Chapter Text
THE RED KEEP, 136 AC
She was there when he made the announcement to his regents- well, his lords, now. Regents no more since this day dawned, and Aegon turned sixteen, a man and king in his own right.
She was there because she wanted them to see her, Manderly and all the rest, and to understand again, much as they did when she watched Peake lose his head, that she is no simple northern maid confined to the godswood, who knows nothing of politics or power. Aegon is impassive at best, apathetic at worst, to many, many things, but in the three years since they wed Barba has worked very hard to make sure he was never apathetic towards her.
She should like to think she has succeed; she would call them friends, of a sort. They do not have the close, brotherly confidence he shares with Gaemon, but Aegon does not tolerate her company, nor does she irritate or tire him. Barba prides herself on her light touch, far from what they say of northern girls, that they are as blunt and crude as their men.
She goes gentle with Aegon, and not just because he is two years her junior. She is as gentle with him as she dares without coming across as coddling. Little riles Aegon, but feeling patronized or condescended to does. And so whether she disagrees or not with his manner- there were better, neater ways to dismiss his regents than this quick fall of the axe- she stays by his side for it, silent but clearly in agreement, and then leaves him be. Confrontations like this exhaust Aegon and she knows he will be irritable and on edge afterwards. Best to let him be.
She goes to the godswood instead, somewhat ironically, for all that she tries to blend in at court, to not be looked upon with suspicion because of her heritage and customs and dress, and prays. For a long time she was simply praying they would survive until Aegon came of age, that she would live to be crowned- she still is not officially his queen.
Officially his wife, yes, though the marriage goes unconsummated. Crowned, no. Peake railed against the thought of it until the marriage had been proven valid and she was proven to be with child. Three years later, Peake is dead, his body shipped back to Starpike, and she is still without a crown.
Barba wants a crown, but more importantly, she needs one. She needs to be legitimized as queen, publicly, she needs Aegon’s faith in her demonstrated, publicly, and she needs his rule to succeed. Publicly. She came all this way three years ago because her people were starving, her brother was desperate, and the Starks were little help to anyone but themselves. Don’t expect a wolf pack to safeguard the sheep. That’s an old Bolton saying. Well, that, and when winter comes, keep the dead close. In case you have to eat them.
Her people were never reduced to eating their dead. As part of the marriage contract, relief was sent to the North under Manderly’s purview. She owes him that much, and Aegon as well, though he was just a child at the time, and his regents held most of the power. He is a child no more now, and his regents have no leads left to grasp at. There is some relief in knowing she no longer needs to balance their pride and arrogance, so many hungry, grasping men, but no king rules alone, even after he turns sixteen.
Aegon needs a Hand. She had hoped at least one of the regents- preferably an agreeable but competent one- could be held back as such, but little chance of that now. Those bridges have been burned more efficiently than any during the Dance. Aegon humiliated those men and they will not easily forget it, no matter that it was not in public. If Aegon had his way, he would name Viserys. Well, Viserys is a boy of fourteen, father though he may be, and the realm will not tolerate being ruled by three youths under the age of twenty.
So she sits under the heart tree, this old oak, and prays for wisdom. If she were one of the Faithful she’d address the Crone. Instead she breathes in the fresh spring air- the season was announced halfway through this year, and just now are things starting to bud and green again, though the rains are relentless- and tries to calm herself. An intemperate and impulsive disposition puts one’s health at risk.
Since both her parents were carried off by a chill in the span of a few short months, Barba has always tried to be attentive to these things. She writes her brother Domeric constantly with advice and worries for his health, since he fancies himself a great huntsman and athlete, but is sure he dismisses most of it as womanly woes. At least he has taken a Karstark to wife; they were always hardy stock, and adept breeders.
She worries after Aegon’s health as well, but unlike her, he has never been poisoned. The maesters say it should have little effect on her fertility in the years to come, but it is still a concern. His father sired many children, but her mother only bore two living. If they are childless the throne will pass to Viserys and his Lyseni wife. Barba does not hate Larra for being a foreigner, but she has little like for the woman, either, and after the scandals with the Rogares, Westeros will not take well to her as queen.
Careful, she tells herself. They have not delighted over you as queen, either. Plain and thick and flat of body, when they could have had some great beauty like Princess Rhaena or a little dollish darling like Daenaera Velaryon. And that is why you need to be crowned. And why we must have some sort of progress. Something. Anything, to prove to the people their king is a miserable, sullen child no longer, that he is competent and can force a smile and raise a hand in recognition in public. Else this will be a long, hard life for you, whether he comes to like you or not.
When she feels wizened enough, or just calmer, she rises, just in time- she can hear Daenaera approaching, the telltale patter of her shoes on the gravel pathway, and a heavier crunch that suggests she is not alone. Baela returned to Driftmark, Rhaena to Dragonstone following Aegon and Barba’s wedding- Barba suspects neither were pleased with their younger half-brother’s choice in bride, though both too dignified to voice any objections- and Rhaena went to Driftmark after she was widowed a year ago.
But they left Daenaera behind, ostensibly as a companion for Barba, but really because they perhaps had some hope Aegon might change his mind, given time around the cheerful young girl, and decide to put Barba aside and take a Velaryon bride instead. She supposes they see it as honoring the memory of their grandfather and grandmother, trying to make a Velaryon queen. Barba is honoring no one’s memory here.
She did not know when she came that she would never leave. No one seriously expected her to be chosen. It was just a platform to launch an appeal for aid from, since ravens to Stark and Manderly had done nothing.
“Barba!” Daenaera says happily, as she rounds the corner, Gaemon on her heels.
She really is a strikingly pretty girl of nine- the sort who looks as though she stepped out of a portrait or tapestry, with her silver gold hair and snow white skin. She is even paler than Barba, a true child of winter. Her doe like eyes are a bright blue that sparkle even in the faintest light, and whoever dresses her does well- clad constantly in soothing greens and blues and purples and silvers, she at times resembles a dragonfly, flitting about and buzzing from place to place.
Gaemon, too, is striking due to his Valyrian looks- or Lyseni looks, depending on who you think his father is. Perhaps neither. The olive tan of his skin contrasts sharply with his white blonde hair, and his eyes are dark and cat-like- something about the shape, perhaps. It makes all his smiles slightly facetious, as if he might be mocking you.
He and Aegon could be cousins, only Gaemon at ten is stocky and sturdy, with the suggestion of broad shoulders and a stout chest to come with adolescence, whereas Aegon is a tall and reedy sixteen year old, not broad but lithe and lean, verging on skinny.
Compared to all three of them, Barba has never felt more dowdy, though she tacitly accepted at a young age that she would never be beautiful. It does not so much torment her as disappoint her. Life is easier for beautiful people. Perhaps a little less so for beautiful women, but it certainly has its advantages. People want to please you when you are pretty.
They look at her and see her plain, oval face, her hooded dark eyes and her flat nose and her small mouth- her plump lips are her only notable feature, she has often thought, she has a nice mouth- and her thin, straight dark hair that holds no lustre. She is not slender, not tall, not even particularly curvaceous. She has good hips but a meager chest. Her hands and feet are small but not elegant.
She dresses well, even lavishly, to show how queenly she can be- a queen is not expected to dress plainly and never cheaply- but only certain colors make her look passable. Yellows and oranges and whites, never. Pale blues and greens are debatable, the darker shades suit her more. Red and pink, of course, they are her house colors, and at least put some vigor in her skin, make her look less sallow. She dressed in a very dark midnight blue today, to compliment Aegon.
If Daenaera has noticed that Barba is very nearly ugly in comparison to herself, she shows no signs of it yet, and embraces Barba now like a sister. Barba expected the younger girl to be shy, even sulky around her, but Daenaera is always lively and seemingly thrilled to be in Barba’s company. She has no siblings of her own, is orphaned, and seemed terribly lonely after Baela and Rhaena departed, and duty demanded Barba at least attempt to be kind towards her.
But Daenaera is not difficult to get along with, only so high spirited and talkative that she can be exhausting at times. Gaemon is one of her foremost playmates, when it is not deemed ‘improper’, since he is after all a common born bastard, a whipping boy, a servant.
No longer, since Peake died, though. It pleased Peake to set Gaemon to be viciously beaten when Aegon defied him. Once or twice he even did it himself. Barba once glimpsed Gaemon’s bare back, when he was being tended to be a maester. It is covered in ropy raised scars that will accompany him into manhood. The child was not just strapped or hit with a switch a few times but flogged. Men twice his age have been broken by such cruel treatment.
So when Peake lost his head, Gaemon smiled, and wore the few trinkets he has left from his whore mothers- earrings, bangles, a cheap copper pendant around the neck. Barba smiled too, on the inside- the man tried to kill her and nearly did Gaemon- but as the king’s wife she could not show open pleasure at an execution, they would revile her as a Bolton monstress, a demon from the North who no doubt bathes in the blood of innocent babes to keep what remains of her looks.
He seems much older than ten, Gaemon, when you speak with him. He has lived enough to be thrice that. “We are sorry to interrupt your prayer, Your Grace,” he says. He always calls her Your Grace, though she technically cannot be addressed as such until her coronation. The other courtiers refer to her as Lady Barba, still. “But Daenaera could not stand to wait-,”
“Oh, she isn’t praying anymore!” Daenaera chirps, glancing past Barba at the oak tree. “I want to climb that, soon. Can I? Septa Melissa says it is not possible and that a lady does not belong in a tree, but-,”
Barba was never a tree climber, herself, but her brother was. “When it’s warmer out, perhaps,” she says. “You could not do it in a dress, we would have to let you borrow some of Gaemon’s trousers.”
“And a belt,” Gaemon says, grinning at Daenaera, who wrinkles her nose, but nods.
“I would look just like Baela,” she says, patting her pale curls, which reach to her waist. “Only with longer hair.”
Barba spends the afternoon with Daenaera and Gaemon in the gardens, making the most of the temporary halt in the rains. King’s Landing sees far more rainfall than the Dreadfort ever did. Barba does not mind the Red Keep, and dislikes the city, but has not seen much of it in these past few years at court.
Between the winter weather and Aegon’s moods, it is not often they ride out. She must push him to go there more often, now that spring is here. The city was ravaged from the war and the riots and then the rationing through the winter and all the closed roads and the flooding in Fleabottom have made it miserable for the smallfolk indeed. It would do some good for them to see their young king on horseback, purchasing their wares, riding past their homes.
She would not enjoy it anymore than he would, but if life was about doing purely what you enjoyed, she would have never left home. She would be in her childhood bedchamber, carefully arranging her dolls and poring over her collection of preserved insects, carefully jotting down notes in her journal. Instead she is here, putting on a mummer’s play every day, bound to a boy who wakes up seized with night terrors and who sometimes does not speak to anyone but his brother for days at a time.
While Daenaera inspects her flower garden, and Gaemon plays with one of the small dogs used to keep moles and rats away, Barba sits in the pale sunshine and thinks, content as ever with her own silence. Finally, she begs their leave as the sun begins to set, and then Daenaera’s septa is there anyways. Gaemon usually has Aegon’s schedule memorized, and can confidently tell her that tonight the king is not dining with his brother and goodsister in their isolated apartments, so Barba returns to her rooms and her maids to change for dinner with her husband.
She and Aegon eat together twice a week, usually. When they were first wed they never took any meals in the same room; this is progress, however slow and grueling. She is a patient woman. She can wait. By now she knows which of her clothes Aegon likes and which he dislikes; he acts impassive but he has preferences, even if there is no sexual undertone to it.
She does not think he finds her particularly physically attractive. Some courtiers make mockery behind his back and insinuate he is like the late Ser Laenor. Others, crueler, suggest he is too ‘damaged’ to ever appreciate a woman. Barba does not particularly care. Her parents were very happy together, but she never considered them to be passionately in love. Rather, they were companions. One does not need romance to produce children, only trust in one another.
She changes from her blue gown to one of a deep shade of plum, and confines her dark hair to an amethyst studded crispinette, which keeps her hair in two buns at the sides of her head, with a dark veil down her back. Then she is escorted by her maids and guards to dinner, which sometimes makes her feel like a prisoner walking to her execution.
Aegon does not frighten her, even in his rare rages, but she does not delude herself that because he is content with her company, that they are equals. She always keeps her guard raised, as much as he does his. He would deny it, but she has far more to lose.
He looks bored and tired when she arrives, which is not unusual. She’d hoped he’d taken a nap after this morning’s commotion, but the shadows under his dark eyes are even more pronounced in the firelight. He has very dark eyes for a Targaryen. They say they are his mother’s eyes, that Prince Daemon’s were paler. Barba would not know, she never met either. She does not think she should have liked to.
“Your Grace,” she says, curtsying deeply. Three years wed, and she can count the number of times she has called him ‘Aegon’ to his face on one hand. And even then, always in private. The last time, it was when she said to him, “Aegon, I can prove it was his doing.”
She was talking about Peake. She was still weak with fever, but the papers were clenched triumphantly in her clammy fist. She remembers how he stared at her, took them, and before he even looked at them, guided her to a chair, gently. He is not a gentle boy and she thinks that was the softest he has ever been with her. She was afraid to like it.
“My lady,” he says, and then dismisses all others. They can serve themselves. He prefers it. She has seen his jaw clench and teeth grit when too many people are hovering around, offering food and drink. He does not like to be touched.
When they murdered his mother, they held him still and forced him to watch as he screamed and writhed and tried to get away, or to look away. Then they chained him up in a cell for four months, before he was brought in shackles to court, where his uncle proposed castrating him on the spot and sending him to the Wall. It only did not happen at the intervention of Lady Alicent, Lord Corlys, and Larys Strong, the clubfoot Hand.
Aegon is like a little bird or weak puppy; you do not make much noise while he eats for fear of distracting him from his meal. He needs his strength. Barba keeps her gaze on her plate and slowly and methodically chews and swallows. First her greens, then the breads, last the meats. They have a different manner of cooking here in the Crownlands, and if she is being honest, she prefers it to the food at home. Especially the lemon cakes.
“I’ve had a letter from my sisters,” he says, when they are finished eating.
Barba glances up warily. His face is taut and terse as ever, like cured leather. It’s disconcerting on someone so young, who is only just able to grow stubble on his chin and cheeks. “They tell me I will be remiss if I do not crown you soon.”
Barba is pleasantly surprised, but durst not show it. She does not want to smile and have it be taken for smug arrogance. Aegon’s patience wears thin on the best of days. “If that is your will, Your Grace,” she says.
“Viserys tells me I should not until we have consummated the marriage,” he continues, bluntly.
Barba takes a sip of her wine. She was not prepared that he should demand she lie with him the very day he reached his majority, but if that is his decision, she should prepare herself. She has no mother to offer counsel but she has been warned men are sensitive of these things, more fickle than women, and that a bad first experience will sour them to a wife for some time, for if they fail in the matter it is her fault.
She realizes he is waiting for some response from her. He is clutching his goblet so hard it is a wonder it does not shatter. Perhaps Viserys has teased him about it, that his elder brother has not bedded a woman yet. Viserys was made to bed his bride far too young, but he may not see it that way, may be proud he already has a chubby little son, and another on the way. Larra is about to enter her confinement with the second.
“Whatever you wish of me, I will do,” she settles on. “But only if it is what you want. No one else may command us, now.”
That seems to please him. He lets go of the cup, without drinking. He is not fond of wine, or too fond. Either he refuses to drink outright, or drinks until he is nodding off or has a headache, so he has an excuse to leave feasts early.
“No,” he agrees, then says. “You’ll be crowned at the year’s end. That is my will.”
“You honor me, Your Grace.”
He nods, then looks away, uncomfortable.
Barba decides she had best dare it, now. “When I am crowned,” she says, “I would ask two gifts of Your Grace.”
He stiffens, suspicious. He is not truly miserly in his personal dealings, though he already has a reputation around court. But he is always leery of being taken advantage of in some way, his generosity preyed upon, of hidden traps and tricks.
“What are they?”
“First,” she says, “that I might have women. Ladies in waiting. As a proper queen should.”
He frowns. “You have Daenaera and Lady Larra.” Always Lady Larra. Aegon has never been fond of his goodsister.
“I am told your mother had many, when she was queen,” she points out, then holds her breath. The mention of his mother alone might make him very angry with her, or very sad.
He says nothing for a moment, turns over his knife in his hand, then says, curt and clipped. “She did. Who would you have?”
“Your sisters, firstly,” Barba says. “Though I know they mislike court, but Rhaena can be here and back again in a day’s time. And Lady Ellyn Baratheon, perhaps.”
She has other suggestions as well, but naming too many women will make him less likely to agree. Who a queen has in her household is her own choice, but as king he can dismiss any of her women or servants at a moment’s notice, and he controls their wages and allowances, including her own. She understands that now, the risk every wife takes. Family has to provide for you. Many husbands feel no such particular duty.
“Fine,” he says. “So long as it does not become…” he trails off. She knows what he means. Aegon hates change, after a childhood of fear and upheaval. He worries if she has ladies she will develop her own court and subject him to its merry whims, though she has no great love for feasting and merriment herself. She should rather retire early with a cup of wine and read.
“Secondly,” she says, “that we should travel to the North, when summer comes.”
He looks hard at her at that. “To the Dreadfort?”
“If you would permit me,” she says. “By way of White Harbor, first, and we could not neglect Winterfell and Lord Cregan-,” much as she dislikes the arrogant man, who thinks himself one of the kings of winter. He has grown far too comfortable with operating sight unseen of the Iron Throne. He recalls the king as a helpless child, and herself he last saw when she was a pudgy little girl. She wants to remind him otherwise. It is good to put the fear back into the lord paramounts, every so often.
“No,” Aegon says, scowling. “I will have no progress-,”
“Only to the North,” she says. “We need not stay long. But to pay our respects, and let the people see their king-,”
“If they want to see me, they can come to me,” he says coldly.
“Your Grace, your lords do not have dragons, only ravens-,”
“I keep no dragons either,” he snarls, and in that instance, he sounds like a grown, angry man.
Barba jumps back in her seat, almost upsetting her wine cup, but steadies it swiftly. He notices and colors a little, ashamed of his outburst.
“It would be a waste of coin and time,” he says. “If you wish to see your brother, he may come here, or you may go to him with your ladies-,”
“One’s duty is never a waste of time,” she says stiffly.
That angers him again. “And how is it my duty, to cavort like a mummer for the people? They do not care for me. They do not love me. They only care that they are fed and unharmed. That is my duty, that is what I will do, and Lord Alyn, once I name him my Hand-,”
Alyn Velaryon is still very young and an attainted bastard to some, but there are far worse options. Barba is relieved.
“You need not cavort,” she says. “But just as a general instills faith in his men by visiting them in the field, and a farmer inspects his crops- They must see you, Your Grace. You need not make empty speeches or dance with their daughters but you must see them, and they you. They have fought for you, starved for you-,”
“For me?” he is incensed.
“For me as well,” she says. “For all of us. You have little faith in many of your lords. You ought not to, they were faithless. But if you cannot rely on the lords, at least you might know you have the people, and that the common folk know you, and choose to follow you, to honor you, to respect you.”
“King of the stablehands and the serfs,” he says coldly. “That is what you would have me be. The people’s ruler. While my courtiers snigger behind their hands about my every action. I am not deaf. I know what they say of me. And of you.”
Barba stills then, and stops talking. Here, she thinks, here, now, his mood is turning and she is losing his favor, ever fleeting.
He is realizing now that she will give him trouble, and he could have the likes of sweet little Daenaera Velaryon in her place, who is an innocent child who does not think of these things. Daenaera would chatter about her day in the gardens and let him brood and would never insist on anything like this, only giggle and smile hopefully at him over her cup of honeyed milk.
“They say you are a heathen and sow-faced,” he says, “and that I must have been drunk on poppy wine or bribed by the Starks to wed a northerner. They say you come from weak stock and will never give me heirs, and that if you do they will never be raised in the Light of the Seven. They say you are sullen and stiff and not womanly and that I will come to rue a boy’s impulsive decision when I am a man grown.”
Barba forces herself to stare at him, unblinking, that cold Bolton gaze. But there is no real fire or venom to his words.
“They are wrong,” Aegon says. “You are the wife I chose and the queen I am crowning.” His lip twists, and then he admits, “I do not regret my choice. Even if you disagree with me, and I with you.”
Barba bows her head again. “Thank you, Your Grace.”
“I was not finished,” he says. “I do not like the idea of any of this. But it will be at least two years before summer. Mayhaps you will change my mind. Manderly and Merryweather and Stackspear could not, but you are more clever than any of them,” he says it offhandedly, as if it should be obvious.
Barba is taken aback and for the first time she knows her shock shows on her face, lips slightly parted.
He watches her expression in silence for a moment, then seems almost pleased he has stunned her with his sudden, if not acquisal, at least acceptance of her argument.
“Thank you, Aegon,” she says, slowly.
Perhaps it is just her imagination, but for a few moments the light from the sconces on the walls seem to make his dark eyes glisten and gleam like the beetles she would collect as a child. The thought is almost a sweet one, which is novel when thinking of her husband.
He stands, and she does as well. “I am not tired,” he says, “and I cannot be ushered off to bed any longer by my regents. I am going to walk.”
Then he stops, and she realizes the invitation is covert, but there.
“May I walk with you?” she asks. “The night air can be invigorating, provided it is not damp.”
That, of all things, gets a faint, almost wry smile from him.
“That would please me, Your Grace.”
Barba does not realize he addressed her as such until she has taken his arm. Very formally, they proceed. But she has never had to hide a smile when walking beside him before.