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Spring arrives gently in the north, carried on the wings of a white raven.
It has been but a short winter, less than a year of bitter cold and driving snows. Still, it has been a hard and hungry winter, the scars of war still stretching across the land and letting their pain be felt.
The very old and the very young perish quietly, almost peacefully, and consumption runs like wildfire through half-empty villages, the Stranger snatching folk away in the dead of night.
It is a winter of death, to be sure, yet spring follows quickly in its wake. The drifts lie twelve feet deep when the last of the winter storms blows itself out, replaced by a southron breeze smelling faintly of lemons.
Slowly at first, and then all at once, the trees begin to shake of their pale blankets, skeletal branches stretching out to feel the sun’s faint warmth. The snowdrifts melt in dribs and drabs, running down into the old familiar channels and gullies until the frozen rivers are full and flowing once more.
New shoots of grass spring up to cover the bare ground, thawed enough at last to bury the dead. Small animals poke tentative noses out of burrows to test the air as larger game returns to the forests, deer stepping forth on trembling legs and bears emerging from their dens.
Day by day, the north awakens from its winter slumber. There has been hunger, there has been sorrow, there has been sickness, there has been death. Yet in every hollow and hidden thicket, in the mountains, the marshes, and the deepest woods, there is now life, returning and reborn, all of it intertwined in a delicate dance of spring.
On the day the flowers first bloom in the wolfswood, a Stark is born in Winterfell.
Cat, deep in the midst of her confinement, sits with her ladies before the hearth, their fingers fumbling with knitting needles and wool, working slowly and stiffly in the cold.
It is two years since Cat first came to the north and still, she has not grown used to it, the bone-deep chill of the air that strikes even indoors, before a fire and beneath layers of fur.
Ned fusses over her comfort in that sweet, stumbling way of his, now more than ever, and it was with a maidenly blush that she had confessed it was only his presence beside her that kept Cat from freezing in the night.
She has missed him these past weeks, banished from her bedchamber by the maester and his place taken by her Whent cousin, Marissa.
Marissa, shivering over her embroidery hoop, is poor replacement for her husband. She complains often of the cold and the food, and of her desire to return to the riverlands. Cat finds it within herself to pity the girl—the north was a strange land, far from her home and familiar life, and a lonely place for a young maid.
She must write to Marissa’s father, Cat decides, now that winter is over, and suggest the arrangement of a betrothal. Young Joreth Mallister, perhaps, or one of Lord Piper’s many sons.
The pain comes suddenly, a sharp agony that radiates through her from womb to groin and leaves Cat gasping, all thoughts of Marissa’s betrothed leaving her mind.
It seems to her that Maester Luwin arrives between one breath and the next. She has walked, somehow, or been carried to the bed, the many heavy layers of her clothing stripped from her body and leaving Cat in only her shift.
He examines her quickly, his hands cold against her flushed skin. “It will be over soon,” he tells her, and Cat thinks he perhaps means to reassure her. “An hour, perhaps two.”
Cat had laboured an entire night before Robb at last had been born, hale and healthy. This babe should be no different, she had thought. Time slips away around her, a mess of movement and feverish pain and Merinda Blackwood’s voice telling her to push, push, push.
Fear grips her then, the icy fingers of the Stranger coming out of darkness to clutch at her heart, for suddenly Cat can think only of her mother and that terrible row of tiny graves. Dimly, distantly, she wishes for old Maester Kym, long since dead, for Lysa, for Ned.
There is silence in the pounding inside of her head, deafeningly loud, and she feels the absence of Luwin’s cold, deft hands on her and the thick wetness between her thighs.
“What,” Cat croaks, the sound barely more than an exhale from between her cracked lips. She swallows. “Is it—”
The sound of a babe’s indignant wail cuts off her words, bellowing in displeasure at such a rude awakening, and Cat falls back against the bed, breathless with her relief.
It is a girl-child, soft and warm and sweetly pink, her tiny body cleaned and then swaddled in soft muslins by Merinda.
Maester Luwin declares the babe perfectly healthy, her size good and her heart sturdy. “Strong lungs, also,” the old man adds drily, the babe’s cries echoing off the walls of the great stone keep.
She falls quiet, however, when placed in the cradle of her mother’s arms, the seemingly endless wail stopping abruptly. Gently sponged and dressed in a clean shift, Cat gazes down at the tiny babe, at the big blue eyes that blink curiously up at her.
For the second time, it is as though she looks into mirrors of her own blue eyes, of the eyes that remind her so deeply of home. Then, with a yawn, her daughter’s eyes button shut, head lolling forward so one velvety cheek rests gently against Cat’s breast.
The maester takes his leave, instruments wiped and packed neatly away, casting a last careful eye over mother and babe. It was a swift birth, but a simple one, praise the Mother, and both are faring well.
He tells as much to his young lord, who has waited uneasily within the confines of his solar. Lord Eddard gives him a hasty thanks and a muttered prayer, and moves swiftly for the door.
Carrying an unfamiliar lightness in his step, Ned goes to his wife’s bedside with a hint of a smile on his long face, the grey flint of his eyes softened by insurmountable joy as he looks upon Cat and their babe.
He had all but worn a path in the stone floor before the hearth, pacing the length of his solar as listened for sounds and did his best to ignore the silences, his meagre courage bolstered only by a cup of strong wine. His mind, as Cat’s did, lingered on memories of blood-soaked sheets and copper-scented grief.
This time, however, the gods have granted him one of their mysterious kindnesses. Beyond these chamber doors, nothing waits for Ned but joy—and a babe, asleep in its mother’s arms.
Pressing a kiss to Cat’s damp temple, he is glad to see her weary smile. She is beautiful like this, he thinks, flushed and tired and happy, although she is beautiful always. Ned can only gaze at her, tongue heavy and lifeless in his head the way it was when they first met.
“I am well, Ned,” Cat tells her husband, carefully raising a hand to stroke away the creases in his brow. “Do not look so solemn—you have a daughter.”
“Indeed,” he murmurs, looking in fascination at the babe in her arms. She is a tiny thing, and Ned scarcely breathes as he reaches down, brushing a finger which suddenly seems too big, too clumsy, over his daughter’s downy head. He laughs, suddenly and softly.
“Are all our children to be redheaded, my lady?”
The heavy curtains have been drawn back, allowing soft golden sunlight to spill into the room. Despite this, Cat feels a sudden rush of cold at his words, a return of that hateful jealousy for some faceless Dornish whore—for a dark-haired woman whose name shall not ever be spoken again within the walls of their home.
“Only the gods know that,” she replies sharply. It is as though he has dishonoured her anew, the familiar stinging anger rising at the slight even as she knows Ned meant only to make a jape. “I cannot change their will.”
Ned reaches for her, his hand halting before it touches her cheek. She turns her face away from him, jaw tightening. “Cat,” he says helplessly, “I did not mean…”
His words trail off into nothings, swallowed by the gulf that has sprung up suddenly between them.
Across the room, Old Nan clucks her tongue, the sound sharp in the silence. Ned startles at it, not having noticed her presence.
She clucks her tongue again. “It is the will of the gods, indeed,” the old woman scolds, soiled bedding bundled in her frail arms. “They know red hair never made any babe less a Stark, nor dark hair made one more. Only blood of the north, and she has it, to be sure.”
Her only response is silence, and Old Nan shakes her head at them, muttering softly as she leaves the room. Now alone, save for the babe sleeping peacefully between them, Lord and Lady Stark stare at one another across the gulf.
Ned swallows, the sound loud and painful. This time, he reaches for his wife’s hand, and Cat, utterly still, allows him to cover it with his own.
“She is beautiful,” he says, in that clumsy, painfully honest way of his. The lines, she notices, have drawn their way back between his brows. “As beautiful as her mother.”
The babe chooses this moment to stir, blinking big blue sleepily at the unfamiliar world around her. One arm has come free of the swaddle, and it grasps for nothing, tiny fist opening and closing around air.
“She needs a name,” Cat says quietly, gently tucking the arm away. It is not forgiveness, and it is not dismissal.
Ned hesitates. His eyes are on their daughter—like his wife, he is fascinated by the blue of her eyes, so different from his own and yet so familiar.
“Perhaps a name from the riverlands?”
She recognises the peace offering for what it is.
Looking down at the babe, sleepy eyes blinking back at her, Cat tries to imagine her daughter as a Beatrice, a Jirelle, a Minisa, even. Yet despite the blue of her eyes, the bright tuft of her hair, she can imagine only one thing.
“No,” she says firmly, meeting Ned’s gaze. “Our daughter shall not have a southron name. She will be a lady of the north; it is only right we give her a Stark name.”
Ned bows his head, and a small part of Cat mourns for the memory of her mother, that no daughter she bears will carry that beloved name. “Very well.”
They sit together in stillness for a moment, frozen in a weak golden sunbeam. Ned, again, is the one to break the silence, stroking a finger against the babe’s cheek as he speaks.
“There was once a lady of the Winterfell named Sansa Stark.”
Sansa. Cat turns the name over in her mind, wondering as she does why she had been so sure Ned was going to say Lyanna. What she might have said if he had.
Sansa Stark.
It is a lovely name, flowing softly off her tongue like running water and onto the tiny babe, once again sleeping contentedly in the comfort of her arms. The sunlight has set that tuft of hair aflame, crimson against milky pale skin.
Had the long-dead lady been beautiful, Cat wonders, as she already knows her daughter will be? Had she been beloved?
As though he has heard the unasked questions on her tongue, Ned goes on. “Old Maester Walys told us a story about her, once, when we were children learning the histories.” He gives her a small, sheepish smile. “I confess, I remember few of the details.”
“Sansa, then,” Cat agrees. She smiles up at Ned, allowing him to lead her into a gentle kiss. “Our daughter.”
Robb visits them the next afternoon, escorted by Ned. At first excited by the prospect of a sister, the boy quickly grows bored of the reality of babes, and jealous of the competition for his mother’s attention.
“She’s boring,” he says, looking down at Sansa with a frown. “All she does is sleep.”
Ned laughs softly—it’s still an unexpected sound, one he rarely makes, and Cat gives him a questioning glance. “Lyanna once said the same thing about Ben when he was a babe,” he explains, merriment fading at the sudden pang that goes through him.
His wife takes his hand, a glimmer of understanding in her eyes. No ravens have come from Castle Black since before the winter was begun. As for the rest—Ned clears his throat, blinking hurriedly.
“You will not think she is so boring when she is older,” Cat tells their son, smoothing a stray hair back from Sansa’s serene face. Robb, unconvinced, reaches a plump hand for the bundle in her arms.
“Carefully,” she warns him.
As Robb’s hand nears the babe, she suddenly begins to fuss, fat tears falling from screwed up eyes and running down her reddening face. He pulls back, face screwed up in dislike, and Ned can see the weariness gathering in Cat’s eyes as she lifts Sansa to her breast, unfastening the strings of her shift.
“Come,” he tells Robb, placing a hand on his shoulder and guiding him gently towards the door. “We will visit again tomorrow.”
Robb huffs, dragging his feet against the stone floor. “I don’t want to,” he mutters, with just a hint of a whine to his voice, and Ned presses his lips into a thin line, guiding him somewhat more firmly to the chamber door.
“I don’t like her,” Robb continues, voice raising in pitch now that they stand in the hall. “She cries. Jon doesn’t—”
Ned shuts the door, cutting off the sound of Sansa’s cries and whatever it was Robb was going to say next. “Enough.” He says it firmly enough that the boy falls silent, sulky eyes dropping to the floor. “You will apologise for your behaviour in the morn.”
For a moment, he thinks Robb will protest, colour flaring in his round cheeks. Wisely, however, he does not, and Ned continues on.
“Sansa is your sister,” he says, ignoring how the words tug at something deep within his chest. “It is your duty to protect her and defend her honour.”
His son considers these words for a long moment, chewing his bottom lip between gap-filled teeth. “Like a knight?” he ventures at last. “They always protect ladies in Old Nan’s stories.”
It is not so in life, Ned thinks grimly. To Robb, he only says, “Yes. Like a knight.”
For the first time in moons, Cat ventures from the warm bower of her chambers, one hand resting on the crook of Ned’s elbow. Old Nan follows behind, Sansa held securely in those frail arms.
Her husband leads her slowly through the chilled halls, a far cry from the warmth of her chambers, and she is reminded of the aches that remain in her lower body, dulled from days spent abed. Cat has grown restless, however, terribly so, and only grits her teeth and continues on.
The Lord’s solar is warmer than the halls, with its great, roaring hearth, and she is more than content to settle into the heavy wooden chair before it, cushioned by soft rabbit fur. Without waiting to be asked, Old Nan places Sansa in her arms, and then disappears into the hall, muttering all the while.
Ned hovers beside her. “You are warm enough?” he asks, fingers twitching anxiously at the furs.
She is never warm, Cat thinks, not here. But she smiles at him, shifting the babe so she rests more easily in her arms. “Indeed.” It is not so much a lie after all, with Sansa’s warmth adding to her own.
“There is business I must discuss with Poole.”
His voice is regretful, sincerely, no doubt, and Cat wonders how the running of Winterfell has suffered from the absence of its Lord. Little, most likely, under the watchful eye and skilled hands of Vayon Poole, well-versed in the motions of a keep in early spring.
Still, it would not do well to keep Ned from his duties any longer. She says as much, shooing him with a smile until he acquiesces, leaning down to press a kiss on the crown of her head.
Then, Cat is alone in the solar, but for Sansa, snuffling quietly in her blanket.
How long she sits there, she cannot be sure. Long enough for the shadows to move from one flagstone to the next, and then to the next, and for the great log in the hearth to collapse with a hiss and a shower of amber sparks. Nothing disturbs her solitude, until there is the quiet squeal of hinges to indicate the opening of the chamber door.
Ned, she thinks faintly, returned from his business with Vayon Poole. Cat turns her head to the door, the beginnings of something sweet upon her lips, and freezes at the sight of the figure upon the threshold.
Jon Snow is standing there, his shoulders curving inward and his face sullen. She can see the moment he notices her, sitting in the great chair, because his eyes suddenly widen, darting from side to side like a trapped animal. “Lady Stark.”
“Jon,” Cat replies coolly. She rarely says his name aloud, avoids thinking it if she can, and it is a strange shape in her mouth, too broad and shallow-edged. It is perhaps this strangeness that makes her say, “Enter.”
The boy blinks back at her, then takes one halting step forward. The heavy door swings closed behind him, latch falling with a quiet thump.
“I was looking for—Lord Stark.”
They both know he meant to say father.
Cat shifts Sansa more closely against her, ignoring the soft wriggles of her kicking feet as she watches him, shoulders hunching up by his ears as he finally remembers to dip his chin to her, like a mummers bow to a lady.
“I had something to give him.” It is as though it pains the boy to say the words, each sound drawn agonisingly through his throat and out of his mouth.
Her eyes fall to the boy’s hands, clenched by his sides. Clutched in the right is a small bunch of flowers. Strange, she thinks, for a boy to bring his—now she stumbles over the word, unable to avoid it even in her own mind—father a posy.
“He is gone to see Vayon Poole.”
“Oh.”
The boy takes another halting step forward. “May I—?” He cuts himself off, blushing furiously. Then, gruff and embarrassed, he thrusts out his hand towards her. “They were for her.”
Cat stares at him, wondering if he has taken leave of his senses. “For her,” she repeats.
“For—Sansa, my lady.” It is strange to hear the bastard say her daughter’s name. “Ser Rodrik said the flowers were out in the wolfswood.”
It has been a long while since Cat last saw wildflowers. The notion makes her think back to childhood, to running through the long grasses of the riverbank, lying in the shade beneath the great willow tree, weaving long-stemmed flowers through Lysa’s hair.
Daisies, she remembers, their long white petals surrounding fat yellow bellies. Jon’s hand, still outstretched, wavers and falls back to his side.
“I thought…” Cat suspects that were the boy before anyone but she, he would be scuffing a foot against the stone floor, his eyes already trained resolutely down. “I thought she might like them.
Perhaps it is the sweet memories of girlhood, fresh in her mind, or the gentle weight of the sleeping babe in her arms, but she holds out her hand for the flowers. The boy’s eyes widen, and he stumbles over his own boots as he gives her the posy.
Her gaze follows the motion, the names of familiar flowers coming to mind as she examines the bunch in her hand. Colourful windflowers and heavy-headed jonquils, clean white daisies which take her again to the riverbank, and a long, limp harebell, its colour a striking dark purple. A rough piece of twine holds them together, neatly knotted in place.
“They’re not as good as the ones in the glass gardens,” he says gruffly. A blotchy flush has risen up his neck as Cat looked at the flowers.
The flowers in the glass gardens, protected from the harsh elements and wild beasts of the wolfswood, bloom under the careful ministrations of the gardeners in pristine uniformity. These flowers are indeed less fine—in her hand, they look limp and bedraggled, bright petals mottled with bruising. A poor gift, in truth, yet the boy has wrong-footed her with its kindness.
“Would you like to see her?”
It is only because Sansa awakens, Cat tells herself, that she asks him thus, offers him the sight of her precious daughter, blinking sleepily in her arms. The line of her body is tense as the boy steps forward, peering to look at her tiny babe.
He smiles hesitantly, the first such expression of his she thinks she has ever seen. “She is very…nice.” In a fit of boldness, he adds, “She looks like Robb.”
“Yes,” Cat agrees, cupping a careful hand behind Sansa’s head. “She does.”
The last of the sunlight is fading, and with it, whatever spell has come over them. The boy straightens, eyes darting again like a rabbit in a hunter’s trap, and she frees him with a pitiful stroke, turning her body to face the hearth once more.
“My lady,” she hears faintly, and then hurried footsteps to the door, closing behind him with an agonising squeal to again leave Cat in the silence of the solar.
Sansa, arm worked free from the blanket, grabs clumsily for the flowers in her hand. Cat waves them before her, smiling at the soft coos of delight, and moves to pull one free, her intention to tuck it into those soft whisps of hair. The white of the daisy would look very fine, or the buttery yellow of a jonquil—
Cat stops, mind racing furiously.
Then, without warning, she hurls the flowers into the hearth.
A hunting dog of her father’s had eaten jonquils once, been fed them by a peasant boy. The beast had died, writhing in pain and vomiting blood, and the boy had been whipped for his foolishness.
Watching the flowers wilt and crumble into pale grey ash, bouncing Sansa as she lets out a cry at the loss of her plaything, Cat shakes her head faintly. No harm done.
The seasons come as they will, and it is three years before spring turns to summer. Arya come in that time, when the blossoms have spread over the boughs of the orchard in the promise of fruit, and they name her for Ned’s wandering grandmother, a Flint of the northern mountains.
Then it is summer, the longest any living have seen, and with it comes Bran, named for the brother but for whose death he would not have been born, and at last little Rickon, in honour of the lord father who went south.
It is a good thing, indeed, that Cat never again wonders at the tale of the woman they have named their eldest daughter for, never asks Luwin to delve more deeply into the annals of Stark history than she ought.
The volumes chronicling House Stark through the murky years after 161 AC, when another Rickon Stark found his death in far-off Dornish lands, remain in their place upon the shelf, dust-covered and forgotten.
For all that she was beautiful, and for all that she was beloved, the tale of the first Sansa Stark is not one which Cat would have done well to hear.