Chapter Text
Autumn brought the first morning snow in three years and a husband-to-be for Catelyn Tully, blown into Riverrun with the crisp north wind.
Lysa and the other castle girls had scrunched their noses and huddled even firmer to the hearth when Catelyn asked them to join her on the ramparts, all of their love for the world outside drifting away with brown leaves in the Trident’s waters. She too loved the cold little, and had wasted an hour that morning digging around for her fur-lined cloaks before she even flirted with the idea of waiting outside for her father and guests to port.
But she marveled at the snow now, as it set its shimmering blanket upon the land. Catelyn had forgotten the feeling of snow, the odd tickle it left against skin as it melted. The warm years had not been many this time around, but when spring’s light crested the Trident none were ever too eager to hold memories of the cold in their hearts.
So, she shivered now as the soft crystals landed upon her skin and wetted her outer layers, watching the river and road below disappear under flecks of winter.
“Cat, dear child,” she heard from behind, the sturdy voice of her uncle Brynden. She had not heard him approach—the snow was not yet thick enough to crunch underfoot, but perfect to muffle a footstep.“You will catch your death. Wouldn’t you like to wait in the solarium with your sister?”
A cool wind seeped under her collar as thought to prove his point.
“The Northmen will not notice the cold,” she argued, and pulled her cloaks tighter about her shoulders as she cast her eyes back to the Red Fork. “I imagine Winterfell is already half buried in snow by now. What should Eddard think of me, if I cannot even bear a breeze?”
Which, in fairness, she was struggling to do. Though her furs were thick, the best of her winter clothes were tailored for a girl of twelve and left her with only light summer layers to insulate her beneath the cloak.
Her uncle, on the other hand, spared no covering, with mole skin mittens and heavy, padded riding leathers and a fur-lined hat pulled over his ruddy curls so they stuck out in any which direction. He raised an eyebrow at her and shook his head, as he often did when Catelyn played her stubborn card.
(Though if the Blackfish of Riverrun thought her stubborn, he should consult a mirror.)
“It is Eddard who will have to adjust his comforts, not you, dear niece. We are not men of winter here.”
Catelyn sighed, and huddled deeper into her furs.
“Dour men, they can be,” her father had warned. “Stern and hardened by their land. When blizzards and hail storms keep you locked in a dark keep for years at a time, living on rations and hope for warmer days, it takes a special type not to grow so world-weary.”
How on earth would such a man adjust? Catelyn had trouble imagining that she would be of any help in that regard.
She’d told Father as much, too.
“If anyone can, it is you, my little Cat.”
Father had left the next morning to meet her betrothed’s traveling party in the Neck. A fortnight later, and all of Catelyn’s reservations had cured into an eager joy as she glimpsed his banners crossing the river, joined now by ones of grey and white.
“Alright, then,” Uncle Brynden said, falling into his tutor’s posture. “How well do you remember your lessons, niece? Which Northman banners do you see?”
Catelyn smiled, a relieved sigh on her lips. Her uncle always knew how best to distract her from her overactive mind.
“Stark, of course, at the helm,” she began, pointing to the nearest of the boats where her father’s banners flew alongside those of the North’s wardens. “Then behind them flies a host of Cerwyn, Hornwood, and Manderly – they worship the Seven, yes?”
“Indeed they do.” Brynden nodded. “And what do you know of your betrothed’s family?”
“Lord Rickard and Lady Lyarra are his parents—third cousins, though her family hails from the Northern mountain clans. Their children are Brandon, Eddard, Lyanna, and Benjen, in that order,” she recited. It was such basic knowledge, but still she circled it through her memory so as not to make a huge fool of herself.
As the Riverlands’ heir, that would not do.
“Uncle,” she started, a coil of nerves in her belly. “What if Eddard is disappointed by me?”
“Live as a spinster. It’s not a bad life.” His smile was playful. “The boy would have to be another kind of stubborn to be disappointed by you.”
“I am being serious.”
“So am I. We’re a picky bunch, second sons. But something tells me Eddard Stark will fold to an intelligent young woman’s charms easier than I.”
The boats drew ever closer. Catelyn could now easily make out the grey wolf of her betrothed’s house flapping on its field of white.
“I should begin dressing,” Catelyn sighed, knowing she and Lysa would be bickering over laces and beads and braids until the moment the boat docked.
—
Eddard Stark had eyes of cold steel and gave her no smile upon their meeting.
Catelyn did not let it wound her; did Father not warn her as much, about harsh men with frozen hearts?
Her father’s warning seemed to apply to all but the Faith-following Manderlys and Brandon, her betrothed’s elder brother, who was a gentleman straight out of her mother’s old songs. Brandon kissed her hand, bowed deep, and called her ‘sister’ with a wink and smile that could melt the Wall. There was nothing too special about his looks, but his beard was full and trimmed nicely, and he knew how to smile.
Eddard was clean shaven, plainly dressed, and barely taller than her in his riding boots. All he mustered was a curt bow and a blunt introduction. Catelyn had never heard one more rehearsed.
Her smile did not waver, though her spirits gave a small shudder with every second Eddard avoided her eye.
He bowed to Lysa, then Uncle Brynden, before scurrying back towards his father, whispering something to him that made the man grunt and nudge him back in Catelyn’s direction.
“Go, lad,” Rickard dismissed. “Let Lady Catelyn show you her home before you speak of naps.”
Her betrothed made a small noise of protest as she hooked her arm in his and dragged him off. From the corner of her eye she saw him glance back to his father, but Lord Rickard had already moved on to introduce Uncle Brynden to his bannermen and just nodded to Catelyn in her retreat. Her own father smiled, a proud, encouraging twinkle in his eye.
“It will not take long, my lord,” she assured Eddard, smiling sweetly. “I know you must be tired.”
They stared at the kitchens, and Catelyn did her duty in introducing every one of the women laboring over supper, before dragging Eddard up to the library and Maester’s quarters, then down to the training yards – the only area of the keep that Catelyn had little knowledge of.
Luckily, Eddard did not ask much of her.
“I do not joust,” he said, when they came upon the tourney grounds. None were tilting that day, what with the Northmen arriving. It made for poor a poor tour, surely, and Catelyn quickly hurried them on to other areas of the keep that might impress her betrothed more.
But the armory earned only a lukewarm response, and Eddard seemed most uninterested in the histories she spouted about all of the Tullys past who occupied a chamber here, or died in a hallway there, or even the river itself, when she marched him through the underground tunnels with tales of battles won and sieges withheld because of how ingeniously the castle wove itself with the very body of the Trident.
(Uncle Brynden will be proud to hear how I remembered my lessons, she thought, smiling with a pride of her own. She did try so very hard to do so.)
As a girl Catelyn had turned herself around and become lost in the tunnels many a time, so entranced was she by their maze. Eddard just knit his brow together and said how they reminded him of the old crypts in Winterfell.
“They are halls of dread,” he explained. “May we go elsewhere, my lady? This place unnerves me.”
Her stomach dropped a little. Have I upset him?
“But we have not yet reached the hidden docks.”
“Another day,” Eddard offered, though he did not meet her eye. Instead, his own flitted about the dark corners of the passage. “There will be many more ahead of us.”
She wanted to push him onward. There was a whole tale about the docks, myths about underwater tunnels that led many an army to their doom and many a knight to freedom, and surely, if nothing else, that should pique any man’s interest!
But Eddard grew more tense the longer they lingered there.
“Perhaps the Godswood, then.” Catelyn offered, and led him back into the sun before he could so much as nod his approval.
Come spring, no color was absent from Riverrun’s Godswood. From flowers running the whole spectrum in every shade imaginable, to the deep, loamy black of the fertile earth, and green, the greens of so many trees, and vines of ivy crawling up the walls that shroud those gardens within the keep.
In this season, however, those colors were little more than variants of brown.
She cringed at the state of her flower beds as they strode between them. Those in the upper gardens fared a little better, as they held holly bushes, sage and asters, and other plants for the cold years. But these, the lower gardens, these were her own. That Eddard should first see them in such a dour state was just shameful.
Indeed, a wrinkle formed between his sharp brows. Catelyn tensed her gut, waiting for his disappointment.
“This is a Godswood?” He asked. It was not what she had been girding herself to hear.
Better than that, she thought, letting the tension relive itself.
“Yes! I know it must not look like much now, but trust, come spring there is no place more lush and beautiful in the keep. Father let me plan the seasonal beds last year. You should have seen them! I wanted roses, but the gardeners said they were past season. Septa Helen lets us take our lessons in the lower yard when the weather is nice, and sometimes Maester Vyman will, too, but he prefers the library.”
“Mm.” He looked around for a moment more, then met her eye. Gods, but his gaze could pierce. “I would stay here for time, if it please you.”
Her heart erupted in quick flutters, and she could barely contain an unseemly grin.
He likes it!
“Splendid! I might gather some cheeses and bread from the kitchens, and we may take our luncheon-”
“-I want to pray. Alone.”
Catelyn recoiled, moving back a pace as her betrothed winced with instant regret. Surely he had not meant for his tone to take such a sharp edge, but how on earth was Catelyn to know? How on earth was she supposed to read this man, who gave her so little to work with?
A long minute passed, Eddard bobbing his mouth like a fish, in search of what to say, before deciding instead to worry at his bottom lip and say nothing at all.
“I understand, my lord,” Catelyn supplied when the silence became unbearable. “You must be so tired.”
Her betrothed sighed. Relieved.
Relieved why? she wondered. That I can take his dismissal kindly, or that he will soon be rid of me? Oh, Mother. I’ve offended him.
As frustrated as Eddard made her, she had quite forgotten that people used Godswoods as, well. Godswoods. That was, truly, her own folly.
Eddard nodded and offered her what might have been an apologetic smile (if Catelyn was being very optimistic about his intentions), then scanned the gardens.
“Has Riverrun a heart tree?”
“No. There is a young weirwood in the north gardens.” She waved a hand in it’s direction. No longer did she keep the disappointment from her tone. “That way. You will find it.”
Eddard may have responded. Catelyn did not see, already speeding away before she got the chance.
—
Catelyn felt like crawling in the river and burrowing deep into the loam, like those horrible bugs that Petyr used to throw at her, that lived underside of rocks and ate away at the moss.
Yes. She felt like a wretched, rock-dwelling creature, never to face another person with dignity.
“I shall live as a spinster.”
Her noble proclamation was muffled in the down of her pillow.
“Come now, Cat,” Erika, the castellan’s granddaughter, cooed. She’d brought her needlework to the hearth, and stitched away to the tune of Catelyn’s woes. “It’s Eddard’s own fault if he cannot show you grace. At least did not fondle you with his eyes, like the last ones.”
But the last ones were at least handsome, she did not say, for fear of sounding like a shallow fool.
Catelyn did not think she even cared much what her husband would look like, beyond a little girl’s naive fantasies. But how could a man be both plain faced and dourly impersonable?
If Eddard was truly the man she should one day take to her bed – who should one day give her an heir to Riverrun – why should she not feel impossibly let down?
At least she was not crying about it anymore. That would not do, to waste her night drowning in humiliation over an impossible man’s impossibly unwelcoming demeanor. She was due her disappointment, but she would handle it like an heiress.
Or, she would later. When she had to.
“He hates Riverrun. He hates me. Oh, I was absolutely dreadful today, no one will ever want to marry me now!
“How much he wants to marry you makes little difference. He seems timid, is all,” her handmaiden, Lara, mumbled behind her, tugging on Catelyn’s braids as she fixed them for bed.
She groaned. It was a valid point.
But how was she to woo a timid man?
Little and less had she seen of Eddard since that morning. The Starks had all supped together, their welcome feast not until the morrow. Though she and Lysa had followed Father and Uncle Brynden as they led Rickard and his eldest son through the keep, her betrothed had not been with them. Brandon Stark said maybe she’d scared him off, that his younger brother had always been a shy one. His father had scolded him and reassured Catelyn that he was just tired.
“He took to his chambers for a nap,” the Rickard Stark had said, his tone as comforting as a bath of ice. “I hope he was not too short with you. Change can be hard for Ned.”
And it was only the rest of his life that he would have to spend here, in a keep he seemed to hate, with Catelyn, who his opinion of was less clear than the Trident after a heavy rain. She must have looked distraught, for the North’s Warden had lightened his expression and offered her a short pat on the back.
“He says you were most gracious, Lady Catelyn.”
Still, she had a hard time taking comfort from that. Even now, with her face buried in her pillow as Lysa and her handmaiden played with her curls and gossiped over her troubles, she could not for the life of her figure out why – if Eddard had truly found her gracious – why didn’t he act like it?
Maybe Uncle Brynden was right. It wouldn’t be so hard to live unmarried. She was to inherit Riverrun either way, so what need had she of a husband, truly?
Then, footsteps down the hall stopped just at her door.
“My lady,” she heard beyond the threshold, following a couple soft raps upon the wood. “It is Eddard Stark. Are you occupied?”
The three other girls gasped and tittered as Catelyn sprang up from her pillow. Lysa shoved her from the bed, her grin massive and eager, waving her to greet her betrothed.
She called towards the door, “One moment!” and quickly threw a woolen robe over her night dress, a flush crawling up her cheeks knowing that he should see her in such a state of undress before their marriage.
As if he hadn’t a low enough impression of me before!
Lysa laughed at Catelyn’s frantic dressing, Erika wetting down a couple fly-away curls and Lara patting out a wrinkle in her robe. The three of them all but threw her at the threshold, skittering off to a corner to watch her fumble her way through another humiliation.
Without his riding boots, she and Eddard were of a height with each other. Standing as close to the door as he was, her face was mere inches from his when she threw it open.
A noise of surprise left her, and she jumped back a pace.
“My lord,” she greeted, with a quick, sharp look thrown towards the girls, all whispering to each other hurriedly. “Is all well?”
Eddard nodded, though his lips twisted in minute discomfort. It was quite the most emotion she had yet seen of him.
“Father says I upset you today,” he began. “It was not my intention. I apologize.”
There was a long, appraising silence between them, Catelyn searching for any earnestness in Eddard’s face, Eddard searching for… something.
“He told me you were tired. I suppose I shan’t have dragged you all about the keep right after a long journey.”
Eddard nodded. He seemed to have something to say, shifting lightly on his feet and pinching his lips in a certain way.
“Well… if that is all, I am currently in naught but my dressing robe-”
“-For you.”
Catelyn flinched as he thrust a hand forward, almost straight into her face, and red filled her vision. She blinked a couple times, and craned her head back until whatever he held cleared into focus.
“...Leaves?”
A bouquet of them, to be exact, clearly self-arranged and tied together with a simple leather cord.
“I would rather have given you flowers,” he explained. “But they’re the only plants with color in this season, weirwoods.”
He was not wrong. But, Catelyn thought, that is why bouquets are spring gifts. Still, she offered a smile.
“Even more so in the North, I am sure.” The only color in a Northern frost at all, maybe.
There was another extended silence. Eddard looked between her and the bundle of leaves, then the smallest hint of a smile piqued his lips. From the bouquet, he plucked a darker leaf, browning and curled, and held it up beside her temple.
“It’s the same as your hair, my lady.”
Lysa cackled behind her.
“Oh... Ehm. Thank you?” She took the leaf and the rest of the bouquet with a small, awkward curtsy. “I am glad you found a piece of home here. Hopefully, the rest will not be so strange forever.”
Eddard blinked a couple times. Faintly, and maybe just in her own imagination, a little color crawled upon his cheeks.
“I-I hope so, too,” he stuttered, then rushed, “Good night, my lady,” and ran off. Catelyn watched him go, wondering. Just wondering.
Lysa patted her shoulder, a look of equal pity and mirth in her eyes. Her sister was still eleven, but Catelyn saw their mother much more in her than herself.
“So much for your charming knight, Cat,” she said, a consolation as much as a taunt.
Catelyn glanced down once more at the bouquet of leaves, haphazardly bundled in their twine. Maybe charming knights only existed in songs.