Chapter Text
The long hall, the two flights of stairs, and the heavy tapestries depicting various couples, not always of different sex, engaged in delightful and wicked activities, successfully muted the sounds coming from the common room. Many guests liked to hear the music as background of their own pleasure but there were also those who rather preferred silence, so the women had developed a way to change sounds in the blink of an eye: an additional tapestry over the door held in place by heavy rings that could be easily drawn up or down – a simple but effective trick.
The client currently occupying this most luxury room of the most sumptuous establishment of its kind in King's Landing belonged to the second type. It was his third visit here within a week and the second time running that he asked for her. She was becoming popular, although she was barely fourteen! And judging by his attire and his unwillingness to be seen, he might even be a real lord. Her breast swelled with pride.
"M'lord only needs to tell me what he needs," she purred.
He chuckled. "Take a few pillows and recline against them," he ordered. "Arrange the coverings around yourself."
Her eyes flickered at the portrait hanging at the wall on their left. It was a new addition, having come to them only a few weeks ago, and she delighted in the rumours she heard about it. Now she took the posture of the naked woman in it – a girl not much older than herself, lying amidst what looked like real rich furs in colours the girl had not even know existed in beasts. The jewels adorning her also looked real – sparkling red, nightly shade of blue, the green of the Kingswood she had seen once, the cold glitter of stars… Long lines of gems the young whore had not seen alternating with pearls shot through the girl's dark hair and disappeared against the black of one of the firs, right against the soft curve of her bent knees.
"Was she indeed a queen?" she asked and he chuckled again.
"She was. A queen and a whore. They are all like this there, you know. Prove that you're better than her," he challenged and she took it as a task that might bring her some additional coins.
She almost got him to acknowledge that no whore, a royal one or not, could not compare to her when the tapestries failed to completely drown the echo of booted feet. Before they could realize what was going on, the door flew wide open and they found themselves face to face with a dozen of gold cloaks.
"Looks like we'll have to do the deed ourselves," the King noted sardonically. "Given the way the men ran away as soon as they got rid of the thing, the servants might drop dead once they reveal it, so it has to be us."
The King's Hand sighed heavily. The gold cloaks' fear was not a good thing indeed. The painting was probably all it was reported to be and much worse. The men had certainly wrapped in in enough layers of cloth for a southern bird to survive a good hundred years on the Wall.
"I'll do it, Your Grace," he said and immediately proceeded to action.
The King's pale face told him that it was even worse than the worse he had expected. He made a step back and his jaw dropped at the unashamed sensuality – shamelessness – of the image captured on the wood panel. At least the man isn't there, he thought but it was a bleak comfort. For how long had this been displayed in that brothel frequented by highborn? How many people had seen it? Had they recognized her? With a pang of despair, Jon Arryn realized that he would have recognized her even without having been warned about her identity, so why wouldn't others know who she was at once?
"Your Grace," he started and fell silent because he didn't have anything to say. What did one say to a man who had found out that he had wed a... a woman like this? Jon knew he'd die, should Lysa's shame be exposed to the world like this. But this was… What would happen now? That would throw doubt over the royal succession. Seven hells, it might even lead to a war… if the King managed to keep it all political, which, where she was concerned, he hadn't managed until now.
"Oh stop with those sympathies already!"
Rhaegar Targaryen's voice was pulsing with anger. Finally, Jon looked at him and was met by eyes widened in fury.
"Certainly it happened before your wedding," he offered tentatively. "The Princess is all but a girl here…"
"Stop talking through your hat already, I said!" the King cut him off. "This isn't Elia."
The Seven help us, he's as mad as Aerys! "I- I don't see how such a thing is possible, Your Grace. I…"
"That's right," Rhaegar agreed icily. "You don't see. For the Mother's sake, Jon, I lived with the woman! I know what she looks like unclothed." He jabbed the offensive panel with his index finger and glared at the woman in it who was not a woman at all, for all the carnality that she had let be depicted. "This isn't Elia, I assure you. The body isn't hers. Blood and doom, even the face isn't the same!"
He didn't need his Hand saying anything to know that he hadn't been believed. Indeed, the face was very much like Elia's, save the slight difference in the cheekbones and the heavier eyelids. The lips were also fuller. It didn't matter, of course. All those would be accepted as imperfections of the hand placing the oil on the panel. Rhaegar only had his instincts to tell him that the difference was more than superficial, a misfortune. The expression wasn't right. The feelings bringing life behind those black eyes – they weren't something that would show in Elia's face in this exact way. The woman simply wasn't his former wife, a girl or not. Although on the tapestry hanging in the wall – a tapestry? On the wall of a bloody cave? – displayed the cockatrice and serpent that were the sigil of House Gargalen which Elia's father was descended from. His eyes went to the voluptuous body. No, not Elia at all.
No chance at all to convince the world that it wasn't her either.
"Elia came to me a maiden, I know that for sure," he said because it was the truth.
Silence.
"One day, they'll say my heir is a bastard," Rhaegar finally exploded. "That's what they will say, a bastard!"
"Why not?" Jon Arryn asked calmly. "It wasn't as if you helped him much with the way you treated his mother, the former Queen."
This time, it was the King who went silent with shock. But it was true, he had done everything in his power to undermine Elia's position once it became clear that she had wed Arthur Dayne, of all people. And carrying his child. The thought that she had given Arthur the daughter Rhaegar had been craving for didn't help him feel warmly toward her. But he had certainly never meant to imply that she had been anything but a faultless wife in their past.
Now, it turned out that his help might not be needed. It had been achieved all on its own, without even Elia’s own participation.
"I want to know where this foulness came from," he said, turning his back on the panel, and wished for it to disappear. "I want to find the one who brought it there. I want him questioned. Immediately! I will not suffer calumnies thrown in my children's way – or Elia's, for that matter! Someone painted this lie, invented this nonexisting woman just to taint the former Queen, my children's mother and I will not tolerate it. He will be punished most severely - indeed, I am starting to think that maiming Ser Ilyn wasn't as insane as I always thought it!"
She had an injured newborn to tend to. Rhaegar was quite surprised at how much this detail changed things, melting a good deal of his anger away and making him feel protective toward her. No matter what else Elia was, she wasn't the creature they were trying to make her out to be.
Who were they? Who was standing behind this strike against Aegon? Because Rhaegar had no doubt that that was it – an attempt to undermine his first son's standing. And his own, of course. After all, if Elia had been a whore years before her marriage to him, what did this fact make him?