Chapter 4
As It Once Was
Where Sandor and Sansa start from the beginning
Sansa
When the Elder Brother left, bidding her good night, it occurred to Sansa that maybe the Hound would have followed him to see her. If he recognized her, as she did him. So she closed the door, but she didn't bolt it, and she didn't ready herself for bed, unwilling to be seen by him in any state of undress, yet strangely hopeful that he would appear.
The waiting took long and she dozed on a chair occupying the remnants of the small space in the cell between the bed and the door, oblivious to the night's chill.
It could have been the hour of the wolf when the inside air stirred, thick with dust.
Sansa could not hear him but he must have been there for a while, in front of the door, immobile as when he stood guard in front of the king. She took her chamber pot, empty, hoping he wouldn't notice that in the darkness. It was the only reasonable excuse for a lady to unbar her door at that hour of the night. He stepped aside when she did open it and she was suddenly frightened of him and of her foolish ideas. So she left the pot in front, daintily, and made several steps backward leaving the door open, a clumsy invitation hung wordless in the air.
He took the hint for what it was and entered in two long strides, closing the door behind him.
Sansa wanted to look up, but she found that she could only stare at her feet.
"Your hair is different," he said, blunt as ever, no lords and ladies in his treatment of people. Just men, and women and children, all made of the same flesh.
"Father says it's better so that people would not see the truth," she said in a meek voice.
"I instantly saw who you were."
"It would please me to tell that I saw who you were as well, but that would not be true," she said, daring a small look upwards. She felt hatred oozing from under his cowl so she rapidly continued before it would grow. "I believe that you still don't have a fondness for lies. In truth, I instantly heard who you were."
The Hound exhaled a peculiar sounding grunt and she realized that it must have been a short burst of uncontrolled friendly laugh, something she had never heard him do before, as far as she could remember. Her opinion of how ugly it sounded must have been clearly written all over her face because what followed was the wrathful ugliness of his words.
"They say that the little bird killed King Joffrey and flew away to the Free Cities with her Imp husband, a proper little Lady Lannister and a dutiful wife to him."
"They also say that the Hound slaughtered and violated innocents in Saltpans. They say that he mutilated them and let them burn," she replied in kind.
"People lie," Sandor barked back.
"That they do," she offered him a weak smile, half looking at him, half not. It was the best she could do. She wondered why he didn't lower his hood. I could do it, an erratic thought crossed her mind but she decided against it. It could anger him further. "Please, excuse me for the night," she said instead, her voice weaker than she would have wanted it, her courage from the reading dissolved in the dark. "The day was exhausting and I would like to rest."
He surprised her by obedience. When she watched him open and close the door again, Sansa found she was overwhelmed by the awareness that whatever had been between them had stayed exactly as it once was.
Elder Brother
Two days after the rain had finally stopped the Elder Brother was about to leave the cell he had called his home for almost twenty years, a place of safety for the children of the Seven he constructed in the lost part of the riverlands, where the Trident flushed him out after the battle in which Robert Baratheon won his kingdom.
His recollections from his life before the battle were sketchy. He knew that he liked women and most likely fathered children in the rose lands of Highgarden. His name had been Randyll, named for Lord Tarly, famous in military prowess, but the Elder Brother had been a simple soldier. The wound he took when he fell in the Trident was so grievous that it was a miracle he survived and that fact washed his previous life away. He had no desire to return to it and instead he felt he had to dedicate all his considerable energies to the people of the realm, because someone had to, and so few were willing. His work doubled with the War of the Five Kings.
He owed his life to the patience of the Elder Brother before him, an ancient weak man, short of stature, who looked like he had been made of paper and not of skin and bone. He laid his saviour to rest many years ago when a weakness of the heart descended upon him and took him in a whisper, like when a cold winter breeze crosses the fields and reaps the last flowers of the long summer.
"Hurry up, brother," the singer, Mance, called after him through the open window, "we have to go before the new rain starts." He was followed by the boy squire of Baelish, a sickly lad who would sometimes convulse in the mud, his lips full of foam, yet only Ser Shadrich dared tease him, and the Corbray men kept their distance.
The clouds were growing dense, sailing on the sky in elaborate patterns of dark grey.
The Trident brought to the river bank a leather bag too, with the Elder Brother's belongings, very few of them and all of no valour. The Elder Brother took it from under his bed and examined his broken treasures. He only looked at them once after he had woken in the Quiet Isle and never touched them since. There was a broken lance, a short dagger blade of battered steel whose hilt got ripped off and most likely stolen, a sharp black stone, which might have been a luck charm of some kind from his previous life of the man of the world, and two loose strings which could have belonged to a harp. The metal of the strings glimmered slightly in the bright light of the morning. Perhaps I should leave all this behind, he thought.
"I am a falcon," the boy said to the singer outside. "And I also want to read your songs, Alayne told me that she can do it, and if she can do it, than I can also do it by right."
"Listen, boy," Mance said , "you know what mummers do, don't you?"
"They play and show what happened to other people who are not they."
"Essentially, yes. And you know there has to be a person each mummer represents," Mance said with uncharacteristic patience, more common for his horse. "In my play there is no boy of twelve, so there is nothing for you to read."
"Did you finish your play?" asked the boy, not giving up.
"Not quite, but-"
"-Then maybe a boy will appear in the story before the end. I want to read with Alayne. She was always telling me stories. I will be a knight and wed her one day."
"Come on, boy, let's pack up," said Mance, laughing wholeheartedly. "You said you wanted to ride. If you don't want to work with me, I will leave you to Ser Shadrich or load you on the wagon with the Lord Protector."
The boy shut up and followed him around without another word.
The Elder Brother felt endeared with the conversation and thought that, out there, there would always be people in need of guidance. Perhaps he did not need the Quiet Isle to labour in the name of the Seven, in the sign of gratitude for the gift of life they bestowed on him, not once, but twice.
And the Seven for some reason saw to it that he also received an inheritance of broken things of the life that was once his. With steadfast belief that things in life mostly happened for a reason, although if it was often difficult to see one, the Elder Brother transferred his possessions into a half full saddle bag. He hid the strings particularly deep on one of the sides. The singer would not let me live if he knew I had this, he thought, he would not let me rest until I would agree to accompany his play by my music. Seven save me, he would give me his lute.
The Seven preferred the crystal radiance of silence, visible in the elaborate glasswork which adorned their septs. And the chant of voices united in hymns. But no sound of an instrument should be allowed to disturb the holy places. The thought that once he could play music was so offensive and contradictory to nature. The Elder Brother firmly rejected it when he stepped out of the door, the saddle bag fastened safely over his shoulders.
Mance
"Come on, the two of you, we don't have all night. Even the horses need to sleep after today's ride," Mance Rayder said impatiently. "Did you try the masks I gave you before we departed?"
Both of his recently recruited players held out traditional wildling masks carved out of white weirwood: the outer border of the slits for eyes and mouth was drawn in a thick line of bright red paint made from its sap. The big monk looked as if he might accidentally squash his disguise, and the lady, Jon's sister, was uncertain of what to do with it. I have to be pleased that they didn't forget them or lose them," thought Mance, trying to calm down. "I hope that yours is big enough, brother. The previous owner had been a large fellow as well." A young giant, Mance pondered with sadness, dead in the war that might yet kill us all.
"Put them on, don't be afraid!" he told them. "The next scene takes place on the battlements, I still have to decide of which fortress, but it should be somewhere far up north. Any ideas?"
"How could they have any?" asked the voice of the mocking bird who had himself carried to them on his sleeping pallet by a pair of particularly brainless looking knights. "A brother of the Faith from the gods forsaken riverlands and a noble bastard from the Fingers? What do they know of the north? So inhospitable and far away."
"Would you, Lord Protector, know of such fortress from your many travels and great wisdom?" asked Mance, unhappy about the company. "Preferably one close to the Wall."
"How about the Queensgate?" asked Baelish's squire, who wouldn't leave Mance's side since they started their journey together. "They say it was a beautiful castle in the snow, visited by the Good Queen Alysanne."
"A well educated squire, my lord," said Mance staring at Baelish, waiting for his reaction, not receiving any.
"I am a falcon," bleated the boy.
"What does my Small Council say?" Mance asked of the Elder Brother who was the last one to arrive to the clearing among weak trees and bushes, where the King-beyond-the-Wall was trying to hold a second reading of his play.
They camped in a thicket next to a stream, one day ride south from the Quiet Island. Corbray and his men were either resting or keeping guard. The few remaining monks huddled under a canopy of a large tree, farther away, not willing to draw any undue attention to themselves.
"Queensgate is very well, I think," the head of the monks observed. "It is important in the history of the Seven Kingdoms."
"Who knows," said Mance, "my song may yet be as widely known as the life or the Good Queen Alysanne." He was pleased to note that the arrival of Baelish prompted both his Rhaegar and his Lyanna to hastily don their masks. Mance still didn't know their real names so he allowed himself the freedom of calling them by their mummers' roles in his mind. The old disguise of the North made them look more poised and confident in their bearing, tall and fearsome for the watching eyes. "Go on," he encouraged them. "Read. You start this time, my lady."
Lyanna and Rhaegar stood facing each other as if they measured how their new attire changed them. A few knights joined the small circle of watchers in a lack of a better thing to do.
"A betrothal is the highest honour for a daughter of a great house," Jon's sister started reading, meticulously, betraying no feelings.
"Yet you don't believe it now, my lady."
"No," she said, turning her back to would-be Rhaegar. "Not any more."
Mance interrupted: "Please, read from the parchment. Do not invent the words!"
"I am sorry," Jon's sister said, "I must have misread. I am not used to reading to more than one or two people at the time."
"Always so shy," Baelish added cheerfully from behind. The man's inquisitive nature was apparently not bothered in the least by the loss of his arm. Since he woke and rose from bed, he was in charge of overseeing all preparations for their trip to King's Landing. Lyn Corbray turned taciturn and was no longer in command. Mance didn't favour that development a single bit, but for the time being he had to play along.
"My lord," he said, "let them read. You may yet find the spectacle enjoyable."
Sandor
Sansa read from the parchment, slowly, deliberately, wishing to avoid another mistake, the Hound supposed. "My betrothed is said to be a man who drinks, and gambles and whores, and who will surely shame his wife. What is honourable about his condition?"
"Maybe he will love you," Sandor rasped back.
"He might, in time," she conceded.
"Still, you are troubled," Sandor began to wonder what her next line would be. They each saw written only their own part. The singer said it was better like that, it would make their reactions more forthcoming.
"What of my own wishes? What if I wanted to drink, and gamble and whore before my betrothal? And what if I don't love him in time?"
"Most unseemly thoughts for a lady," Sandor read, perplexed as to where the conversation was leading. "Would you do all that if you could?"
"No," she said as if she meant every word. "I just wish that the choice was mine and not a mere opinion of the world of what a lady should do."
"My parchment says 'halt' now," Sandor said to Mance, unsure how to proceed. I am good in killing, he thought, not in guessing this fool's intentions.
"That means that you should wait a bit for the lady to continue," Mance urged the scene on. "You could offer her a meaningful look. There. Good. Just like that. As if you were waiting for her next words."
"Who are you?" she asked with more freedom, forgetting that Littlefinger was watching her every move. "And why did you follow me to the battlements of the Queensgate? Men don't come to this castle since it was abandoned because it brings bad luck. It is said that the spirit of the Good Queen Alysanne will curse any man who ventures here to lose all he holds dear, his lands, his children, or his wife."
"You put wife last. Do you think that men think so little of their wives?" Sandor replied.
"Most do not think of them at all," Sansa's voice rang like music on a feast, determined and relentless. "You haven't answered my question. Who are you and why are you here?"
"Might be I came here because I also am troubled and seek solitude like you seem to be doing, my lady," Sandor hated reading his reply. He would never admit such a thing to anyone, even if it was occasionally true.
"Then why won't you show me your face?" she asked him, gently, in a voice Sandor recognised as the one she reserved only for Joffrey when she was much too young for her own good, and fell in love with the golden prince.
"Maybe next time," he said, taking in the warmth of her voice selfishly for himself, glad it were the last words on his parchment for that night.
"Very good," said Mance. "Queensgate it is. The lady says the name so sweetly."
"Can I now be on the show? I helped you with that name," asked the squire, hopeful and eager as only young boys could be.
The crowd of knights and brothers slowly increased in number around them while the scene was being read. A knight whistled his discontent. "Give us more, singer," he said. "The night is too cold to lay down and sleep."
"Let the brave knight kiss the lady," another ventured. "What kind of show is that if there's no kissing?"
Sandor only had eyes for her under the cowl and the mask, completely ignoring the others. When the crowd finally disbanded before Mance's staunch refusal to make them rehearse some more, and Littlefinger was carried away, Sansa started towards the wagon where she was to sleep. He followed two steps behind her, silent, as if she were a princess, and he her sworn shield.
He stood guard in front of the wagon until he was sure that she had fallen asleep. Only then he sat down to rest, on the cold muddy ground, falling back to his old soldier habits. His back found comfort alongside a young tree, in memory of a time passed, when he had nearly died like that, calling her name in his agony.