We have found the most splendid fool. Only a boy, yet nimble as a monkey and witty as a dozen courtiers. He juggles and riddles and does magic, and he can sing prettily in four tongues. We have bought his freedom and hope to bring him home with us. Robert will be delighted with him, and perhaps in time he will even teach Stannis how to laugh.
His father had written those words to Maester Cressen, a fortnight before he and his wife were supposed to return home from that futile mission to find a bride for Rhaegar Targaryen. The maester had told Stannis about the fool Steffon Baratheon was bringing home, but he had neglected to mention his father's wish that the fool might teach Stannis how to laugh.
Robert had read that part out loud to Stannis, after the funeral. He had gone looking for the letter in Maester Cressen's room, making a mess of everything in the process, while the maester was still in the great hall greeting the guests and mourners.
"What are you doing?" Stannis had admonished him. "This is the maester's room. You have no right!"
"I have every right!" Robert had shouted. "That letter was from our father. His last letter. His last words."
"That letter was from Father to the maester, not to us. And if you really want to read it, you should ask Maester Cressen first," Stannis pointed out.
"I am Lord of Storm's End now. I have every right. Every right in the world," Robert replied, not shouting this time. The words were said with so much sorrow and hurt, Stannis did not have the heart to contradict his brother.
"Well, we will have to keep that fool here at Storm's End, of course," Robert had said after he finished reading the letter out loud.
"Because he is our responsibility now?" Stannis had asked.
Robert had smiled, very, very briefly. The first smile to graze his lips since the day Windproud had its final encounter with that ferocious storm. "Because anyone who could make my dour, humorless brother laugh is a priceless treasure. That fool must know real magic if he could really do that."
Stannis had scoffed in reply. "I doubt he can make anyone laugh now. Not even you, who are so easily amused by anything silly and frivolous. Maester Cressen said his mind is completely gone. He can barely speak, and the things he says make no sense at all."
"Two days under the sea would do that to you," Robert had replied, seemingly already losing interest in the unfortunate creature.
"Do you think … he … he could tell us -" Stannis changed his mind abruptly before he had completed the question. "Never mind," he said instead.
Robert was staring at him, curious. "Tell us what? What do you want to know from that fool?"
Stannis shook his head. "Nothing. I don't think he can tell us anything," he said firmly.
Were Mother and Father together when the ship went down? Were they holding hands? Were they afraid?
Did they see Robert and me waiting for them at the parapet?
Did they pray to the Seven, like I did?
Were they as furious as I had been with the gods, for refusing to listen?
But Stannis knew that even if the fool could still speak sensibly, even if he had not lost his mind, he still could not have told Stannis the answers to those questions. Patchface must have been too scared himself, too busy worrying about his own fate as Windproud was sinking, to be observing or thinking about Steffon Baratheon and his lady wife.
And yet even knowing that as an indisputable fact had not stopped Stannis from trying to find meaning in the fool's insensible words and songs. Was Patchface reliving the sinking of the ship and his near drowning with his songs? He sang often of the merwives under the sea with their gowns made of silver weeds. But to Stannis' great disappointment, the fool's tongue was completely silent on the subject of Steffon Baratheon and Cassana Estermont.
His wife was afraid of Patchface, Stannis finally realized, perhaps much later than he should. He had taken Lyanna's avoidance of the fool as mere indifference at first, or perhaps even disgust at such a hideous creature sharing their home. But he finally understood that it was not indifference or disgust that made her walk out of a room when Patchface was singing one of his songs, or meet the fool's gaze with a defiant, almost hostile stare of her own. The fool's songs troubled her greatly, and Stannis was almost afraid to ask why.
A song is only a song, and a dream is only a dream, Stannis reminded himself forcefully. I am not a man who believes in anything I cannot see and hear with my own eyes and ears.
"I think it's time for us to have that conversation, Stannis." And yet, when Rickard Stark had spoken those words, Stannis was assailed by a sudden fear so great, he had almost silently prayed to the Seven, before violently stopping himself just in time.
The gods did not listen then, why would they listen now?
And who was he to pray to them now, he thought, when he had cursed them in every way possible, had promised himself never to believe again, had vowed never to worship again, from the very day his mother and father was buried.
They were standing at the parapet overlooking Shipbreaker Bay, Stannis and his father-in-law. Lord Rickard had led the way from Patchface's room, and Stannis had followed silently. Two days at Storm's End, and the Lord of Winterfell was already as familiar with the castle as if he had owned it himself. Rickard Stark did not seem to be in a hurry to start the conversation. He was gazing out to sea, his mouth set in a grim frown.
"This is where you were standing, wasn't it? You and Robert, waiting for your father's ship to dock," he finally broke the silence.
Stannis was not surprised that Lord Rickard had known this. Robert must have told Ned, and Ned Stark had told his father, Stannis thought. He nodded. "Yes. Robert was home from the Eyrie for a visit."
"Such an ill-fated trip. And an unnecessary one too," Rickard Stark sighed. "The blame lies not with your lord father of course," he added quickly, after he noticed Stannis stiffening beside him, "but with the king. There was no need for him to send your lord father and your lady mother on that fruitless trip. A wife for Prince Rhaegar could have been found among the daughters of the many lords of the Seven Kingdoms."
"It was a storm that killed my father and mother, not His Grace the king," Stannis replied.
"They would not have been caught up in that storm if they had not gone on the trip His Grace commanded," his father-in-law insisted.
"We might as well blame Prince Rhaegar too, in that case. After all, it was for the purpose of finding a bride for him that they went on that trip," Stannis voiced the thought that he had not voiced to anyone else before.
"The prince was against it, did you know that?" Rickard Stark did not wait for Stannis to reply. "He told his father he would be more than content to marry a woman from the Seven Kingdoms. But King Aerys … no … King Aerys insisted on a bride with the blood of old Valyria flowing inside her. Nothing else was good enough, supposedly. And yet in the end he married his son off to a Dornish woman," Lord Rickard scoffed.
"Dorne is still part of the Seven Kingdoms," Stannis pointed out to his father-in-law.
"Just barely," Lord Rickard replied serenely. "The point is, if he had consented to that match earlier, perhaps your father and mother would not have to die."
"I do not blame the king for their death," Stannis said stiffly, and firmly.
"Who do you blame, then? You blame someone, I am certain of it. You would not be this angry and bitter otherwise," Lord Rickard said, gazing shrewdly at Stannis.
"Perhaps I was born angry and bitter," Stannis replied.
Rickard Stark laughed. "Well, well. Maybe I have misjudged you after all. You are not as humorless as I have always thought." Stannis was about to protest that he had not been jesting, but his father-in-law surprised him by touching his arm and squeezing it gently. "No one is born angry and bitter, Stannis. Not even you," he said softly. "If you do not blame the king, do you blame your gods, then? The Seven with all their rules and insistence on order, and yet still cruel and disordered enough to snatch the lives of two blameless people as their sons stood watching."
How could he have known? Stannis had not told Robert this.
"Like you, I value order too. Order, predictability, stability," Lord Rickard said.
"Then perhaps you should worship the Seven instead of the old gods," Stannis retorted.
Rickard Stark smiled. "That is no more likely than you worshiping the gods of the north, despite your anger for the Seven. You would rather not worship anything at all." He paused. "It is a futile endeavor, blaming the gods. Their actions are completely out of our control. Our own action, on the other hand … What we choose to do, how we decide when that day finally comes, that could determine everything."
That day? Stannis had no idea what his father-in-law meant by that.
Stannis thought of the king's words to him, and Prince Rhaegar's words as well. He was seeing the same pattern with this conversation with Lord Rickard. "War is the enemy of order and stability," Stannis said emphatically.
"Order and stability is the final destination. How we get there, well …" Lord Rickard shrugged. "And there might not have to be a war, if people such as yourself choose wisely."
"They are trying to seduce you, the king and the crown prince both. Vying for your support. The king with all his talk of blood ties and loyalty, and the crown prince with all his talk of duty," Lyanna had said to Stannis, when he had finally opened up to her about his worries.
What should he tell his wife now? Your father is trying to seduce me too, Lyanna.