Chapter Text
It began, as far too many disasters did, with the arrival of An Aunt. In this case with the indomitable termagant that was Aunt Genna Frey, née Lannister, who arrived at Jaime’s King’s Landing townhouse for their luncheon in a tizzy and an enormous fur coat.
“Jaime, darling, I must implore you to—” She stopped, gloves half off, and stared at the chaise longue. “Oh, hullo.”
“Good afternoon, Lady Genna,” Brienne said dryly. “Lovely to see you.”
Aunt Genna nodded and then turned to her wayward nephew. “Jaime, you didn’t mention your little friend was joining us.”
“I’m not,” Brienne said helpfully.
“She’s not,” Jaime confirmed. “And no part of her can be described at little.”
“Don’t sass me,” Aunt Genna says. “I am in dire straits.” She collapsed—dramatically—into the nearby armchair and sighed at a volume best associated with steam locomotives. “Alerie Tyrell has ruined everything!”
“Now, I’m sure that’s an exaggeration. Surely not everything.”
“Everything that matters!”
Jaime exchanged a glance with his ‘little friend’, who was in fact his dearest friend and closest confidante and continual source of consternation. Brienne, bless her, seemed genuinely concerned by Aunt Genna’s antics, which just went to show she was the kindest woman in all of King’s Landing. A courtesy his aunt, beloved though she might be, did not deserve.
“What is it this time, Aunt Genna? Has she pipped your Myrish-trained chef once again? Purchased the very fine necklace that you promised poor Jeyne for having to wed Cleos?”
“Jaime,” Brienne warned, lips pressed together disapprovingly.
She was always doing that, reining in the crueller impulses he was too Lannister to see as truly cruel. It really ought to bother him more.
“Apologies, aunt. Surely it is a particularly egregious wrong she’s inflicted upon you this time.”
Alerie Tyrell and Genna had been duelling over fripperies since they’d found themselves betrothed in the same season many years before. Rarely a moon went by where there was not some new crisis to attend to. Usually she had the good sense to take the matter up with Tyrion, who was both far more clever and far more ruthless than Jaime, but occasionally…
Genna clutched at her pearls. “The most,” she confirmed. “She’s stolen my cow creamer.”
“Your… cow creamer.”
“Yes!”
Jaime swallowed and exchanged a glance with Brienne, whose sombreness was undermined by the slight twitch at the corner of her lips. Right. This was precisely as ridiculous as he thought.
“How did she… steal this… item?”
“Well,” Aunt Genna said, drawing the breath of someone preparing to Tell A Tale. “As you know, I am a collector of fine antiques.”
Jaime did not know this nor could he quite grasp how a cow creamer came into it, but he nodded anyway.
“And for years I have searched high and low for the piece to complete my collection. It has been my greatest passion, the cause of many sleepless nights.”
Again, this was news to Jaime. Last he’d heard, Aunt Genna’s great passions were whist and spaniels.
“And finally, I found it in a little shop off Hook Lane. Tarnished, but beautiful.” Aunt Genna’s eyes nearly shone with emotion. Or possibly indigestion. “The fool didn’t know the value of what he had.”
“But, of course, you did.”
Aunt Genna sniffed. “Of course. I have an eye for these things, you know.”
Jaime nodded, not that she paid any mind to his affirmation.
“Well, I was hardly carrying money on me in Hook Lane. Why, it’s practically part of Flea Bottom!”
Hook Lane was a good half mile from anywhere that could possibly be called Flea Bottom, but best not to say so. She might ask questions about Jaime’s experience on the matter, and some things were best left unmentioned.
“What happened?”
“Oh! I can barely bring myself to say!” She clutched her pearls, then narrowed her eyes. “Where is that man of yours? Pip? Feck?”
“Peck.”
“Ah yes, that’s it.” She craned her neck around to look at the door. “He really ought to have brought tea by now.”
“I’ll see where he is,” Brienne offered, rising to her feet. Clearly intending to abandon Jaime to his fate, a betrayal he did not think possible of her. Still, he need not discover the depths of her treachery, because at just that moment Peck arrived bearing a tray with tea and scones and the finest strawberry preserves.
“Impeccable timing, Peck,” Jaime said. “One might even say impeckable.”
“One might also deserve a good boxing around the ear,” Brienne muttered, clear enough for him to hear and yet his relative—his very own flesh and blood, who’d bounced him upon her generous knee when he was but an innocent babe—did not rise to his defence. Inconceivable.
Still, there was some grim satisfaction in the way she eyed the door and its sweet, sweet relief from The Woes of an Aunt and then resignedly retook her seat. Peck’s scones could persuade even the hardest hearted harridan, and for all her bluster and mean left hook, Brienne could hardly qualify.
“Do go on, Aunt Genna,” Jaime said, when he was certain Brienne was once more as bound by the bonds of society and good graces as he was. “You found your creamer which is meant to… hold cream, one presumes, from only the finest of bovines. No goat milk here, no ser.”
Aunt Genna sniffed and drew herself upright. “Don’t be ridiculous, Jaime. It is a creamer in the shape of a cow.”
“Ah, yes. How foolish of me. You found your cow-shaped creamer in the very darkest alleys of Flea Bottom. We are riveted.”
Aunt Genna folded her hands as one might fold a particular recalcitrant bedsheet. “Well, it was quite late. There was no time to retrieve the funds and return before dark, and so I asked the proprietor to set the creamer aside. Explained it was very dear to me, though of very little monetary value. There may have been a tale of a childhood creamer of just that style, lost to the vagaries of time.”
“You lied.”
“I… exaggerated. I did not want to risk the man realising the value of what he had.”
“Marriage did not change your Lannister nature, I see.”
Somewhere to his right, a teacup and saucer rattled against each other as Brienne stifled a laugh. Good.
“Why should it?” Aunt Genna replied. “The point remains, the creamer was mine. I held it, saw the way it glinted even in that dim little light and beneath all the tarnish. I can still recall the coolness of the metal against my palm.”
She spoke with the fervour of a woman gone mad, but Jaime had long ago accepted that this was to be his fate. Bored to death by a pitcher he hadn’t even seen. Best just to nod and smile and hope that the cold hands of the Stranger came quickly.
“I arrived the next morning—well, afternoon, but truly who can be expected to be travelling to such a place before a fortifying luncheon of smoked salmon—only to find Alerie Tyrell in the shop, creamer firmly in hand!”
“That must have been frightfully upsetting,” Brienne said, and by the Crone Jaime really believed she meant it.
“Oh, I marched right in to give her what-for! But it was too late. She’d paid double the price the man had asked for—terrible behaviour on her part, underpaying the man so—and was quite smug as she lofted it above her head.”
“Surely not, aunt.”
“She did.”
Jaime suspected that the image that sprung to mind—Alerie Tyrrell, cow creamer aloft, while Aunt Genna attempted to hop like a particularly furious rabbit to steal it from her hands—was far closer to the truth than Aunt Genna would ever admit.
“This is all tragic,” he said. “I fail to see what’s to be done.”
Yet another aggrieved sigh from the Aunt. “I ought to have spoken to your brother.”
Tyrion, last Jaime had heard, was quite happily ensconced in the dregs of Flea Bottom with too much cheap wine and female companions, and would remain so until Jaime next dragged him out for some crisis. He was not entirely certain the cow creamer would qualify.
“Lady Genna,” Brienne said, not unkindly, “I’m certain Jaime would help you if he could, but surely the law states it is Lady Alerie’s creamer, morality aside.”
“Yes, that is what the policeman said. Damned inconvenient.” She sipped her tea, and Jaime foolishly thought that was the end of it. They would attend luncheon as planned, and by the time they were done no doubt Brienne would be done with her own obligations and returned to his place for afternoon tea. Alas, the whims of fate had it out for him, vis-à-vis scheming aunts. “Of course, you can always steal it.”
“Pardon?”
“Oh, don’t look shocked.” Aunt Genna waved her hand dismissively. “I know about your childhood proclivities—”
“That was Cersei.”
“Yes, well, close enough. In fact, it is the only option.” She nodded firmly. “You must attend Alerie’s country house party this very week and retrieve the creamer for me. It is, after all, entirely mine by rights.” She stood, pulling on hat and gloves. “We can have lunch when you return.”
And then, with another sniff and blur of fur, she was gone. Jaime watched the door for several long minutes, the tick-tick of the clock on the mantelpiece the only sound as he awaited the next disaster. When none was forthcoming, he cleared his throat and turned to Brienne, who was staring in vague horror at the seat recently vacated by his esteemed aunt. The woman did tend to do that to people.
“Your aunt—”
“She’s mad, I know, but it’s best just to go along with it. The question is, how do I get myself invited to Highgarden? Ol’ Squiggy hasn’t been fond of me since the incident with the—”
“No, Jaime. That’s easy. I’ll telephone Renly this afternoon.”
“Well, then, what’s gotten the unflappable Miss Tarth whiter than a ghost caught in the flour?”
Brienne waved her hand at the chair. “Your aunt— she sat on my best hat.”
And there, indeed, was her beloved fedora, crushed beyond repair.
“Well,” Jaime says. “It is a good thing I know a milliner.”