Mushroom testifies, “but she raged when she learned that Maidenpool had gone over to the foe, that the girl Nettles had escaped, that her own beloved consort had betrayed her, and she trembled when Lady Mysaria warned her against the coming dark, that this night would be worse than the last. At dawn, a hundred men attended her in the throne room, but one by one they slipped away or were dismissed, until only her sons and I remained with her. ‘My faithful Mushroom,’ Her Grace called me, ‘would that all men were true as you. I should make you my Hand.’ When I replied that I would sooner be her consort, she laughed. No sound was ever sweeter. It was good to hear her laugh.”
Munkun’s True Telling says naught of the queen laughing, only that Her Grace swung from rage to despair and back again, clutching so desperately at the Iron Throne that both her hands were bloody by the time the sun set. She gave command of the gold cloaks to Ser Balon Byrch, captain at the Iron Gate, sent ravens to Winterfell and the Eyrie pleading for more aid, ordered that a decree of attainder be drawn up against the Mootons of Maidenpool, and named the young Ser Glendon Goode Lord Commander of the Queensguard (though only twenty, and a member of the White Swords for less than a moon’s turn, Goode had distinguished himself during the fighting in Flea Bottom earlier that day. It was he who brought back Ser Lorent’s body, to keep the rioters from despoiling it).
Though the fool Mushroom does not figure in Septon Eustace’s account of the Last Day, nor in Munkun’s True Telling, both speak of the queen’s sons. Aegon the Younger was ever at his mother’s side, yet seldom spoke a word. Prince Joffrey, ten-and-three, donned squire’s armor and begged the queen to let him ride to the Dragonpit and mount Tyraxes. “I want to fight for you, Mother, as my brothers did. Let me prove that I am as brave as they were.” His words only deepened Rhaenyra’s resolve, however. “Brave they were, and dead they are, the both of them. My sweet boys.” And once more, Her Grace forbade the prince to leave the castle.
With the setting of the sun, the vermin of King’s Landing emerged once more from their rat pits, hidey-holes, and cellars, in even greater numbers than the night before.
On Visenya’s Hill, an army of whores bestowed their favors freely on any man willing to swear his sword to Gaemon Palehair (“King Cunny” in the vulgar parlance of the city). At the River Gate, Ser Perkin feasted his gutter knights on stolen food and led them down the riverfront, looting wharves and warehouses and any ship that had not put to sea, even as Wat the Tanner led his own mob of howling ruffians against the Gate of the Gods. Though King’s Landing boasted massive walls and stout towers, they had been designed to repel attacks from outside the city, not from within its walls. The garrison at the Gate of the Gods was especially weak, as their captain and a third of their number had died with Ser Luthor Largent in Cobbler’s Square. Those who remained, many wounded, were easily overcome. Wat’s followers poured out into the countryside, streaming up the kingsroad behind Lord Celtigar’s rotting head…toward where, not even Wat seemed certain.
Before an hour had passed, the King’s Gate and the Lion Gate were open as well. The gold cloaks at the first had fled, whilst the “lions” at the other had thrown in with the mobs. Three of the seven gates of King’s Landing were open to Rhaenyra’s foes.
The most dire threat to the queen’s rule proved to be within the city, however. At nightfall, the Shepherd had appeared once more to resume his preaching in Cobbler’s Square. The corpses from last night’s fighting had been cleared away during the day, we are told, but not before they had been looted of their clothes and coin and other valuables, and in some cases of their heads as well. As the one-handed prophet shrieked his curses at “the vile queen” in the Red Keep, a hundred severed heads looked up at him, swaying atop tall spears and sharpened staffs. The crowd, Septon Eustace says, was twice as large and thrice as fearful as the night before. Like the queen they so despised, the Shepherd’s “lambs” were looking to the sky with