chamber or his.
How does one wile away the time before a bedding? He bade her to explore and thus with nothing else to do, she leaves the room and to acquaint herself with the overbearing place.
The Dreadfort has many stairs and many halls. She supposes the Boltons have memorized the cracks in the walls, the faded tapestries. Sansa has not, and soon has no idea where she is. The closest room is behind double doors of mahogany. Peeking inside, she enters in curiosity.
A meeting chamber? A trophy room? In the center is a wooden table twice her length, flanked by chairs too comfortable for dining. Both are carved from bloodwood, chosen no doubt as tribute to the weaponry that lines the room. Several bookcases are tucked in a corner, their bindings all leather—the room simmers with the musky scent. The pride of the room is steel. Racks and display cases span the walls. The glass is exquisite, almost without flaw. Nothing better would do for the blades that fill the room.
There are swords, both tools of war and decorated prizes, broadswords and even an arakh. But mostly there are knives. A dirk as long as her forearm, its hilt pocked with jade; a small ebony rack with the daintiest blades she has ever seen, no longer than her pinky, delicate and sharp as a cat's fang.
Old Nan's stories cozen back to her, of ancient Boltons and their ghastly predilection for skinning. Our knives are sharp, their words say. A naked man has few secrets, a flayed man none, so some whisper as their true saying. And yet, she is transfixed with how pretty they are. Not the grisly things one might imagine, but immaculate and veneered. A lucent world of metal and stones.
Sansa thinks she can hear the whispers of the Weeping Water, its secrets trapped beneath the icy currents. At the far end of the chamber is a glass display case mounted on the wall, holding two swords and a long, slender dagger. Caught in the light, the case shows her reflection more than the blades.
Below the case, and more intriguing, sits a pedestal with three knives, none longer than her hand. The prettiest has blade so slender it looks almost like jewelry. A red-filled design is etched into the steel. The small hilt has an oxblood strip of leather.
Her neck prickles a warning and she snaps up.
"Arming yourself, my lady?" Her breath hisses past her teeth. He stands behind her with a cool smile and glittering eyes, someplace between mocking and amused. "Of course the only time I startle you is when you have a mirror."
She blushes and turns to him. So he realized she could usually sense him coming. "Exploring, my lord. The door was not locked."
He cocks an eyebrow. "If it was locked you would not be in here." Ramsay walks up beside her, eyes only for the blades. "My family's greatest treasure should not be locked away."
"Are they ceremonial?" As if she would touch one to find out.
"Blades are for killing, not play-acting," he scoffs.
"These are beautiful."
Ramsay smiles, genuine she thinks, not just at his own amusement. He plucks the red-etched knife from the stand.
"You throw this one. You can core an eye if your aim is good enough." He balances it on his fingers, flipping it into his palm. "Few smiths forge anything this well-weighted. Kill someone with it, and their widow should thank you for the gift."
He takes the second blade, longer than its companion, with a wider blade and heavier hilt. A red, black-flecked stone shines in the crosspiece. "This is one for hunting."
"Throwing it?"
His laughter barks overloud through the chamber. "Skinning." His eyes look to hers, glimmering, not only with mirth but ardor. "It's an art. How could you have a fox-trimmed cloak without someone cutting its skin off?"
Sansa looks at the pristine blade. He holds it almost lovingly, a tender-hearted huntsman. "You enjoy hunting, my lord."
"It's better than hitting knights with a stick," he says, daring her to say different.
Sansa offers him a pretty smile. "I used to accompany my brothers on hunts. Rabbits and deer and such." Those were happier times.
"When a dead rabbit means you eat that night, it loses excitement. I hunt better game." He replaces the flaying knife, grin quirking.
During the ride from the Riverlands he took down a hart from almost three-hundred yards. Bears, elk, wolves—she can see him with his bow, bringing them down with the eagle-eyed sharpness she sees glitter on occasion. Ramsay looks at most people like they are game.
"I could accompany you, my lord, if it pleases you." She has little desire after Lady's death, but that would make for a dull reply.
He snorts and touches her cheek. "You can, someday. Hunting is always better with a pretty lady."
It is those moments that make her step away—sometimes, the hunter in his gaze is too prowling and canny. A cat may find a broken-winged bird amusing, but its own laughter does not make it so. His eyes lurk now, and his hand slips to her throat, thumb tracing her jaw. She shivers, not from fear. Mostly not. "You are very pretty, Sansa, even if you lie about enjoying hunting." He sounds amused, not accusing. "It's artistry. You cut things to make something better. Are your gloves not fine?"
Sansa has heard that a snake can transfix you with its eyes. She thinks of something Margaery said, soon before she fled with Lady Brienne. The Tyrell Rose was in good spirits, reclining on a divan, wine and sun making her as close to silly as she ever could be. She laughed, teasing but also not, and told Sansa something she heard from a bard in Highgarden. Sansa always remembered; she would not blurt it to a man, particularly hers, but his voracious stare makes her voice tumble free. She feels warm, like she just drank a cup of wine.
"There is a striking resemblance between the act of love and the ministrations of a torturer, my lord."
Lord Ramsay watches her in dead silence, expression blank as the grave. His eyes that say everything often say nothing. Then in a hot rush his mouth clacks against hers, and when he pulls back his grin is feral, voice thick and eyes alight.
"From you, that's precious."
He resumes his attack, pushing her against the heavy table, her hands steadying herself against the edge, his own tugging at her stays. Though she fights for breath in between kisses and it seems so very wicked, he is not harming her. Her own thoughts were not so vivid, but perhaps a whisper in her mind, a dredged detail from some crooked story of Margaery or Jeyne's. Something prods her belly—Sansa wonders for a moment, before her girlhood with five brothers answers for her. He jerks harder at her stays, smirking when her breasts pull free. No, surely for a consummation…?
"Should we go…?" Should we wait for night? Do newlyweds even do this during the day?
"No," he growls.
He pushes her the rest of the way onto the table, sliding between her legs, hands disappearing under her skirts. Sansa catches her reflection in the glass case, another girl looking back at her, eyes wide. Then pain spears through her and she yelps—just as those sharp teeth bury themselves in her neck. Not buried, she realizes after a moment of alarm, but digging, daring her to cry out. Her reflection stares back as he drives into her. She is wrapped around him, as wanton a maid as there ever was, feeling one of his hands braced on the table beside her, the other one clamped on her shoulder. She can barely see him from their closeness, only hear his rutting breath and feel a fierce smile as his teeth scrape her throat. A striking resemblance between the act of love and impalement.
At last he gasps out, and something warm and wet rolls down her thighs. Ramsay pushes her to her back and further onto the table so she lies atop it, detangling himself enough to sprawl beside her. The sudden cold air of the Dreadfort stings; she is spent, cored. Her mind races too much to think clearly, but she thinks the pain was not as awful as she feared. Not as strong as the surprise.
Propping himself on an elbow, he absently twines her hair into a long cord, until some berated desire to be a lord instead of a bastard son moves him to kiss her tenderly, the softest kiss since their wedding. Her softhearted husband, whose most beautiful room is dedicated to bloodshed.
"I was rash, my dear." He rubs her neck with his thumb, her skin still wet and sensitive. "But you standing here, looking so rapt at all my blades, saying pretty things—how does anyone resist you?"
Before she can reply, the doors swing open. Ramsay twists and hurls the red-etched dagger. The intruder squawks and Sansa winces as she hears steel bury in the doorframe. Then she realizes he must have been holding it beside her hip. She never heard him set it down.
"What?" he snaps. "I'll aim for your throat next time."
Sansa remains on her back, arms still trembling from extertion now crossed over her chest, caught between horror and embarrassment. She arches her neck to see him upside-down. A middle-aged guard, she thinks, his gaze averted. Not that she fears judgement, but to be found on atable—
"My lord, the brigands were seen a league away. You wished to know."
The anger melts off her husband's face, replaced by the thrill of one who feels most alive amid baying hounds and fleeing creatures. "Gather the boys and the bitches and wait for me."
When he is gone, Ramsay springs off the table and laces his breeches. He shoots her a sharp-toothed smile.
"I need bow practice, and idiots plague my lord father's lands."
Sansa sits up, disheveled beyond easy repair. "But you just returned—"
"You're a girl so you don't understand. They disrespect my father, and so they die." He smiles like he just found a cache of Valyrian steel. "I'll call you a bath and see you before I leave. You and the Dreadfort can get better acquainted." So she is just as easy to use as to put aside? She once imagined her wedding night trickling dreamily through the next day, a tender start to a sound marriage. He scoops her off the table, eyes half-closed, somewhere between languid and excited. "If you're lonely already, show me when I return."
Good to his word, his servants have a steaming tub waiting when she returns to the bedchamber, and a waifish servant to scrub her back and wash her hair. The water stings and her neck aches, but it is not truly unpleasant. Sansa stretches out in the tub, breath wafting steam. Giggling in spite of herself, she doubts her mother will want to hear this story. Lady Catelyn already thinks her husband is a lowborn beast.
Instead, Sansa thinks of witty Margaery, who would savor a rakish tale. They used to talk during Margaery's frequent baths, Sansa on a divan and she in her tub, a pitcher of cold honeyed tea nearby. The Rose of Tyrell explained she grew up with dozens of close cousins, and so a bath without someone to trade gossip is a waste. She had a way of turning to regard any who entered her chamber, her face wreathed in steam, eyes beguiling.
Margaery would like her story. Now that her body has relaxed in the hot water, her skin scrubbed clean, she finds herself less alarmed. Did fine ladies fling their passions onto tables? She thinks of his soft kiss. A welcome to a world more debauched than you expected? Sansa remembers his avaricious smile from their wedding feast. Perhaps it is better to be valued as an object of passion than to never be valued at all.
Sansa knows he has entered when the maid skitters off. She turns to look over a bare shoulder, but he has slipped just out of sight. Before she can look the other way, his corded arms hook under hers and haul her from the bath. She squeals at the cold, horrified at the water splashing everywhere.
"A lord keeps his promises to his deflowered wife." He laughs into her damp hair and drapes her in a towel.
Something clinks at his hip and she turns in curiosity. Ramsay wears his hunting clothes of leather, fur, and weapons. The clinking comes from a ring of keys.
"The Deadfort is your home now. You should learn its secrets." He unhooks the ring. It holds every key she can think of—thick black ones, tiny copper ones, elegant keys to a chest and crude keys to a cellar. "Play with my knives, lounge in the jewels of my father's old wife, whatever suits. Except for one thing—"
He smiles, cagey, and separates a key from the rest. It is sharp and thin, almost a blade the size of her pinky. Ramsay tilts her chin up, eyes lively though his voice is solemn. "This key's door is on the first floor, at the end of the west-most hallway. Do not use it."
"What—" He taps her lips with a finger.
"A small room of no import but to myself." He bares his teeth in a smile, his hand reaching to cup a half-covered breast. He squeezes, not enough to hurt, but she still squirms.
Bolder—perhaps the steam has loosened her mind—she reaches for his own chest. "A key to your heart?" she asks, playful.
He looks back just as coy. "There is none. A key to my hell though."
Sansa smiles. She thinks she is learning his strange humor. "Then I promise."
He clips her chin gently and holds out the key ring. "It was a gift from my father, for when I want to be alone. A room down a dark stairwell full of cobwebs that would ruin your hair. Old and dark and boring, but a wolf defends its den." She accepts the ring with a solemnity that makes him chuckle. "So elegant, even dripping wet."
A blush returns, but a dawning thought too. Perhaps she is strange to him, with her court-trained ways. Do lowborn bastards fling their passions onto tables? He is just as strange to her. Sansa decides to use the time he is away to explore the Dreadfort and understand him better.
The men set off soon after she dresses. Ramsay rides his towering stallion. Her husband wears armor now, light enough to easily use his bow. It swings from his back, his falchion from his hip. For a man who loves knives, he wields an ugly sword.
First Sansa sends pleasant letters to Robb and her mother. The Dreadfort's maester has gone with Lord Bolton, but his steward tends the ravens. Beyond that she knows not what to do.
The Dreadfort's silence has returned, even more hollow than before. Compared to King's Landing, the place is a tomb. She is a lady, bound to an abandoned castle forgotten by the rest of the world. Roose Bolton has a new Frey wife, does he not? She wonders why he has not sent her here. He does not seem like a man who has much passion for his wife's bed. And you do not seem a lady who almost enjoys being tossed onto a table and speared by her husband.