The Song Of Ice and Fire (504 page)

“Darry was on my way,” lied Jaime.
Riverrun will keep.
And if perchance the siege had ended before he reached the castle, he would be spared the need to take up arms against House Tully.

Dismounting, he handed Honor to a stableboy. “Will I find my uncle here?” He did not supply a name. Ser Kevan was the only uncle he had left, the last surviving son of Tytos Lannister.

“No, my lord. Ser Kevan took his leave of us after the wedding.” The maester pulled at the chain collar, as if it had grown too tight for him. “I know Lord Lancel will be pleased to see you and … and all your gallant knights. Though it pains me to confess that Darry cannot feed so many.”

“We have our own provisions. You are?”

“Maester Ottomore, if it please my lord. Lady Amerei wished to welcome you herself, but she is seeing to the preparation of a feast in your honor. It is her hope that you and your chief knights and captains will join us at table this evening.”

“A hot meal would be most welcome. The days have been cold and wet.” Jaime glanced about the yard, at the bearded faces of the sparrows.
Too many. And too many Freys as well.
“Where will I find Hardstone?”

“We had a report of outlaws beyond the Trident. Ser Harwyn took five knights and twenty archers and went to deal with them.”

“And Lord Lancel?”

“He is at his prayers. His lordship has commanded us never to disturb him when he is praying.”

He and Ser Bonifer should get on well.
“Very well.” There would be time enough to talk with his cousin later. “Show me to my chambers and have a bath brought up.”

“If it please my lord, we have put you in the Plowman’s Keep. I will show you there.”

“I know the way.” Jaime was no stranger to this castle. He and Cersei had been guests here twice before, once on their way to Winterfell with Robert, and again on the way back to King’s Landing. Though small as castles went, it was larger than an inn, with good hunting along the river. Robert Baratheon had never been loath to impose upon the hospitality of his subjects.

The keep was much as he recalled it. “The walls are still bare,” Jaime observed as the maester led him down a gallery.

“Lord Lancel hopes one day to cover them with hangings,” said Ottomore. “Scenes of piety and devotion.”

Piety and devotion.
It was all he could do not to laugh. The walls had been bare on his first visit too. Tyrion had pointed out the squares of darker stone where tapestries had once hung. Ser Raymun could remove the hangings, but not the marks they’d left. Later, the Imp had slipped a handful of stags to one of Darry’s serving men for the key to the cellar where the missing tapestries were hidden. He showed them to Jaime by the light of a candle, grinning; woven portraits of all the Targaryen kings, from the first Aegon to the second Aenys. “If I tell Robert, mayhaps he’ll make
me
Lord of Darry,” the dwarf said, chortling.

Maester Ottomore led Jaime to the top of the keep. “I trust you will be comfortable here, my lord. There is a privy, when nature calls. Your window looks out upon the godswood. The bedchamber adjoins her ladyship’s, with a servant’s cell between.”

“These were Lord Darry’s own apartments.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“My cousin is too kind. I did not intend to put Lancel out of his own bedchamber.”

“Lord Lancel has been sleeping in the sept.”

Sleeping with the Mother and the Maiden, when he has a warm wife just through that door?
Jaime did not know whether to laugh or weep.
Maybe he is praying for his cock to harden.
In King’s Landing it had been rumored that Lancel’s wounds had left him incapable.
Still, he ought to have sense enough to try.
His cousin’s hold on his new lands would not be secure until he fathered a son on his half-Darry wife. Jaime had begun to rue the impulse that had brought him here. He gave thanks to Ottomore, reminded him about the bath, and had Peck see him out.

The lord’s bedchamber had changed since his last visit, and not for the better. Old stale rushes covered the floor in place of the fine Myrish carpet that had been there previously, and all the furnishings were new and crudely made. Ser Raymun Darry’s bed had been large enough to sleep six, with brown velvet draperies and oakwood posts carved with vines and leaves; Lancel’s was a lumpy straw pallet, placed beneath the window where the first light of day would be sure to wake him. The other bed had no doubt been burned or smashed or stolen, but even so … 

When the tub arrived, Little Lew pulled off Jaime’s boots and helped remove his golden hand. Peck and Garrett hauled water, and Pia found him something clean to sup in. The girl glanced at him shyly as she shook his doublet out. Jaime was uncomfortably aware of the curve of hip and breast beneath her roughspun brown dress. He found himself remembering the things that Pia had whispered to him at Harrenhal, the night that Qyburn sent her to his bed.
Sometimes when I’m with some man,
she’d said,
I close my eyes and pretend it’s you on top of me.

He was grateful when the bath was deep enough to conceal his arousal. As he lowered himself into the steaming water, he recalled another bath, the one he’d shared with Brienne. He had been feverish and weak from loss of blood, and the heat had made him so dizzy he found himself saying things better left unsaid. This time he had no such excuse.
Remember your vows. Pia is more fit for Tyrion’s bed than yours.
“Fetch me soap and a stiff brush,” he told Peck. “Pia, you may leave us.”

“Aye, m’lord. Thank you, m’lord.” She covered her mouth when she spoke, to hide her broken teeth.

“Do you want her?” Jaime asked Peck, when she was gone.

The squire turned beet red.

“If she’ll have you, take her. She’ll teach you a few things you’ll find useful on your wedding night, I don’t doubt, and you’re not like to get a bastard by her.” Pia had spread her legs for half his father’s army and never quickened; most like the girl was barren. “If you bed her, though, be kind to her.”

“Kind, my lord? How … how would I …?”

“Sweet words. Gentle touches. You don’t want to wed her, but so long as you’re abed treat her as you would your bride.”

The lad nodded. “My lord, I … where should I take her? There’s never a place to … to …”

“… to be alone?” Jaime grinned. “We’ll be at supper several hours. The straw looks lumpy, but it should serve.”

Peck’s eyes grew wide. “His lordship’s bed?”

“You’ll feel a lord yourself when you’re done, if Pia knows her business.”
And someone ought to make some use of that miserable straw mattress.

When he descended for the feast that night, Jaime Lannister wore a doublet of red velvet slashed with cloth-of-gold, and a golden chain studded with black diamonds. He had strapped on his golden hand as well, polished to a fine bright sheen. This was no fit place to wear his whites. His duty awaited him at Riverrun; a darker need had brought him here.

Darry’s great hall was great only by courtesy. Trestle tables crowded it from wall to wall, and the ceiling rafters were black with smoke. Jaime had been seated on the dais, to the right of Lancel’s empty chair. “Will my cousin not be joining us for supper?” he asked as he sat down.

“My lord prefers to fast,” said Lancel’s wife, the Lady Amerei. “He’s sick with grief for the poor High Septon.” She was a long-legged, full-breasted, strapping girl of some eight-and-ten years; a healthy wench to look at her, though her pinched, chinless face reminded Jaime of his late and unlamented cousin Cleos, who had always looked somewhat like a weasel.

Fasting? He is an even bigger fool than I suspected.
His cousin should be busy fathering a little weasel-faced heir on his widow instead of starving himself to death. He wondered what Ser Kevan might have had to say about his son’s new fervor. Could that be the reason for his uncle’s abrupt departure?

Over bowls of bean-and-bacon soup Lady Amerei told Jaime how her first husband had been slain by Ser Gregor Clegane when the Freys were still fighting for Robb Stark. “I begged him not to go, but my Pate was oh so
very
brave, and swore he was the man to slay that monster. He wanted to make a great name for himself.”

We all do.
“When I was a squire I told myself I’d be the man to slay the Smiling Knight.”

“The Smiling Knight?” She sounded lost. “Who was that?”

The Mountain of my boyhood. Half as big but twice as mad.

“An outlaw, long dead. No one who need concern your ladyship.”

Amerei’s lip trembled. Tears rolled from her brown eyes.

“You must forgive my daughter,” said an older woman. Lady Amerei had brought a score of Freys to Darry with her; a sister, an uncle, a half uncle, various cousins … and her mother, who had been born a Darry. “She still grieves for her father.”

“Outlaws
killed
him,” sobbed Lady Amerei. “Father had only gone out to ransom Petyr Pimple. He brought them the gold they asked for, but they hung him anyway.”

“
Hanged,
Ami. Your father was not a tapestry.” Lady Mariya turned back to Jaime. “I believe you knew him, ser.”

“We were squires together once, at Crakehall.” He would not go so far as to claim they had been friends. When Jaime had arrived, Merrett Frey had been the castle bully, lording it over all the younger boys.
Then he tried to bully me.
“He was … very strong.” It was the only praise that came to mind. Merrett had been slow and clumsy and stupid, but he
was
strong.

“You fought against the Kingswood Brotherhood together,” sniffed Lady Amerei. “Father used to tell me stories.”

Father used to boast and lie, you mean.
“We did.” Frey’s chief contributions to the fight had consisted of contracting the pox from a camp follower and getting himself captured by the White Fawn. The outlaw queen burned her sigil into his arse before ransoming him back to Sumner Crakehall. Merrett had not been able to sit down for a fortnight, though Jaime doubted that the red-hot iron was half so nasty as the kettles of shit his fellow squires made him eat once he was returned.
Boys are the cruelest creatures on the earth.
He slipped his golden hand around his wine cup and raised it up. “To Merrett’s memory,” he said. It was easier to drink to the man than to talk of him.

After the toast Lady Amerei stopped weeping and the table talk turned to wolves, of the four-footed kind. Ser Danwell Frey claimed there were more of them about than even his grandfather could remember. “They’ve lost all fear of men. Packs of them attacked our baggage train on our way down from the Twins. Our archers had to feather a dozen before the others fled.” Ser Addam Marbrand confessed that their own column had faced similar troubles on their way up from King’s Landing.

Jaime concentrated on the fare before him, tearing off chunks of bread with his left hand and fumbling at his wine cup with his right. He watched Addam Marbrand charm the girl beside him, watched Steffon Swyft refight the battle for King’s Landing with bread and nuts and carrots. Ser Kennos pulled a serving girl into his lap, urging her to stroke his horn, whilst Ser Dermot regaled some squires with tales of knight errantry in the rainwood. Farther down the table Hugo Vance had closed his eyes.
Brooding on the mysteries of life,
thought Jaime.
That, or napping between courses.
He turned back to Lady Mariya. “The outlaws who killed your husband … was it Lord Beric’s band?”

“So we thought, at first.” Though Lady Mariya’s hair was streaked with grey, she was still a handsome woman. “The killers scattered when they left Oldstones. Lord Vypren tracked one band to Fairmarket, but lost them there. Black Walder led hounds and hunters into Hag’s Mire after the others. The peasants denied seeing them, but when questioned sharply they sang a different song. They spoke of a one-eyed man and another who wore a yellow cloak … and a woman, cloaked and hooded.”

“A woman?” He would have thought that the White Fawn would have taught Merrett to stay clear of outlaw wenches. “There was a woman in the Kingswood Brotherhood as well.”

“I know of her.”
How not,
her tone suggested,
when she left her mark upon my husband?
“The White Fawn was young and fair, they say. This hooded woman is neither. The peasants would have us believe that her face was torn and scarred, and her eyes terrible to look upon. They claim she led the outlaws.”

“Led them?” Jaime found that hard to believe. “Beric Dondarrion and the red priest …”

“… were not seen.” Lady Mariya sounded certain.

“Dondarrion’s dead,” said Strongboar. “The Mountain drove a knife through his eye, we have men with us who saw it.”

“That’s one tale,” said Addam Marbrand. “Others will tell you that Lord Beric can’t be killed.”

“Ser Harwyn says those tales are lies.” Lady Amerei wound a braid around her finger. “He has promised me Lord Beric’s head. He’s very gallant.” She was blushing beneath her tears.

Jaime thought back on the head he’d given to Pia. He could almost hear his little brother chuckle.
Whatever became of giving women flowers?
Tyrion might have asked. He would have had a few choice words for Harwyn Plumm as well, though
gallant
would not have been one of them. Plumm’s brothers were big, fleshy fellows with thick necks and red faces; loud and lusty, quick to laugh, quick to anger, quick to forgive. Harwyn was a different sort of Plumm; hard-eyed and taciturn, unforgiving … and deadly, with his hammer in his hand. A good man to command a garrison, but not a man to love.
Although … 
Jaime gazed at Lady Amerei.

The serving men were bringing out the fish course, a river pike baked in a crust of herbs and crushed nuts. Lancel’s lady tasted it, approved, and commanded that the first portion be served to Jaime. As they set the fish before him, she leaned across her husband’s place to touch his golden hand. “
You
could kill Lord Beric, Ser Jaime. You slew the Smiley Knight. Please, my lord, I beg you, stay and help us with Lord Beric and the Hound.” Her pale fingers caressed his golden ones.