“I’m afraid,” she admitted. She reached out and took the letter in trembling hands.
The fursdropped away from her nakedness, forgotten.
In the blue wax was the moon-and-falcon seal of HouseArryn.
“It’s from Lysa.” Catelyn looked at her husband. “It will not make us glad,” she told him.
“There is grief in this message, Ned. I can feel it.”
Ned frowned, his face darkening. “Open it.”
Catelyn broke the seal.
Her eyes moved over the words. At first they made no sense to her.
Then she remembered. “Lysatook no chances. When we were girls together,
we had a private language, she and I.”
“Can you read it?”
“Yes,” Catelyn admitted.
“Then tell us.”
“Perhaps I should withdraw,” Maester Luwin said.
“No,” Catelyn said. “We will need your counsel.” She threw back the furs and
climbed from thebed. The night air was as cold as the grave on her bare skin
as she padded across the room.
Maester Luwin averted19 his eyes. Even Ned looked shocked. “What are you doing?” he asked.
“Lighting a fire,” Catelyn told him. She found a dressing20 gown and shrugged21
into it, then kneltover the cold hearth22.
“Maester Luwin—” Ned began.
“Maester Luwin has delivered all my children,” Catelyn said.
“This is no time for false modesty23.”
She slid the paper in among the kindling24 and placed the heavier logs on top of it.
Ned crossed the room, took her by the arm, and pulled her to her feet.
He held her there, his faceinches from her. “My lady, tell me! What was this message?”
Catelyn stiffened25 in his grasp. “A warning,” she said softly.
"If we have the wits to hear.”
His eyes searched her face. “Go on.”
“Lysa says Jon Arryn was murdered.”
His fingers tightened26 on her arm. “By whom?”
“The Lannisters,” she told him. “The queen.”
Ned released his hold on her arm. There were deep red marks on her skin.
“Gods,” he whispered.
His voice was hoarse27. “Your sister is sick with grief.
She cannot know what she is saying.”
“She knows,” Catelyn said. “Lysa is impulsive28, yes, but this message
was carefully planned,cleverly hidden. She knew it meant death if her
letter fell into the wrong hands. To risk so much, shemust have had more
than mere29 suspicion.” Catelyn looked to her husband. “Now we truly
have nochoice. You must be Robert’s Hand. You must go south with him and learn the truth.”
She saw at once that Ned had reached a very different conclusion.
“The only truths I know are here.
The south is a nest of adders30 I would do better to avoid.”
Luwin plucked at his chain collar where it had chafed31 the soft skin of his throat.
“The Hand of theKing has great power, my lord. Power to find the truth of
Lord Arryn’s death, to bring his killers32 tothe king’s justice. Power to protect
Lady Arryn and her son, if the worst be true.”
Ned glanced helplessly around the bedchamber. Catelyn’s heart went out to
him, but she knew shecould not take him in her arms just then. First the victory
must be won, for her children’s sake. “Yousay you love Robert like a brother.
Would you leave your brother surrounded by Lannisters?”
“The Others take both of you,” Ned muttered darkly. He turned away
from them and went to thewindow. She did not speak, nor did the maester.
They waited, quiet, while Eddard Stark said a silentfarewell to the home he
loved. When he turned away from the window at last, his voice was tired
andfull of melancholy33, and moisture glittered faintly in the corners of his eyes.
“My father went southonce, to answer the summons of a king. He never came home again.”
“A different time,” Maester Luwin said. “A different king.”
“Yes,” Ned said dully. He seated himself in a chair by the hearth. “Catelyn,
you shall stay here inWinterfell.”
His words were like an icy draft through her heart. “No,” she said, suddenly afraid. Was
this to beher punishment? Never to see his face again, nor to feel his arms around her?
“Yes,” Ned said, in words that would brook34 no argument. “You must govern
the north in mystead, while I run Robert’s errands. There must always be a Stark in
Winterfell. Robb is fourteen.
Soon enough, he will be a man grown. He must learn to rule, and I will not be
here for him. Makehim part of your councils. He must be ready when his time comes.”
“Gods will, not for many years,” Maester Luwin murmured.
“Maester Luwin, I trust you as I would my own blood. Give my wife your voice
in all things greatand small. Teach my son the things he needs to know. Winter is coming.”
Maester Luwin nodded gravely. Then silence fell, until Catelyn found her courage
and asked thequestion whose answer she most dreaded35. “What of the other children?”
Ned stood, and took her in his arms, and held her face close to his. “Rickon is very young
he saidgently. “He should stay here with you and Robb. The others I would take with me.”
“I could not bear it,” Catelyn said, trembling.
“You must,” he said. “Sansa must wed Joffrey, that is clear now,
we must give them no groundsto suspect our devotion.
And it is past time that Arya learned the ways of a southron court.
In a fewyears she will be of an age to marry too.”
Sansa would shine in the south, Catelyn thought to herself, and the
gods knew that Arya neededrefinement. Reluctantly, she let go of them in
her heart. But not Bran. Never Bran. “Yes,” she said,“but please, Ned, for
the love you bear me, let Bran remain here at Winterfell. He is only seven.”
“I was eight when my father sent me to foster at the Eyrie,” Ned said.
“Ser Rodrik tells me thereis bad feeling between Robb and Prince Joffrey.
That is not healthy. Bran can bridge that distance. Heis a sweet boy, quick
to laugh, easy to love. Let him grow up with the young princes, let him
becometheir friend as Robert became mine. Our House will be the safer for it.”
He was right; Catelyn knew it. It did not make the pain any easier to bear.
She would lose all fourof them, then: Ned, and both girls, and her sweet,
loving Bran. Only Robb and little Rickon would beleft to her. She felt lonely
already. Winterfell was such a vast place. “Keep him off the walls, then,”
she said bravely. “You know how Bran loves to climb.”
Ned kissed the tears from her eyes before they could fall.
“Thank you, my lady,” he whispered.
“This is hard, I know.”
“What of Jon Snow, my lord?” Maester Luwin asked.
Catelyn tensed at the mention of the name. Ned felt the anger in her, and pulled away.
Many men fathered bastards36. Catelyn had grown up with that knowledge.
It came as no surprise toher, in the first year of her marriage, to learn that Ned
had fathered a child on some girl chance met oncampaign. He had a man’s needs,
after all, and they had spent that year apart, Ned off at war in thesouth while she
remained safe in her father’s castle at Riverrun. Her thoughts were more of Robb,
theinfant at her breast, than of the husband she scarcely knew. He was welcome
to whatever solace37 hemight find between battles. And if his seed quickened,
she expected he would see to the child’s needs.
He did more than that. The Starks were not like other men. Ned brought his bastard
home with him,and called him “son” for all the north to see. When the wars were
over at last, and Catelyn rode toWinterfell, Jon and his wet nurse
had already taken up residence.
That cut deep. Ned would not speak of the mother, not so much as a word,
but a castle has nosecrets, and Catelyn heard her maids repeating tales they
heard from the lips of her husband’ssoldiers. They whispered of Ser Arthur Dayne,
the Sword of the Morning, deadliest of the sevenknights of Aerys’s Kingsguard,
and of how their young lord had slain38 him in single combat. And theytold
how afterward39 Ned had carried Ser Arthur’s sword back to the beautiful
young sister whoawaited him in a castle called Starfall on the shores of the Summer Sea.
The Lady Ashara Dayne, talland fair, with haunting violet eyes.
It had taken her a fortnight to marshal her courage, but finally, inbed one night,
Catelyn had asked her husband the truth of it, asked him to his face.
That was the only time in all their years that Ned had ever frightened her.
“Never ask me aboutJon,” he said, cold as ice. “He is my blood, and that is all
you need to know. And now I will learnwhere you heard that name, my lady.”
She had pledged to obey; she told him; and from that day on,the whispering had stopped,
and Ashara Dayne’s name was never heard in Winterfell again.
Whoever Jon’s mother had been, Ned must have loved her fiercely, for nothing
Catelyn said wouldpersuade him to send the boy away. It was the one thing she
could never forgive him. She had cometo love her husband with all her heart,
but she had never found it in her to love Jon. She might haveoverlooked a dozen
bastards for Ned’s sake, so long as they were out of sight. Jon was never out ofsight,
and as he grew, he looked more like Ned than any of the trueborn sons she bore him.
Somehowthat made it worse. “Jon must go,” she said now.
“He and Robb are close,” Ned said. “I had hoped …”
“He cannot stay here,” Catelyn said, cutting him off. “He is your son, not mine.
I will not havehim.” It was hard, she knew, but no less the truth. Ned would do the
boy no kindness by leaving himhere at Winterfell.
The look Ned gave her was anguished40. “You know I cannot take him south.
There will be no placefor him at court. A boy with a bastard’s name …
you know what they will say of him. He will beshunned.”
Catelyn armored her heart against the mute appeal in her husband’s eyes.
“They say your friendRobert has fathered a dozen bastards himself.”
“And none of them has ever been seen at court!” Ned blazed.
“The Lannister woman has seen tothat. How can you be so damnably cruel,
Catelyn? He is only a boy. He—”
His fury was on him. He might have said more, and worse, but Maester Luwin cut in.
“Anothersolution presents itself,” he said, his voice quiet.
“Your brother Benjen came to me about Jon a fewdays ago.
It seems the boy aspires41 to take the black.”
Ned looked shocked. “He asked to join the Night’s Watch?”
Catelyn said nothing. Let Ned work it out in his own mind;
her voice would not be welcome now.
Yet gladly would she have kissed the maester just then. His was the perfect solution.
Benjen Starkwas a Sworn Brother. Jon would be a son to him, the child he
would never have. And in time the boywould take the oath as well. He would father
no sons who might someday contest with Catelyn’s owngrandchildren for Winterfell.
Maester Luwin said, “There is great honor in service on the Wall, my lord.”
“And even a bastard may rise high in the Night’s Watch,” Ned reflected.
Still, his voice wastroubled. “Jon is so young. If he asked this when he was a man grown,
that would be one thing, but aboy of fourteen …”
“A hard sacrifice,” Maester Luwin agreed. “Yet these are hard times, my lord.
His road is nocrueler than yours or your lady’s.”
Catelyn thought of the three children she must lose. It was not easy keeping silent then.
Ned turned away from them to gaze out the window, his long face silent and thoughtful.
Finally hesighed, and turned back. “Very well,” he said to Maester Luwin.
“I suppose it is for the best. I willspeak to Ben.”
“When shall we tell Jon?” the maester asked.
“When I must. Preparations must be made. It will be a fortnight before we are
ready to depart. Iwould sooner let Jon enjoy these last few days. Summer will end soon
enough, and childhood as well.
When the time comes, I will tell him myself.”