our intent. You have my regrets, my lord, and my gratitude.”
“I would sooner have my brother,” Lord Alaric answered darkly.
Lord Stark and King Jaehaerys would never be fast friends; the shade of Walton Stark remained between them to the end. It was only through Queen Alysanne’s good offices that they ever found accord. The queen had visited Brandon’s Gift, the lands south of the Wall that Brandon the Builder had granted to the Watch for their support and sustenance. “It is not enough,” she told the king. “The soil is thin and stony, the hills unpopulated. The Watch lacks for coin, and when winter comes they will lack for food as well.” The answer she proposed was a New Gift, a further strip of land south of Brandon’s Gift.
The notion did not please Lord Alaric; though a strong friend to the Night’s Watch, he knew that the lords who presently held the lands in question would object to them being given away without their leave. “I have no doubt that you can persuade them, Lord Alaric,” the queen said. And finally, charmed by her as ever, Alaric Stark agreed that, aye, he could. And so it came to pass that the size of the Gift was doubled with a stroke.
Little more need be said of the time Queen Alysanne and King Jaehaerys spent in the North. After lingering in Winterfell for another fortnight, they made their way to Torrhen’s Square and thence to Barrowton, where Lord Dustin showed them the barrow of the First King and staged somewhat of a tourney in their honor, though it was a poor thing compared to the tourneys of the south. From there Vermithor and Silverwing bore Jaehaerys and Alysanne back again to King’s Landing. The men and women of their retinue had a more arduous journey home, traveling overland from Barrowton back to White Harbor and taking ship from there.
Even before the others reached White Harbor, King Jaehaerys had called together his council in the Red Keep, to consider an entreaty from his queen. When Septon Barth, Grand Maester Benifer, and the others had assembled, Alysanne told them of her visit to the Wall, and the day that she had spent with the whores and fallen women of Mole’s Town.
“There was a girl there,” the queen said, “no older than I am as I sit before you now. A pretty girl, but not, I think, as pretty as she was. Her father was a blacksmith, and when she was a maid of fourteen years, he gave her hand in marriage to his apprentice. She was fond of the boy, and he of her, so the two of them were duly wed…but scarcely had they said their vows than their lord came down upon the wedding with his men-at-arms to claim his right to her first night. He carried her off to his tower and enjoyed her, and the next morning his men returned her to her husband.
“But her maidenhead was gone, together with whatever love the apprentice boy had borne her. He could not raise his hand against the lord for peril of his life, so instead he raised it against his wife. When it became plain that she was carrying the lord’s child, he beat it out of her. From that day on, he never called her anything but ‘whore,’ until finally the girl decided that if she must be called a whore she would live as one, and made her way to Mole’s Town. There she dwells until this day, a sad child, ruined…but all the while, in other villages, other maids are being wed, and other lords are claiming their first night.
“Hers was the worst story, but not the only one. At White Harbor, at Mole’s Town, at Barrowton, other women spoke of their first nights as well. I never knew, my lords. Oh, I knew of the tradition. Even on Dragonstone, there are stories of men of mine own house, Targaryens, who have made free with the wives of fisherfolk and serving men, and sired children on them…”
“Dragonseeds, they call them,” Jaehaerys said with obvious reluctance. “It is not a thing to boast of, but it has happened, mayhaps more often than we would care to admit. Such children are cherished, though. Orys Baratheon himself was a dragonseed, a bastard brother to our grandsire. Whether he was conceived of a first night I cannot say, but Lord Aerion was his father, that was well-known. Gifts were given…”
“Gifts?”