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She’s never felt like quite the right handmaiden to serve Lady Stark. Alysanne is, after all, a girl from the North who has never been past Torhenn’s Square in all her six-and-ten years. She’s young and inexperienced, with rough hands from spending all the summer and autumn years of her childhood helping her brother planting and harvesting the barley fields. More times than not, Lady Sansa helps Alysanne with the sewing just to make sure it gets done, instead of letting the handmaid finish it herself.
But Alysanne is also a quiet girl, more apt to listen than to speak, and that’s kind of discretion is exactly what her lady needs.
The first time she notices something amiss is her third night serving in Winterfell. The dark night is colder than she expected, icy breezes blowing through the keep even though hot springs water pulses through the thick stone walls of its halls. Alysanne sneaks away from her cell, down the narrow hall and towards her lady’s solar, where she left her thick cloak that morning. It will be a welcome extra layer since it is too late at night to search for another woolen blanket.
She is just about to push the door open when she notices the firelight pouring steadily from beneath it. Alysanne doused the fire herself before putting Lady Sansa to sleep. No one should be in the chamber in the hour of the wolf, when darkness grips the great keep and even the mice sleep in their nests.
Ear pressed to the door, she tries to discern the hushed voices whispering within the solar.
“If only you hadn’t lost it in the wolfswood.”
“It’s not my fault it fell off my shoulders in the middle of the hunt!”
The first, light and airy and filled with gentle laughter, is easily the lady of Winterfell. It is alright, that Sansa Stark is in her own chamber. But the other . . . the other voice is deep and sterner than the faces of the godswood hearttree, is harder to place. Obviously a male, from what little Alysanne hears, but she cannot tell who it is.
The whispers seem too casual to be a late night diplomatic discussion, some matter of state that pulled her lady from the warmth and comfort of her bed in the Lord's Chamber.
Alysanne backs away slowly. She does not wish to intrude upon Lady Sansa and her strange guest. But she will not tell anyone she has seen, not even her friend Cat who works in the kitchens, Cat who she shares everything with. Because to tell Cat is to risk someone finding out, and Alysanne will not bring the gossip of Winterfell’s halls upon Lady Sansa’s shoulders when she has done so much for them already.
The next morning, Alysanne wakes to find her cloak hanging on her doorknob, the tear at the bottom fixed with neat, even stitches in a matching thread of forest green. The stitches have been neatly hidden in an embroidered garden design, a tree and flowers and little white xes of falling snow. She worries after, that Lady Sansa knew she eavesdropped upon her and her male companion. But Alysanne quickly realizes this is just one of her lady’s many courtesies for those in her employ, like the creamy hare soup she brings to Alysanne when she is abed with coughs and fever, or the shawl she decorates with trees and swirls of snow as a gift for Alysanne’s seventeenth nameday.
Not too long past her own nameday, the lords of the North fall upon Winterfell to celebrate the nameday of their king. The halls are decked in flowing tapestries decorated in Stark colors, with strong wolves in grey on white, with gifts from the Northern lords and ladies to bring the castle back to its past life and prepare it for the winter. Someone even finds a minstrel to sing and play for the gathering throughout the festivities.
Alysanne helps lower Lady Sansa into her bath, letting the rising steam fill her face with its comforting warmth and the wonderful scent of juniper and pine. There is something else in the bath, something sweet that she cannot quite name. Lady Sansa chose to bathe in her finest scent, a dash of something once popular in Highgarden left over from the collection of poor, dead Lady Walda Frey.
“Mmm.”
“The secret’s in the oranges.” Lady Sansa says as she settles into the water. Alysanne feels her cheeks burn with the hottest fire. She did not realize she had whispered her appreciations out loud.
“Oranges, my lady?”
“They’re a fruit, popular in Dorne. Like a lemon, but sweet and brightly colored.” She leans her head back, her coppery hair draping over the edge of the matching copper tub. Sansa's eyes close as Alysanne begins to tend to her, brushing out her hair and caring for her nails. “The perfumers dried the wedges and added them to the forest scents.”
“It’s lovely, my lady.” Alysanne cards her hands through Sansa’s hair. She reaches for a brush and begins untangling the few knots there are.
Sansa’s eyes snap open. At first she fears she has done something wrong. “Would you like to wear some?”
“Oh! My lady, this is above my station. Someone would think I stole it.” The scent is lovely, but not worth the likes of her. It’s meant for women like Sansa, proper ladies of Great Houses.
“Tonight’s a special night, not just for Jon but for everyone.” A smile plays on Sansa’s lips. “I’d like to share my joy with you.”
Alysanne nods, knowing that she cannot win a battle like this against her mistress. While a gentle lady, Sansa is headstrong when she wishes to have her way.
It is as she dabs some of the scent behind her ears and on her wrists that Alysanne realizes why this night is so exciting for Sansa. Likely, her mysterious caller is among the celebrants that came to enjoy the King’s feast and hospitality.
As she sits at the table with Cat and the other maiden servants, Alysanne’s eyes are fixed on her lady. She notes every one of Lady Sansa’s dance partners, from the Cerwyn heir to the youngest nephew of Lord Manderly to a scrawny young hedge knight. She smiles graciously at all of them, but her eyes seem not to glimmer in any special way for anyone.
And Lady Sansa spends most of the night speaking with her brother or dancing on his arm, rarely letting go of the little time he spends enjoying the minstrel’s songs. King Jon spends time with only two other partners: Lady Lyanna Mormont and Lady Brienne of Tarth, both of whom had no other partners before he deigned to spare his time for them. After that, there was no trouble.
But that was not a problem Lady Sansa had.
After she follows Lady Sansa to her chambers, she is surprised to be sent away before she can aid her lady in undressing.
“I’m sure you’re tired, Alysanne.” Sansa spins around, holding her hands to her chest. Her eyes are a sky sprinkled with twinkling stars. “I know I am.”
“Then can I help you, my lady?”
“Oh, I’m too tired to sleep.” She giggles like a giddy little girl with a mouthful of apple tarts. “I’ll handle it on my own. Thank you, though.”
“At least let me stay and sew with you a little, my lady.” She gently pushes the subject, wanting to make sure everything is alright.
“There’s really no need. I’ll have plenty company by my lonesome.”
Alysanne is sure then that the stranger will be calling again. Sure enough, there are soft voices whispering from Lady Sansa’s solar well into the night. Alysanne smiles secretly to herself, glad that her lady has found happiness in someone. Yet fear still yaps from in its nest within her. She is unsure who this person is, and thus unsure who to protect her lady’s heart and honor from if called upon to do so.
Life continues on for another moon, with sewing and meals and caring for her lady, before Lord Bran returns from the snowy world beyond Winterfell. There is a new joy in the walls of Winterfell, of hope and rebirth and renewal of a line they all thought resting entirely on Lady Sansa. Lord Bran slowly joins in the council meetings and running on Winterfell, learning the new ways of the castle that have been set.
Lady Sansa holds that giddy smile across her face again after her brother’s arrival. It lasts for days and well into the nights as they sit to their sewing in front of Sansa’s roaring hearth.
Alysanne holds her head low as her lady sews something akin to a maiden’s cloak, even though there is no wedding on the horizon. For once, when she peers covertly to look at Lady Sansa’s stitches, the design is angled away from Alysanne’s curious gaze.
She thinks upon that invisible suitor, a voice behind a shut door, and worries more than a mother whose child has left her side for the first time.
King Jon joins Lady Sansa in her solar two days later, a stack of old records in his hands. He needs help going through them, he says, and Lady Sansa quickly chases Alysanne and her other companions out the door.
Later that night, after the King has left, the giddy laughter comes not from Lady Sansa’s solar but from her bedchamber. Alysanne tries to keep the thoughts to herself, but cannot keep everything away from Cat, who saw a dark cloaked figure leaving the chambers when she brought the morning meal.
The news spreads quickly after that: Lady Sansa has taken on a lover.
The servants and the men-at-arms whisper of dishonor, ruining her parents legacy in the very bed where she was born, shaming her in every way they can. All this, over a rumor of a serving girl from the winter town.
Alysanne is furious at her friend, refuses to speak to her for days. Only after a greater rumor, quickly revealed to be a truth by Lord Bran, spreads through all of Winterfell, does she sit with Cat again.
“I can’t believe you’d tell people!” She chides, hands shaking in her anger.
“What was I supposed to do?” Cat shrugs her shoulders. “It’s not like I could act like it didn’t happen.”
Alysanne cannot fathom how to explain- that is exactly what she has done. Every action of Lady Sansa’s testifies the truth- she is a woman in love, hopelessly and purely. No amount of rumors can stop that. She has defended her mistress to every stable boy and cook’s helper she can verbally spar with, threatening them with her wrath or worse if she catches them spreading these vicious truths.
“That’s what I’ve been doing.” She admits with a heavy sigh. “It’s what we must all do, for our lady, for our king, for all of Winterfell. Until she addresses this herself, we must remain true in our loyalties.”
“But Alysa-” Her friend begins, a nickname from her childhood desperately spilling from her tongue.
“No buts. We must remain secure in one another in this winter.” She raises a stiff eyebrow. “And that means our lord and lady most of all.”
As she says the words, it all dawns for her, brighter than the sun at the end of the Long Night. This new tale, brought forth by Lord Bran, explains so much. She has been a fool, blind to the evidence before her.
Alysanne bolts from the kitchen, away from Cat’s side. She runs up stairs and down halls, finally bursting forward into Lady Sansa’s solar.
There, seated before the hearth, is her lady, splendid in Stark colors, smooth grey and glowing white. Besides her, King Jon and a stack of ledgers. His hand is on Lady Sansa’s knee, and he leans in close, closer than is proper, admiring the maiden’s cloak she has been so diligently working on.
“My lady, I-”
“Come, Alysanne. I have good news to share with you.” There, that giddy smile all over again, confirming all these thoughts running wild round Alysanne’s head.
And as the news pours out, that Lady Sansa will marry the king and reign as Queen of the North in a short time, she thinks of how long these things have been going on. Months before Lord Bran arrived and called the king their cousin, Lady Sansa was desperately, hopelessly in love. Yet, besides the sins that it implies, Alysanne cannot help but be happy. After all their whispers in dark rooms, the gazes everyone saw but did not comprehend, the pair can be together and be happy, the happiness her lady deserves, and a happiness that will extend to them all.