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She knows the minute she hears it that it isn’t true. She knows without a shred of doubt that Brienne of Tarth is not the one who killed her husband.
Renly Baratheon, the young stag, cut down before his twenty-fifth birthday in his own tent of war. Margaery mourns for him, but only a little: she had barely known him, after all, and she is not carrying his child. He will be only the first of her many husbands.
She has admired this whispered-of Brienne of Tarth since she first saw her striding through their camp at Bitterbridge, admired her in a way that she does not admire many women. She had never seen a woman dressed in armor before. When the tall, stern-faced female knight knelt and offered her sword and service to Margaery’s lord husband, Margaery had been entranced. Something stirred inside of her at the sight of a woman knight, a sworn knight who did not have to be a man to be brave and strong enough to defend those who needed defending.
Brienne of Tarth had loved Renly. Margaery knows it’s true. She knows it from the pure, unselfish way she’d seen the woman knight look at her late husband, and this is how she knows that Brienne could not have killed him.
She tells Brienne’s accusers and it makes no difference, it only changes their version of the story. The woman must have killed Renly because he had scorned her, rejected her love. “She did it for revenge, the bitch,” rages her brother, half out of his mind with grief. Her father grimaces, shaking his head at the pitiful wretchedness of it all.
They make monsters of us women, Margaery thinks in disbelief. But wearing armor didn’t make a woman unfeeling, no more than carrying a sword made her murderous. To her mind, a woman with a sword is no worse than a man with one, and she resents how they all speak of Brienne of Tarth as if the opposite were true. Brienne of Tarth has always been distrusted, because people cannot decide if she is too much man or too much woman. None of them see what Margaery sees—which simply is that, under all the armor, Brienne of Tarth is only an ordinary woman, capable of anything, and nothing, and everything.
She knows it was not Brienne of Tarth who killed her husband, at any rate, but nobody asks her again. They all assume that she feels a certain way about her slain husband, and another way about the woman accused of slaying him. It’s quite wrong and she feels like it should be corrected, but her family pulls her out of the whole mess and soon there is a brand new monster to deal with, if the rumors about her latest betrothed have any truth to them. Margaery departs for King’s Landing and forgets about Brienne of Tarth for a while.
Jaime Lannister returns to King’s Landing haggard and missing a hand, and the court erupts in whispers about his unmistakable female companion. When Margaery hears that Brienne of Tarth had sworn her service to Catelyn Stark, she grows pensive. So Catelyn Stark had had a sworn woman knight, if only for a brief time. But Catelyn Stark is dead, and it chills Margaery to the bone to hear how that had come to pass. Lady Stark’s horrific end is just another warning story of what happens to women and mothers in this world, one more fatal example of what Margaery will dance on a sword’s edge her entire life to prevent from happening to her.
Loras comes to her that night, pale and furious, his face nearly as white as the Kingsguard garments he wears. He claws at his own cheeks, tears hot on his skin and Margaery’s hands too as she tries to still his tearing fingers, and finally he spits out what he has learned.
“She’s here at court—that horrible woman, that freak—the murderer, the one who killed Renly—”
She shushes him, calms him, repeats what she’s always said and what in his ravaged grief he will never believe. He never believes her when she says that the warrior woman was not the one who killed Renly. But his mind cannot conceive of another possibility: that the death of his lover could have been caused by something else, something darker, an evil not borne of a woman’s rage but of the deep, blood-denying enmity between brothers. And that, she thinks, is far worse than a spurned woman’s revenge. But of all the evils in the world, her brother's choice is to blame a woman. She is not surprised; she is never surprised by this predictability when it occurs. Yet it never fails to disappoint and dishearten her.
So, taking special pains not to be seen, she goes to visit Brienne of Tarth in her cell. Though sparsely furnished, the cell resembles the chamber of a penitent more than any dungeon. And when Margaery sees it, she understands that Jaime Lannister has put Brienne here not as punishment, but to protect her from Loras. And probably, she reflects, from the rest of the court that would look upon the lady knight with cruel and unsympathetic curiosity.
When Margaery enters the cell, the huge woman is seated on her cot, staring listlessly out the arrow-slit window. At the sound of the door, Brienne of Tarth turns to look—and a dart of recognition crosses her flat pale face when she sees her visitor. Then her face seals neutrally over like plaster being troweled onto a wall, and she lowers her eyes.
That’s right, Margaery thinks with a strange little curl in her stomach, she knows me only as the widow of the man everyone says she killed. She doesn’t know how to convey her true intent: that she has come on her own wish to right a wrong that she has not committed. She’s come because she feels that she knows this woman, somehow.
Having averted her attention, the woman warrior now regards the flagstones of the floor in cool, numb silence. Her short fair hair is mussed and she wears man’s clothing that no longer has distinguishable color. Margaery cannot believe this woman’s courage, even as she sits there in stubborn muteness. How can she ride across the hills and rivers of Westeros with only her armor to protect her? Anyone might attack her—violate her. Yet the woman knight has survived, and she is here. It’s incredible that their paths have crossed again, Margaery thinks.
“Lady Brienne,” she begins, her voice falsely cheery, “do you remember me? I am Queen Margaery Tyrell. Margaery Baratheon, if you recall my married name. We’ve met before.”
Silence. Her chirping words fade into the walls of the stone cell, echo in her own head like a mocking litany, and the woman knight says nothing. Margaery waits, flushing slightly.
“They say,” she says at last, breaking the pall-like quiet, “that you were sworn to Lady Catelyn Stark.”
Brienne doesn’t move. At last she inclines her head mutely, and it’s an answer, it’s something. Margaery feels disproportionate relief.
“Lady Stark is dead,” Margaery continues, her words coming out more clipped than she had intended. She winces a little, inwardly. “And so, now—what is left for you? What will you do?”
“I am sworn to Lady Catelyn,” the female knight echoes, in a low voice. She lifts her head and stares at Margaery, her face a blank careful mask. “I swore an oath.”
“And what was the oath?” she counters. She can feel the great woman weighing her, weighing her own situation, deciding whether or not tell the truth.
Finally Brienne says, “To rescue her daughters.”
Margaery exhales sharply through her nose. She keeps her shoulders straight though, and doesn’t let the other woman see the tickle of tears just behind her lashes.
Her grandmother would scold her for caring too much. She would say yes, women ought to look out for one another, but there are limits and in the end one is really only obligated to look out for one’s own. What can Margaery truly do for this woman knight, anyway? Her grandmother would tell her to nod gracefully, having learned what she’d come for, excuse herself, and leave.
“I knew Sansa Stark for a time, here in King’s Landing,” she says instead. A terrible sadness settles over her at the memory of that lost, nearly shattered little girl. Even Margaery hadn’t been able to help her reassemble the pieces of her broken life. “I tried to protect her, but—well. There is only so much we women can do.” She bites the inside of her lip with sudden discomfort, something she almost never feels.
“Where is she now?” Brienne says, pinning Margaery with the stare of her pale-lashed eyes. “Where is the Lady Sansa now?”
“Would that I knew,” Margaery tells her, her throat tight. For, of all the injured ghosts that haunt her, the memory of Sansa Stark is the worst.
Brienne draws in a deep harsh breath that rattles when she releases it.
“What will you do now?” Margaery asks her again, with a sharp pang in her voice. She is asking so many questions, yet has no answers of her own. Perhaps that is why she has really come—to hear the woman knight’s answers. Not only because she wants to hear them, but because she needs to.
Brienne raises herself up, her face resilient. For the first time her words are strong, almost ringing. “Remain here in my confinement, I suppose. And should Ser Jaime decide to release me—”
“Jaime Lannister will release you,” Margaery says, with some certainty. She doesn’t quite know where her certainty comes from, but she feels it strongly. “He has no reason to keep you here.”
The lines around the woman knight’s mouth relax just a bit, and Margaery can tell she is relieved. She nods then. “I swore an oath to Lady Catelyn. I will find her daughters.”
“I wish you nothing but the greatest success.” Thank the Mother, Sansa Stark will have at least one person seeking to protect her. “If you find her—if you find Sansa Stark—” She hesitates. “Tell her that I’m sorry.”
From Brienne’s face, it’s clear that she senses the undercurrent in Margaery’s weak words. But Margaery doesn’t want to talk about that painful ghost any more. She shakes off the memory and steps before the taller woman. There is something she must say.
“I know you didn’t kill him,” she says. She says it softly, like it’s a secret. She says it strongly, like a vow.
And Brienne looks at her. She really looks at her, and Margaery knows that Brienne is seeing her for the first time: gauging, realizing, and understanding. To Brienne, before this, Margaery knows she had seemed nothing more than a figurehead, an insipid queen, a doll in skirts next to the man who Brienne had loved. It hurts a little to understand this, that Brienne has never seen Margaery as fully as Margaery sees her. But that is what women do, we make enemies of one another when we ought to be doing exactly the opposite. She raises her head and looks back at Brienne, unblinking.
“They tell me you’ve married again,” Brienne says at last. “Since Lord Renly.”
“Yes.”
“They say you’ve married again, twice.”
“Yes, this is my third marriage,” Margaery says lightly. She tips her head with a little smile, trying to make it a joke. “Men, you know. They’re terribly fragile, quite prone to dying, and generally just rather difficult to keep around.”
Brienne looks at her, marveling, and then—like smooth marble, her forehead furrows, her mouth purses, and she almost smiles. Something lifts in Margaery’s chest, and she feels lighter than she has in a long time.
“I know it wasn’t you,” she repeats faintly, stumbling on the words. “I don’t blame you for anything,” for what it’s worth, as if her benediction or grace is what this woman needs.
Brienne of Tarth nods, accepting Margaery’s words, her paltry offering. Something has changed in her face and she seems to have grown calm. Margaery can’t express the feeling that gives her.
Abruptly, compelled by something she cannot name, Margaery moves forward and folds down onto her knees before the seated warrior. The flagstones are rough and painful beneath her, but she ignores them and grasps Brienne’s hands. The taller woman is staring at her in wonder, with incredulity.
“May the Mother protect you, Brienne of Tarth,” she says, though she’s never been terribly religious. It seems like the right thing to say. And she means it.
“My lady,” Brienne responds somberly, her voice hoarse.
“May the Mother protect us all,” Margaery says, her voice dying out into a tiny thread. She has spoken without thinking; at first she isn’t sure what she means. And then, quite clearly, she knows exactly what she means. From the way Brienne looks at her, it’s clear that she knows, too.
Drawing deep breaths, Margaery presses her forehead to their enfolded hands. And she prays for them. Gentle mother, for her and Brienne, strength of women, for all of them. Help our daughters through this fray. For all of them.
She doesn’t know if it will do any good. She only hopes that it will mean something, for either of them or any of them, in the end.