Chapter Text
It is the fourth night after Ned returns from the Greyjoy Rebellion that he tells her. He waits until after dinner, after Robb and Sansa are safely asleep and Winterfell bedding down for the night, after they are in her warm chambers and definitely alone (except for baby Arya, asleep in her cradle) until dawn.
“My lady,” he says, “Catelyn. There is something I promised myself I would tell you.”
“What, Ned?” she asks, dread prickling in her gut. It cannot be another bastard, she thinks – that had been one of the very first things he had told her when she arrived at Winterfell with Robb in her arms. He was glad to see her again, he was pleased to meet his son, her rooms would be in the warm heart of the castle, and oh yes, his bastard son would also be raised here, no questions. He would not do that to me again. He cannot do that to me again. If he had, he would have told me already.
She is surprised when he says, “It concerns Jon Snow. And his mother.” Her shock must have showed on her face, for he hesitates. “You did – want to know, did you not, my lady?”
“Yes,” she replies instantly. She does want to know. Very much. She has wanted to know since she arrived here in the North. Ned can see it, too - his expression sets hard, until he looks almost as grim as he did the day they wed, as grim as the day he marched south from Riverrun. “Ned, sit down,” she tells him, wanting more than anything to reassure him. “You are welcome in my rooms, and I am hardly going to attack you for admitting you lay with another woman. We are past that point, I would hope.”
“You say that now, but you have not yet heard what it is I have to tell you.” But he slumps into a chair all the same. She takes the one opposite him and waits for him to speak. Eventually, he says, “Jon Snow is not my son.”
The words leave her breathless with shock and confusion, but before she can fully absorb their meaning Ned continues. “He is my sister Lyanna's child, her trueborn child, by Rhaegar Targaryen.”
What?
“You lied to me,” she says at last, latching on to this one important thing because the other and its implications are too big for her to consider right now. “You told me Jon Snow was your bastard.”
“Yes,” he replies, his eyes never leaving her face. “To save his life. Yes.”
“You have lied to the King,” she says. “To Jon Arryn as well.”
“Yes.”
“You have committed treason.” At that, Ned starts to protest, but she cuts him off. “If Robert would not consider this treason, the deception would hardly be necessary. Would it, my lord?”
Pale now, he admits it. “No. It would not.”
“You have told a lie that shames me, become a traitor, and put us all, your children included, in danger to protect a child not even yours.”
“Yes,” he says.
It doesn’t seem real. She cannot absorb the information. This cannot be true. Ned would not do something so foolhardy, so – she doesn’t know what to call it. Deceptive? Treacherous? The words sit ill when applied to her husband. He would not do this. Not to her. Not to Robert Baratheon either, who has been his closest friend since he was a boy.
It is so far-fetched, she realises, that it is probably the truth. While Ned might lie to her, might have just admitted to lying to her, he would not lie to her in this way. She feels very cold.
“I have changed my mind, my lord,” she says quietly. “You are not welcome in my chambers this evening after all.”
That grim expression had not left his face through their brief conversation, but now Catelyn thinks she can see resignation there as well. Ned nods, and stands, and turns to leave. Before he opens the door, she asks, “Why?”
“Lyanna asked it of me,” Ned says. “It was her dying wish. And – he is my nephew. The only nephew I will ever have. I could not let him be killed when it was in my power to save him.”
And then he goes. He shuts the door behind him softly and leaves her to her thoughts.
---
The more Catelyn thinks about it, the angrier she is, and she cannot sleep for it.
What can she do about this situation? Nothing. Nothing at all. Ned has chosen his lie and chosen his course of action and now she must follow with him. Knowingly.
True, if she sent a raven to Lysa with all she had learned, to pass along to Jon Arryn and from Lord Arryn to the King, she could likely ensure Robb at least received his rightful inheritance. But there would be no helping Ned. Ned would be executed as a traitor without a doubt. With him would die Sansa’s and Arya’s chances for worthy marriages and the honour of House Stark.
Even if it only – only! – means losing Ned, it is no choice at all. Damn the man and how much she’s come to love him.
Because the other side of the coin is that to keep Ned’s secret, she must maintain the fiction of Jon Snow. She must accept the presence of her husband’s supposed bastard in her home. Telling her the truth, she realises, makes her partially responsible for the boy’s protection. She doesn’t care for Snow, but that doesn’t mean she wants to be responsible for his death. Robert would likely have the boy killed even before he executed Ned, if he ever found out. Catelyn only ever wanted the boy gone.
If Ned had told her true, that was. A few hours ago she would not have questioned it. She is still having trouble accepting this, torn between thinking that the original lie was the most terrible thing he could have done to her, and thinking that surely this "truth" is a terrible jape. It's too ridiculous to be true. It's too ridiculous to be a lie. A trueborn child of Rhaegar Targaryen, when the man was already wed, smuggled to Winterfell with nobody the wiser?
Gods, she hopes nobody is the wiser.
But the worried thought only reminds her of the danger Ned has put them all in. Her anger and her fear circle in upon themselves and when Arya wakes crying in the middle of the night, as she is wont to do, Catelyn still has not had a wink of sleep.
Her only satisfaction the next morning is that it looks like Ned has hardly slept either. She is still far too angry to speak to him, though. They pass breakfast in tense silence. And supper. And all of the next day, and the day after that. She watches Robb and Sansa at play, ignores Jon Snow entirely, and does not go out of her way to make the Greyjoy boy – an arrogant, selfish child named Theon she disliked on sight - feel welcome in Winterfell.
“Milady’s been keeping Lord Stark out of her bedchamber,” she hears one of her bedmaids tell a washerwoman on the fourth day after Ned told her. “He must’ve bedded another woman while he was away, and that’s what’s made milady angry.”
A castle has no secrets, Catelyn thinks. I believed that once.
“He keeps to her bed well enough, though,” her bedmaid adds. The woman is seventeen years Catelyn’s senior, married, widowed once and married again, two of her four daughters grown and wed themselves. “A rare thing, in a man highborn as he is.”
The washerwoman titters. “Must have been a real beauty to tempt Lord Stark. Or a real tart. Wonder if we’re going to see another little Snow in a few months…”
They both fall silent when Catelyn rounds the corner. She gives them no hint that she overheard their conversation. It is beneath her to defend her husband to the servants. They know nothing of how it is between her and Ned. And, she realises, it might well be that Ned has indeed been faithful to her. To all appearances he may have shamed her, but that is not necessarily the case, something that only they can know.
To all appearances, Ned has shamed her. Shames her still, as long as he keeps his supposed bastard in Winterfell.
But what can she do about it, now that she knows it’s all a lie told for the sake of a child? Nothing.
---
On the evening of the fifth day since he told her, Catelyn waits until Robb and Sansa are safely asleep, leaves Arya in the care of her wet nurse for the night, and goes to seek her husband in his chambers. They are handsomely furnished rooms, though little used even before her husband’s extended journey to Pyke. They are, as always, considerably colder than she personally would prefer. Ned is in the middle of undressing for bed. He stops when he sees her, hands freezing over the laces of his shirt. “My lady,” he says, and pauses mid-sentence too, waiting for her to make the first move.
She has thought carefully about what to say. What she wants from him. “If I am to share in the consequences of your actions, my lord,” she tells him, “I would share in your reasoning as well.”
Still he hesitates.
“Tell me everything, Ned,” Catelyn says. “I deserve this much consideration from you.”
“I hardly know where to start,” he protests, but he is no longer paralysed. He draws a chair closer to his small fire for her and then fetches her a fur from his bed. Even in summer, the northern nights can become unpleasantly chill. There will be snow on the ground tomorrow morning, if she is any judge at all. He sits down in the chair opposite her, as he had five nights before.
“Start with your sister, perhaps,” she prompts him.
“Lyanna. Yes.” Grief flashes across that face she loves so well, that she is still so angry with. “It began at Harrenhal, of course. It was the first time I had seen her after my father arranged her betrothal, and she was…not well pleased. Particularly after she met Robert in person. The trouble began, truly, when she brought us an unexpected addition to our party shortly before the welcoming feast began – Howland Reed, whom she had found being attacked by some squires…”
It is a good tale, one that either of them might repeat to their children, though Catelyn cannot say she exactly approves of Lyanna jousting in a tournament as a mystery knight. Mayhaps it is because of what came of it. But Ned concludes his tale on an ominous note. “This much I knew when I departed for the Vale after the tournament. That the Prince had taken undue interest in Lyanna, and that it angered Robert greatly. I thought that she would come to accept matters as they were. The Prince was wed, she herself was betrothed, there were many and more leagues between them.” He turns his face away from her then briefly, bitterness in his voice. “The next I heard of the matter was when my father wrote to say Lyanna had vanished from Winterfell. Shortly afterwards, Aerys sent for my head.”
“You don’t know how Brandon came to learn of your sister’s disappearance?” she asks, a question that has quietly bothered her almost since she learned of Brandon’s arrest herself.
“No,” Ned says. “I have never been able to find out. I wonder, particularly since anyone familiar with Rhaegar’s plans to visit Winterfell and leave with my sister should by rights have known his attentions were not unwelcome. In any case, I heard nothing more of Lyanna’s whereabouts until almost the end of the war, when I went to break the siege at Storm’s End. You know that I left King’s Landing after I quarrelled with Robert about the fates of Princess Elia and her children.”
She does know, though Ned has told her little of it. Ned swallows, and continues.
“What happened to them – Princess Rhaenys was dragged from under her father’s bed and stabbed too many times to count. Prince Aegon hardly had a head after Tywin Lannister’s men were finished with him. And Princess Elia had been…violated, most brutally, before she too was killed. Cat, it was the most terrible thing I saw in the war.
“Yet it might have been different, if Robert had insisted on justice. Gods forgive for what I am about to say, because Robert is my king and my friend, but it was because it was Rhaegar’s wife and Rhaegar’s children who were dead. Robert had already killed Rhaegar himself, but it was not enough. It seemed almost a madness in him. And for that he was willing to forgive Tywin Lannister.”
“And you could not stand by and let the murders of an unarmed woman and her children pass,” Catelyn says, “not when you went to war in protest of your lord father’s murder. And your brother's.”
Once again he turns away from her slightly, staring into the fire. Catelyn knows she is correct then, that her husband had thought Robert motivated as much by justice as by revenge, and that he had been deeply distressed when he learned he judged wrong.
She is beginning to see why he did what he did. The two slain children he had seen laid at the foot of the Iron Throne had been Jon Snow’s half-brother and half-sister. He could not have known it then, but neither could he have failed to realise it later. Even if they hadn’t been, it was not in him to allow the murder of children to stand unchallenged.
Was it worth lying to her? She’s still too angry with him to think that it might have been.
“I found Lyanna in Dorne,” Ned at last continues. “The last of Aerys’ Kingsguard were there. Seven against three, and only Howland Reed and I survived. My sister was dying even as I climbed the stairs of the tower. Her voice – she was saving her strength to talk to me before she died. She told me she wed Rhaegar before our own heart tree and left with him of her own will. She asked me –“
To protect her son. He doesn’t need to finish that sentence. She won't make him, not when she's making him relive his sister's death already. She must know, if she's to cooperate in this, but she won't make him say the words. Instead she waits.
“I promised,” he says, which is obvious given Jon Snow’s presence at Winterfell. “I did not realise when I did so what keeping that promise would entail.”
“You did it readily enough, though,” Catelyn says, more sharply than she’d intended to.
“What I knew was that my sister was dying and afraid and her son was in terrible danger. I do not regret saving Jon’s life, my lady, though I wish there had been a way to spare you embarrassment.”
“And did you tell me only to spare your guilty conscience?” she accuses him. “You know perfectly well, my lord, that I still have no choice in this matter! I can free myself of your bastard’s presence in this castle only if I allow Robert to free your head from your shoulders.”
“He is not my bastard.”
“You know that and I know that, but it hardly matters.” She is losing her temper with him, after she promised herself she would listen to him first and then say her own piece calmly. “To everyone outside this room, Jon Snow must remain your bastard if you want him to live. You cannot disown him now, and I don’t believe you’ll send him away. So I must endure the pity and the comments about your infidelity and my own deficiencies, that such an honourable man as Eddard Stark would break faith with me so quickly and bring another woman’s child to my home to raise as a brother to mine own!”
Catelyn finds she is on her feet now. Ned looks stricken at her outburst. But Catelyn does not storm from his rooms, does not begin to shout, she just returns to her seat. She isn't done yet. “There is one more thing I would like to know, my lord,” she says. “Ashara Dayne.”
“My lady –“
“No, Ned. You frightened me - you actually frightened me - when I first asked about her. Yet it seems you would have me believe you have kept your vows to me. How does Lady Ashara come into this story?”
Ned sighs. “She told me where Lyanna was.”
“Why would she do that?”
“For love of my brother Brandon,” Ned says bluntly. “It was not only my sister who began an ill-considered affair at Harrenhal.”
That was not amongst the things she had thought her husband might admit. Brandon, the one who had loved Ashara Dayne? She asks as much. But something must show on her face, because Ned looks at her with sympathy.
“I am sorry, Cat, it's true. I know you cared for him. But Lady Ashara was carrying Brandon’s child when he was murdered by Aerys. She had the very great misfortune of witnessing it. Their babe, a daughter, was stillborn. For Brandon’s sake, she took the risk of contacting me and telling me Lyanna’s whereabouts. And I killed her brother there. She was a brave woman, a good woman, and my family brought her only grief.”
“Was it for Brandon that she threw herself into the sea?”
Ned is the one who stands now. He turns toward the window, away from her. “For Brandon, yes. Her daughter too, and her brother. She loved Elia of Dorne like a sister, and they tried to convince Aerys to allow Princess Rhaenys at least to accompany her to Starfall.”
Which had failed, clearly. It is a terrible list of losses. If she had lost Edmure and Lysa, Ned and Robb, she can’t imagine what she might have done. It does not answer her original question. “And you, Ned? Did you love her?”
To her gratification and relief he answers immediately. “She was very lovely, and I danced with her at Harrenhal. After we wed, I spoke with her the once, a few days before…well. Nothing more happened between us. If things had been different, I might have attempted to court her. But I was still half a boy, and did not know what love was.” He pauses. “I know better now.”
Those are words she never thought her husband would say to her – not in all honesty. It feels good. Perhaps she’s being silly and jealous, but it still feels good. It is the best thing for her in this whole sorry mess. The only good thing.
“My lady?” Ned asks. She’s been silent for some time. “Was there anything else you wanted to know?”
“No, Ned,” she sighs. “Not at the moment. You’ve given me a lot to think about, and I’m still very angry with you.” She stands, walks over to him, and kisses him on the cheek. “But I think it might be a passing thing.”
---
What if it had been Lysa?
Catelyn sits up later still after leaving Ned that evening. Thinking, as she had told him. She tries to imagine what she might have done in his situation. In many ways it is an absurd hypothetical. She could not claim to have borne two children of her own by two fathers in the span of less than a year, no woman could. But if she had not been carrying Robb…
The idea of lying to Ned is repugnant.
The idea of Lysa being seduced by an unsuitable man, on the other hand, is far easier to imagine, as is the idea of Lysa asking her help to conceal her shame – if their father did not arrange anything himself, that is. That’s not the important part.
But having to lie to Ned, to tell him she had known another man…! She could not do it now. She does not know if she could even have done it six years ago, when they were strangers to each other.
It is different for women. There is no way, none at all, she could ever raise a hypothetical bastard of her own in her husband’s house. Not even her Ned would allow it. In Dorne perhaps, but this isn't Dorne.
Even so, she isn’t sure she could ever make a promise to Lysa like Ned had made to Lyanna. Perhaps Ned loved his sister more than she loves hers, because she doesn’t think she could shame herself so, not for anything. Men might think her husband cold, but they will never know what he’s done for those he loves. Catelyn realises, strangely enough, that she is almost as proud of him as she is angry.
Her children could still be in danger from Snow’s existence, but at least she knows the lengths Ned might go to in order to protect them. Her dear honest husband will tell any lie, defy even the King himself – she knows it for a certainty now.
It is that bit of cold comfort that lulls her to sleep at last.
---
“Are you angry with Father?” Robb asks the next morning. He looks up at her so anxiously, his eyes so like her own. He looks only a very little like his father, and for the first time Catelyn wonders if Ned ever resented that she named him after Robert. Robert who would have condoned the murder of Ned’s only nephew. More than condoned. Sought it out and be glad when it was done. If he knew.
“I am, sweetling,” she sighs, because it can hardly be hidden. “It’s between us, though, and none of your concern. Your father and I will work it out ourselves.”
“All right,” Robb says dubiously, but starts chattering about the new pups the Master of Hounds showed him.
It hits her then: she has just lied to her son for the sake of Jon Snow. Just as Ned did. Does. Robb is too young to be told, as is Jon Snow. It’s too dangerous. It’s too dangerous for them all – and so it is very much her son’s concern, or it will be one day.
I wish Ned had never brought the boy here.
It’s a half-hearted wish, though, because it’s too late for that. It’s far too late for that. Perhaps Ned could send Jon Snow to foster, but she doubts her husband will want to take the risk. It is sensible, safer, to keep him here, knowing what they know – the fewer people to get a close look at Jon Snow, the better – but then the danger falls on them. On her, and Ned, and their children.
“Mother, you’re not listening,” Robb complains.
“I’m sorry, Robb,” she says. “I’m rather tired this morning, I fear.”
“Was Arya keeping you awake again?”
“No more so than she usually does.” She makes the effort and smiles at him, and ruffles his hair. “Children,” she says seriously, “are very tiring.”
“Am I making you tired?” he asks, shocked.
“No more so than you usually do. Go and play, Robb. I will sit here in this chair and rest. Then you can come back and tell me all about those pups, and when you do, I will be awake enough to listen to you properly.”
A few minutes later, Catelyn looks out her window to see her son playing with his bastard brother in the yard. Cousin, she reminds herself. Jon Snow is Robb’s cousin and not his brother. When she thinks about it like that, it makes her feel just a little bit better. Jon Snow is Ned’s nephew, she repeats in her head, a cousin to her children and not a brother. Ned will tell Snow as much one day.
She does not have to be so afraid of Jon Snow anymore, she realises.
She must fear for Ned and for her children from other quarters, but she doesn’t have to fear that Jon Snow will take Winterfell from her children anywhere nearly as much as she did just last week. If Ned raises him to be an honourable man, raises the boy to love his cousins – and she thinks she can trust Ned to do that, for his sister's sake if nothing else – neither she nor her children will have anything to fear from him. What's more, if worst comes to worst, she has the knowledge to prevent Jon Snow from taking Winterfell from her children and grandchildren. Nor does she have to worry that Ned wants Jon more than he wants Robb, Sansa and Arya. Jon Snow is not his child.
Knowing that, her heart softens just a little, to see the boys together.
Over the next few days she finds it much easier to look at Jon Snow than she ever has before. The boy does not have Ned’s eyes or his long, serious face. He shares those traits with his mother Lyanna Stark. It might be a petty distinction, the worst kind of quibbling, but it makes her feel better somehow. Moreover, thinking about it that way almost makes her grateful for how much the boy resembles her husband. If all anyone can see in him is Ned, nobody will ever suspect that things might be other than they appear, and that will keep them all safe.
When she realises that, she feels another rush of relief. Ned has always been faithful to her. Ned did not bring his lover’s child into her house. Ned only did what he thought he must to save his nephew. She can respect that. Family, duty, and honour - yes, she can respect that, even if she still fears for her own family and resents being dragged into this.
This might work, she thinks. Ned might succeed. If I help him. She does not want Jon Snow to die, and that’s the only option she really has. It would hurt her husband and her children. The lie is solid, and it will hurt her, but for the sake of her family she thinks she might be able to stand it.
And so she comes to a decision.
Late one night, slightly more than two weeks after Ned first told her of his deception, Catelyn shrugs on a robe, takes a candle, and lets herself into Ned’s rooms. He wakes when she enters, sits up in his bed as she sits down beside him. “Catelyn? What is it?”
“I understand,” she says. She takes a deep breath. “I forgive you.”