TANSY - DECLARING WAR
SIX MONTHS later, the young Tarly's return to the dark clouds gathering over the pink-stoned Horn Hill.
Caecilia steps out of the carriage they have been travelling in since first leaving Harrenhal half a year ago, forest-green skirts billowing around her legs. Leaving Highgarden two days ago had been a tearful farewell and as she stares up at the castle that has failed to feel like home, a sudden thorny feeling rises in her throat. She desperately wishes she could return to her true home. To her mother. To the long gardens.
She is helped out of the carriage by one of the servants and she bleats out a chipper thanking that sounds utterly false on her bitter tongue. She and Trevyr have been happy these past months, travelling winding roads and sharing stories, curled in front of an unfamiliar fireplace as rain batters the windows, relearning how to be friends. When they first started on their journey, Trevyr had barely spoken a few words to her at a time, still trying to get the image of her whispering Jaime Lannister's name in their bed out of his head. But, finally, he had learned to love her again. He trusted her once more.
This castle, with its whispering paintings and gloomy walls, may just undo everything she has worked towards.
She cannot lose Trevyr again.
"Lady Tarly!" Lunette rushes across the courtyard and throws herself at her closest friend. Caecilia curls herself around the handmaiden, having missed her springy dark curls and perfumed scent very much. She misses their giggling gossip, their long whispers. Having someone know exactly how to brush her hair, how tight she wears her dresses, the temperature she drinks her wine. Lunette is her dearest friend and to have spent six months without her has been almost unbearable.
Trevyr at least made that manageable.
"Oh, how I have missed you, dearest Lunette."
"I have missed you even more, I am sure."
Lunette has nobody at Horn Hill except for Caecilia and Trevyr. They had wished her to come with them on their six-month journey but had talked about it at length and realised that to know one another truly, they must do so only by themselves. They had called it a bridal tour that had been taken far too late.
It had yet to result in a child.
Trevyr too hugs Lunette and, soon, it is the three of them standing together, hands held tightly. Tears prickle at the corners of Caecilia's eyes as she claims over and over to be truly sorry to have left her friend behind. Lunette tries to wave her away, but it merely falls on deaf ears. Not until Trevyr places his hand on his wife's back and drops his head so his whisper can fall directly into her ear.
"My darling, we are back. You need not leave Lunette again. Let her take you to our room while I join my family to tell them of our travels."
Caecilia nods and steps away from her husband. Her hands have yet to drop Lunette's. "Come, dearest. I'll tell you of our travels in the comfort of our quarters. Trevyr, dear –" He looks at her and smiles. She smiles back. She is so glad to have her friend back. "–shall we see you before dinner?"
"Most likely no, darling. Are you not sick of my face?"
She giggles. "Not nearly enough." Trevyr laughs too and dips his head forward to catch his wife's lips in his. It is soft and sweet and short. Their kisses do not last as long as her and Jaime's used to. Like hungry beasts who had to taste one another to be satiated, who had to rip one another open and drink the blood that pooled from them. Trevyr kisses her like a rose petal, soft enough to barely even be there.
She leads Lunette back inside and leaves behind her husband.
She sheds her travelling dress as soon as she enters the room, stepping out of the green forest and letting the chilly air of the tower touch her skin. Lunette has already laid out a hollyhock pink dress for her to change back into that is so unlike the dresses worn by the Tarly women that it is a shock to see it sitting there. Caecilia does not argue. Why would she want to be anything like the women who let their husbands do everything while they allow haunted shadows to tear at their skin until all that is left is the carcass of the woman they used to be?
She is not like them.
A bath awaits her too. A hot bath. After two days of travelling, it is desperately needed. She steps out of her undergarments and into the warm, lavender-scented water that awaits her. She leans all the way back until the water has completely enveloped her, face and all. She could be drowning and she would not even notice. The lavender smells all too nice. She supposes if she had to die anywhere it would be surrounded by flowers, where the strong smell would mask the stink of death emanating from her, where her only peace has ever been.
She sits up and lets Lunette care for her.
Water drips down her neck as she recalls many of the events of the last six months, Lunette washing the grime of the past two days from her hair. Playing chess with Jon Arryn and finally winning on their thirteenth – and penultimate – day in the Eyrie. Watching the Tully's argue with the Stark's over wedding preparations at Riverrun while she and Catelyn ate sweet treats in the corner and stayed out of it. They'd managed to avoid Casterly Rock entirely while in Lannisport and had been quick to go to Crakehall and be dined on the saltiest fish for seven days. Finally, the last month they spent at Highgarden, enjoying the sun as they raced around the gardens, swimming in the Manderly before the rain washed upon them, reading in the library while her family played cards.
Lunette laughs through many of her tales, encouraging her to keep talking. Caecilia only stops talking when her fingers prune and the water turns almost icily cold. She stands and a towel that had been warming in front of the fire is wrapped around her chilled, but clean, body.
"You were in Lannisport but did not visit Casterly Rock?"
"No. I did not wish to visit the Lannisters. Not with..." Caecilia trails off. Jaime would not have been there anyway. But his portraits still hang all over the walls. With his twin. With both siblings. The entire family. With his mother. Just himself in his new Kingsguard armour. She knows they line the walls in that creaky, wind-whistling castle, lavish castle. She could not subject Trevyr to his gaze over and over and over again.
She would not dare meet with Cersei Lannister. Not again.
"Lunette. Can I ask something of you?"
"Of course. Anything. You know I would do anything for you."
Caecilia holds the towel around her body with one hand.
"You must never mention Jaime Lannister again." Lunette simply stares at her, face aghast. He has been her one love for as long as she can remember. "I cannot allow myself to hurt Trevyr and thus, I must expel Jaime from my life forever. He is never to be mentioned around myself or my husband."
"When does this silence begin?"
Caecilia's lip trembles. "As soon as we leave this room." She keeps her spine straight even though she so desperately wishes to crumble. Lunette is the only person who knows the true extent of her love. The hold it has on her. Her bones will never be able to forget Jaime, not for as long as she lives, forever in the chokehold that he holds on her. She is the flower he plucked that desperately relies on him for water. He is the sun she needs to keep growing.
She must live forever in shade.
She has to. She cannot hurt Trevyr as she once did.
"Did Trevyr learn of your..." she does not say it but it is clear as day in the stifling air between them. Caecilia nods. She will never see Jaime Lannister again. Her heart has been breaking for months with the knowledge, but her travels were enough to ease the heaviness that had settled in her chest. Now that she has returned to this lonely castle, she is not sure how she will cope without his memory on her tongue.
She must try to forget him.
She must be a good wife for her kind, unselfish husband.
She must rear children for him. Mousy-haired, mousy-tempered children who will grow up in this stunted castle. Shy and too small and too skinny, they will be. They will not taste poison, but they will hold a sword, and they will ride horses, and they will read books until words are falling out of their ears.
They will be hers and they will be Trevyr's.
"Do you wish to dress and go to dinner?"
Lunette searches Caecilia's face, but the blonde stares into the fire trying to dry the water dripping on her body. She can see him dancing in the flames, the knight with white armour, his peeling laughter, his strong hands with the veins entwining on the back. The hands that have held her waist against him, that have dripped beneath her skirts, that have danced with her until the night has washed away and the sun has started to rise. She must throw him into that fire and let it swallow him up, let him crumble to ash.
Her hands shake around the towel she clings to her body.
"Not just yet, Lunette. I wish to stay in this room just a little longer."
They sit in front of the fire and talk of Jaime until he grows hoarse in their throats. The sun had disappeared for the night and the moon has risen. Finally, the dark clouds have dispersed and the moon shines through the inky sky. Caecilia rises and stares out at the moonlight dipping over the forest in the distance. It shines almost like a lake. Lunette joins her at the window and they stare out at the darkness together. Dinner has long ended and Trevyr will be returning at any moment.
Somewhere out there, far away in the distance, is Jaime Lannister.
She will never see him again and she must learn to be content with that.
Lunette helps her into her nightgown. Her hair has dried after their long hours spent in front of the fire and she has staved the hunger off with wine. In the morning, she will wolf down her breakfast and try to ignore the jabs sent her way by her goodmother but, for now, she will lay in her bed. Once she leaves this room, Jaime Lannister must leave her mind forever. She must unstitch him from her bones, pull the roots from the grassy bed she has made for him, tear apart the heart she has been saving just for him.
She can do that tomorrow.
The two women are saying goodnight to one another when the door is slammed open. They jump apart, facing a wild-eyed Trevyr and the trembling servant girl at his side.
"Tell them," he says, before either of them can ask what has gotten him so worked up. His cheeks are red. Caecilia cannot quite tell if he is mad or excited. "Marion, tell them what you have just told my family and I."
Marion, the servant girl who usually reads out letters to the Tarly's because they can never be fussed doing so themselves, opens the letter that has been clutched in her hands. She holds it up to let the candlelight flickering around her wash over it.
"Lady Lyanna Stark has been kidnapped near the God's Eye."
Caecilia immediately sits on the end of her bed.
Just a few months ago she and Lyanna Stark were dipping their feet in the cold water of the Trident. They had finally met, away from the hustle-and-bustle of an exciting tourney, on the Tarly's fourteen-day stay at Riverrun. Caecilia, Lyanna and Catelyn would often hide from the wedding preparations, finding solace in the great river, messing around like young children only seconds away from being scolded by their parents. It was no way for proper ladies to act, not at their ages, but in the stillness of the forestry, they were free from prying eyes and could be as loud as they wished. Caecilia's only friend was Lunette for the longest time.
Finally, she could laugh with others.
The loneliness that permeated her mind at night was often merely an afterthought after long days spent with the eldest Tully and only female Stark. They talked about their dreams the night before as they broke their fast in the grand hall of Riverrun. They taught each other the dances of their regions, the quick footwork of the Reach, the waltzes of Riverlands, the swinging around and foot-stamping of the North. Loneliness was merely another weed to be trampled underfoot.
And now Lyanna has been taken.
"You do not think it was..."
Rhaegar crowned her the Queen of Love and Beauty. He threw a crown of blue roses onto her lap while his wife watched and he did not once apologise for it. The two stared at one another as the crowd went quiet and it was clear for all to see that this was not the first time they had seen one another.
Who knew all it took to tame the she-wolf was a little fire?
"It was Rhaegar Targaryen. You know what they are like, that family. Those kings. They take and they take and they take." Trevyr's fingernails scrape across his scalp. Caecilia takes his arm and pulls him into their room, ordering Marion to leave them now. The servant scampers off and they slam the door shut behind her.
The three of them sit on the end of the bed.
"Would he kill her, do you think?"
"No. I think he merely wanted her. I do not think anybody has ever told him no."
"I am frightened for her."
Caecilia plays with the light fabric of her nightgown. Trevyr's hand lands on her knee, the nightgown having been pushed up enough for him to touch the bare skin underneath. His touch is supposed to be comforting. But, right now, all she can think about is what she truly wants. What she would steal to have forever. A warm hand with entwining blue veins running across the back, the pads of the fingers hardened from years of sword fighting, the light scars littered over the skin.
She stares into the fire starting to die out and thinks that, maybe, the she-wolf was not kidnapped after all. Maybe, she too knew what she wanted. Maybe, she has also never been told no.
When she falls asleep that night all she can think about is that if Jaime asked her to run away, she would not hesitate to follow him.
And she is a bad wife.
THE TREES of the forest grow tall and wild, long branches stretched out like a Giant's arm reaching for her, leaves swaying in the chilly wind, roots poking out from the earth. She pushes through to the clearing and remembers clearly the last time she stood here. The sword in her hand, Trevyr's laughter in her ear, Lunette reading the time away. Her hand traces the marks left in the trunk of the tree from when she had swung and swung and swung at it.
How long ago that feels now.
She reaches for the flowers closest to her. She is going to make wine for the castle. The Tarly's do not like her much, but they are her family now and she is stuck in that castle for the rest of her life. She must make amends. Amends she does not entirely know how to sew together. But, they do enjoy wine. And she enjoys making wine from flowers.
They will merely use it to wash away unsalted meat.
She has to be a good wife for her husband.
A voice dances in the wind. "Darling?" Her head shoots up, worried that she had imagined it. Even worse, what if it was the howl of a wolf? She freezes, hands clutching the woven basket. She does not have her sword on her and she has left Daena at the entrance to the forest.
There is no easy escape for her.
She presses her back to a tree.
Please, she begs whichever of the Seven will listen, do not let it be a wolf.
"Darling! I saw Daena, I know you are here!"
Suddenly, Trevyr appears from the other side of the clearing and both of their hearts stop racing. She meets him in the middle and he allows her to show the flowers she has been collecting. It does not seem that he is listening, however, and so she trails off, covering her flowers with the cloth she has been using to protect them.
"I am – Caecilia." He takes her free hand and runs his thumb over her knuckles. She stares down at it instead of at his face. "I am to go to war." Her head shoots up and she finally meets the teary gaze that awaits her.
Her husband is going to war.
He may die.
"King Aerys has executed Brandon and Rickard Stark. Your brother sent a letter. Jon Arryn has raised his banners in revolt and your brother has called on us to follow the Tyrell's to war, whichever side we may fall on, wherever it may lead us."
Her basket clatters around her feet and the flowers pour out around them. Pink and yellow and green tinted blood surround them. Trevyr will be killed on the battlefield and she may never see him again.
She has yet to rear the mousy-haired children he so desperately wants – even if he does not say it to her face.
"All Tyrell bannerman are to report to Highgarden immediately. My brother and I leave tomorrow."
Her hand cups his cheek, thumb tracing the stray tear that he allows to drop. He tries to keep the other tears at bay. But, when he cannot fight them off any longer, she allows him to collapse into her arms even though she cannot hold them both up. The grass beneath them is as soft as ever as they kneel in it, her arms around him, his tears soaking through her dress to her bosom.
She will lose him.
It is a dark, awful feeling that swirls in her stomach as she comforts her husband's craven tears. He will die on the battlefield before she has given him a child and she will return to Highgarden a widow before she is sixteen. She will mourn the loss of a dear friend and her mother will marry her off again in a few years, when the war has ended and there are new lords where traitors had once been. She will be Lady in a new castle with new ghosts glaring down at her and she will think often of the man who taught her how to swing a sword.
She will mourn Trevyr for the rest of her life.
She holds him as close as she can and refuses to let him go until his tears have dried up. Tonight, they will dine alone in their bedroom so she may keep her loving husband with her for a few more hours, selfishly all too herself. And, tomorrow, she will kiss him one last time and allow it to linger forever between them.
She will be a good wife to a dead husband.