Chapter Text
Anke hadn’t meant to do it.
She hadn’t meant to poison the Queen in the North.
She’d only intended to give Queen Sansa enough of the blue winterberries to send her into an unbreakable sleep for a night and a day, so that the big blond kneeler lord would leave Winterfell and not steal her. Kneeler women, unlike their counterparts among the Free Folk, were not wont to fight back when their men stole them at the feasts the kneelers held after their binding ceremonies. Why, Tormund Giantsbane himself had said that the Queen Sansa had had a binding ceremony with that monster Ramsay Bolton, whom any Free Folk woman would have gutted like a fish rather than allow him to steal her. But Queen Sansa had not fought the Bolton monster, and instead she had suffered cruelly for it.
So if Queen Sansa had not fought the Bolton creature, she would likely not fight any man to whom she was bound. Granted, such a man must first win his permission for the binding from the Queen’s cousin and heir, Lord Jon Snow. And Lord Jon clearly did not want to give that permission. Instead, he groused and growled worse than a hungry bear whenever a young lord visited Winterfell to seek the young Queen’s hand in marriage. That always vexed the Queen, who on such occasions seemed more concerned with ensuring that her cousin did not challenge the young lords to fight than she seemed pleased to speak to any of the lords herself, or to dance with them at feasts. It was clear to anyone with eyes that Queen Sansa would rather fight all of them off herself than be bound to any of them, but she was after all a kneeler, and kneelers did have the strangest ideas about pretending to like other kneelers, even they would have loved nothing more than to skewer them or drive them away. Even Lord Jon, whom Anke would have loved to see fight off those other kneeler lords, would always give in when the Queen asked him to keep from challenging anybody to combat, although according to Tormund, he would give in only because it was the Queen who had asked, and no one else.
Anke herself, who had taken up permanent residence in Winterfell as she finished her apprenticeship with Murron, the aging Free Folk healer, had seen ample evidence to prove Tormund’s point. For one thing, Anke had passed by the council chambers on her way to the healers’ quarters from gathering herbs and roots outside prior to several of the kneeler lords’ visits and had witnessed the effectiveness of Queen Sansa’s persuasions herself. Sometimes she asked in that sweet voice of hers that had managed to charm even Anke’s ornery clan, and sometimes she yelled at him with her blue eyes flashing fiercely, but he capitulated every time. For another thing, Tormund would sometimes return from council meetings to report that the Queen had managed to talk the Lord Jon into changing his mind or at least listening to her about some matter or another about which even Tormund and Lord Davos, Lord Jon’s best friend, had despaired of moving the man’s stubborn resolve. Anke had heard some of Winterfell’s more loose-tongued servants whispering that it was as if the Queen had bewitched Lord Jon, and had snorted when she’d heard it. True bewitchment took hard work, much patience, and just the right potions, and at any rate, while the Queen had shown the utmost respect for the Free Folk way of life, she would never have engaged one of them to help her bewitch anybody.
But if the Queen Sansa had managed to soften the brooding lord’s harsher edges, Lord Jon himself had done much to boost her confidence and that of the kneeler lords in her ability to be an effective ruler. After the war against the Walkers had ended and Lord Jon’s strange, dragon-riding aunt had gone back to rule the south, Lord Jon had not only refused to go with her, but had been the first of the kneeler lords to kneel before his cousin and proclaim her queen when the council had met to settle the matter of who would rule the North. He had promptly directed his fiercest glare toward those few lords who had hesitated on account of the Queen’s being a woman.
“Do you wish to forsake your oaths to House Stark?” he had growled while glaring at some lord named Cerwyn. He had looked as though he might grab the young lord by the scruff of his neck at any moment, and the other man had shrunk back under the Lord Jon’s withering glare. “Lady Sansa Stark is its trueborn heir. She ruled the North in my absence before, and she ruled it well. Let any man who believes she did not step out of this room and go home a coward.”
After that, all the lords had knelt at once to proclaim Lady Sansa as their queen, and before long, even those who had been reluctant to support her had been won over by her fairness, her generosity, and her dedication to rebuilding the shattered strongholds of the North. Night after night she had remained for long hours in the council chamber or the solar, reviewing letters and petitions and supply lists, often with the Lord Jon at her side. Morning after morning, she had awakened early to distribute bread to the orphaned children in Winterfell who had lost their parents in the war, or to take sword lessons from the Lord Jon, or to supervise the rebuilding and expansion of Winterfell. She never hesitated to perform her duties, but when Lord Jon was at her side, she seemed calmer without fail, and much more apt to smile and even joke with the people she encountered. The tension that normally tightened her body like a bowstring when surrounded by men all but disappeared. And when on occasion she rode out to visit one or another of the castles being rebuilt on her orders, the Lord Jon would always ride out at her side. He even accompanied her when she visited the godswood, and she would suffer no other to do so.
Anke had witnessed them on more than one such foray while she had been and gathering roots and herbs from the bushes by the side of the path they had traveled. She had moved as silently as a shadow, so they had never noticed her, but she had certainly noticed the ease of their conversation, the merriment in the queen’s laugh, and the abundance of Lord Jon’s usually rare smiles. On some occasions, such as the last time Anke had been in the godswood with them, they had gone into the forest’s relative seclusion to discuss some particularly weighty issue. The Queen had been particularly upset that day, and her voice had risen and trembled during their entire journey to the spring where Lord Jon was often wont to sharpen his sword, although Anke had been unable to make out her words. When the two had finally reached the spring, the queen had begun to wipe at her cheeks, and Anke had realized she must be crying. Lord Jon had taken her into his arms at once, and Anke, upon drawing nearer, had seen his face gentle as it never had before, and heard him speaking in a low voice as one hand rubbed the queen’s back in soothing circles. Eventually the queen had raised her head from his shoulder and nodded at whatever he was saying, and he had rubbed what must have been another tear from her cheek before leaning over and pressing his lips to her forehead. She had offered him a small smile, and he had kissed her cheek before releasing her and offering her his arm. Anke had had to scurry behind the bushes to keep them from seeing her as they left the clearing. They had swept to within a foot or two of her as they had departed, and Anke had seen clearly the tender look the Lord Jon had given his cousin when her eyes had been turned away from his. It was the look of a man besotted by the beauty of his woman, and Anke had half thought he would try to steal her then and there, before she had remembered that he and the queen were, after all, kneelers. She sniggered to herself after the two were safely out of earshot. No wonder Lord Jon hated it so much when the other kneeler lords paid their visits to Winterfell.
In the days after that particular excursion, however, Anke had begun to think that the young queen might change her mind about binding ceremonies if she could have one with the Lord Jon. She had smiled more readily and swept about the castle as if a burden had been lifted from her shoulders, and Anke had even witnessed her laughing at one or more of Tormund’s absurd jokes.
However, Queen Sansa’s happiness had not been dimmed by the arrival of yet another kneeler lord, which made Anke question whether she had read the other woman aright at all. This vexed her, for she was, after all, a Free Folk healer, trained in the art of reading the eyes and expressions of the afflicted whose wounds or illnesses had rendered them unable to speak. No, Tormund had reported that the queen had taken more calmly than usual her council’s reminder at its meeting the night before the new lord’s arrival that the sooner she married a good lord and produced heirs, the more secure the northern kneelers’ kingdom would be. She had, in fact, all but ignored Lord Jon’s customary bout of growling upon the subject. And after the meeting, she had swept about the castle ordering the preparations for the new lord’s arrival with upturned lips and an air that Anke could only describe as merry.
Merry she was before the lord’s arrival, and merrily she greeted him. Anke could forgive her for the manner of her greeting, for the young man was tall, broad, and fair, with a head full of flowing golden locks and a smile to match the queen’s own. Anke herself would have been tempted by him, had he not been a kneeler. Furthermore, she had heard it said that the queen had dreamed as a child of marrying just such a man.
However, the longer the welcome feast went on in the great hall, the less Anke liked the new lord. He laughed and talked and heaped countless courtesies upon Queen Sansa whenever she was looking at him; but his speech, when not dedicated to flattering the queen scandalously, revolved almost entirely around himself and his kingdom’s affairs. He seemed to take no particular interest in Winterfell, where, after all, he would have to live were he to wed Queen Sansa. And when the queen was training her attentions elsewhere, his gaze wandered a little too often to various other young women in attendance and lingered a bit too long to be considered innocent even among the Free Folk, let alone a gathering of kneelers. So when he finally swept the young queen into the middle of the hall for a dance, and then refused to let go of her for another two sets, Anke could not blame Lord Jon for glowering at the man over his mead goblet. She only wondered that the queen remained smiling and serene throughout the rest of the evening, especially considering that she usually only danced every other set, and usually no more than two dances with the same man.
Anke’s scowl as she swept back to the healers’ chambers that night almost rivaled Lord Jon’s. Whether or not he would ask Queen Sansa’s permission to steal her after that strange kneeler fashion was his own affair; but she had always thought the queen more intelligent than to be taken in, and so quickly, by a flatterer with a wandering eye that any Free Folk wife worth her salt would have carved out had she been unlucky enough to be bound to him.
The following morning, on her way into the forest to gather more supplies, Anke walked past the fencing grounds, where she saw the golden-haired kneeler lord sparring with one of his bannermen. Queen Sansa passed through the yard just then, and Anke noticed that she walked more slowly than usual, as if lost in thought or even daydreaming. Her eyes softened as they fluttered past the two men at their swordplay, and Anke rolled her eyes.
As soon as the queen was out of earshot, the kneeler lord disarmed his bannerman and tossed his sword to his squire. The bannerman tilted his head in the direction Queen Sansa had just gone.
“Not a bad eyeful,” he remarked, “to give up naming your sons Harwood for, if you’ll have to name them ‘Stark.’”
His lord produced a look that was more leer than grin.
“Not a bad handful, either, I’d say,” he replied. “Or two hands full, more like.” His companion guffawed, and the lord shrugged. “And cockful to boot. Bunch of nice, tight cockfuls, by the look of her.”
This time they both burst out laughing. Anke turned away and swept through the yards in disgust. If the other woman insisted on losing her wits all of a sudden, that was her own affair; but neither the North nor kind Queen Sansa, momentary idiocy notwithstanding, deserved to be suffer from the rule of such a revolting lout, and Anke knew just the means to prevent it.
Not two hours later, Anke had pounded several dozen blue winterberries into a pulp and added the remaining ingredients needed to form a draught that would put Queen Sansa to sleep for a night and a day. She hesitated a moment before she poured it into a flask, then for several more after the final course of dinner had been served before she pulled aside the serving girl tasked in charge of the royal table’s drinks and instructed her to see that the healing potion for Queen Sansa’s headache be mixed thoroughly with her wine. Anke stuttered at first, so that the serving girl had to ask her to repeat herself; but in the end the instructions were given and the medicine passed off and poured into the queen’s goblet just as Anke had wished.
Not half an hour later, Anke saw Queen Sansa yawning and speaking into the Lord Jon’s ear. He nodded and said something back before she shook her head and swept off in the company of her maidservants. Anke’s lips turned up in a thin smile.
However, that smile left Anke’s face when the queen and her servants were almost back to her apartments, for it was then that the young woman began coughing and clutching her throat. Anke had kept at a distance as she had followed them through the halls, but even from her vantage point she could see the color draining rapidly from Queen Sansa’s face. She watched in horror as that same gentle face took on a sickly purplish hue.
“Anke! Anke!” One of the maidservants was frantically pulling her arm, and Anke broke out of her brief trance and leaped to Queen Sansa’s side. The maidservants had loosened her corsets, and one was slapping her on the face and rubbing her back, but the queen responded only with sharp gasps that shook her whole body as red spots began to appear in her wide-open eyes. Anke sank to the ground and touched the young queen’s neck, wrists, and chest in rapid succession. Beneath the skin of each, she felt a weak and wildly skipping heartbeat.
Anke stopped short in terror. Any of the young queen’s symptoms by itself would have indicated some type of poisoning, but all of them appearing at once could only mean one thing.
“Get her to her room!” she shouted at the maidservants. “Gently! And set her on her back!”
They hastened to obey her, and Anke dashed through the hallways as though all the White Walkers from the war were after her. Fortunately, the healers’ quarters were not terribly far from the queen’s, and even more fortunately, Murron was in the quarters stirring a cauldron of blackberry stew. Next to the cauldron stood Anke’s own workbench, and when she opened her mouth to call out the older healer’s name, nothing came out, for what she saw confirmed her worst fears. Instead of plucking blue winterberries for the queen’s sleeping draught, she had picked several bunches of deadly white winterberries, which budded in a nearly identical shade of blue to their harmless cousins and only turned white upon maturity. Anke could feel her own face going white as the berries as Murron turned to face her.
“The Queen,” she finally managed to gasp. “It’s – she’s had white winterberries – Murron – help – ”
The older woman’s eyes widened. With a swiftness that belied her age, she grabbed her oak walking stick, which was resting against the opposite wall, and hobbled over to one of the workbenches next to the cauldron. She pulled several pieces of dried red spruce bark out of one of the drawers and handed them to Anke, whose hands were shaking.
“How much?” she asked, and Anke told her. The old woman’s eyes widened further, and she yanked open another drawer and pulled out three bunches of herbs.
“You are sure?” she asked. Anke, who had just turned toward the door, whirled back around to face the other woman and nodded. Her lower lip began to tremble, which would have shamed her at any other time.
“I – the juice is there,” she stuttered, pointing to her work table, where a few of the berries she had discarded still sat. One of the first lessons she had learned when Murron had begun teaching her about poisons was that brewing the antidote to a berry-based poison could be made much simpler if one were to add a single drop of the poison’s source. Murron narrowed her eyes into slits, which Anke knew meant the normally placid woman would boil over along with the cauldron of blackberry stew if she did not receive an explanation. She stammered out her own as quickly as she could. The older healer eyed her sharply for a moment and then brought her cane around in a whistling crack over Anke’s head.
“Get you to the queen’s quarters next moment,” she cried, and her shrill voice drowned out Anke’s startled shriek. “And best pray the Old Gods and her Seven alike be with her, or the Lord Jon kills you before I do!”
Shaking, Anke dashed out of the healers’ quarters and down the hall. She prayed the entire way to the queen’s quarters, which was just as well, for she arrived to find the younger woman’s bed surrounded by agitated maidservants. One or two were weeping; the others were undressing the queen and wiping her brow and rubbing fingers, which were now turning the color of bruises along with the her face. Anke pushed her way past them all and informed them as firmly as she could that Murron was already brewing an antidote and would be on her way shortly. She shredded a piece of red spruce bark as fast as her shaking fingers would allow her to do and began filling Queen Sansa’s mouth with the splinters. It would be best, she knew, if the queen could chew and swallow them, for then their full virtue would be released into her blood, and, while red spruce bark would not cure her, it would help to slow the spread of the poison.
But the queen’s throat had very nearly closed, and no amount of coaxing the girl, whose bloodshot eyes were blinking without any recognition of what was in front of them, could get her to chew. Therefore, the best Anke could do was to put several splinters of bark into the younger woman’s mouth and close her lips around each other. She could feel the gaze of every maidservant in the room on her as she silently begged the gods to open the queen’s throat even a little bit.
Perhaps a minute later, the queen’s eyes fluttered open, and her throat relaxed a little. Anke immediately released her lips, and a very shallow breath escaped from them. She managed to get the queen to chew and swallow a couple of the splinters before her eyes closed again and she let out another gasp. Anke swore aloud and reached to shut the queen’s lips around the bark again, but she was interrupted by the slam of the door against the wall. She turned around to face Lord Jon Snow, whose face was as pale as his cousin’s was purple.
“Sansa!” he cried, and as he leaped to her bedside, the maidservants parted around him as fast as they could. Anke herself shuffled quickly to her left to make room for the young lord, who collapsed to his knees beside the bed. He seized her right hand with both of his, and when he turned to face Anke, his eyes were wide with horror.
“What in the bloody hell happened to her?” he demanded, and though his face was white, his gray eyes had taken on the hue of molten steel. Anke drew back in spite of herself. Those were the eyes of the fiercest swordsman in the North, the eyes of the dragon rider ready to unleash his full fury on whoever had harmed the Lady of Winterfell.
Anke gulped, but she was, after all, a woman of the Free Folk and no coward. She raised her chin and told Lord Jon that the queen had ingested white winterberry poison by accident.
“I am to blame, my lord,” she said. “I made a mistake when mixing a draught for her. I am feeding her pine bark to slow the poison’s spread until Murron arrives with the antidote. She will be here the moment she has mixed it.”
The color in the young lord’s face turned from white to red in a matter of moments. Anke did not know whether he would strike her or beg her to heal the queen sooner, and perhaps he did not know himself. Nor would either of them find out, for just then the door slammed back against the wall once again, and Murron burst into the room with a steaming flask in her hand. She hobbled over to the bed at once, knocking Anke aside with one knee as she did so, and slowly poured the liquid into Queen Sansa’s mouth. Lord Jon’s eyes widened, and his grip on his cousin’s hand tightened. He blinked several times in rapid succession, and his jaw clenched.
The entire room froze as Murron finished feeding the queen her antidote. The young woman blinked a few times but did nothing else, and Anke had only to look at Murron’s face as she felt the queen’s wrists, neck, and chest that nothing else had changed.
Murron turned to face Lord Jon, and as she did so, the fire reflected the glimmer of fear in her eyes. Anke hoped to the gods that the young man could not see it.
“My lord,” the old healer said stiffly, “I have given her the strongest antidote I have, and no more will help her. Best keep her as comfortable as you can now. She will either wake between now and the morn, or she will die.”
Lord Jon snapped his head forward in acknowledgement, and his jaw clenched even tighter. Murron nodded in return and swept away from the queen’s bedside. As she did so, she reached down and hauled Anke up by the collar of her dress.
“And you – ” she muttered. “You be lucky if the Lord Jon not order your death by sunrise.”
But Lord Jon gave only one more order that night. Anke had not quite reached the threshold of the queen’s door when the sudden boom of his voice, raised to a cracking shout, nearly caused her to trip and fall on her face.
“Out!” he cried. “Everyone OUT!”
The maidservants, who had frozen to a woman, now scurried out of the bedchamber like so many rats. Anke risked one look over her shoulder at Lord Jon’s stricken face before the door slammed shut behind them. The gray fire in his eyes had diminished to a barely lit ember; the mighty dragon warrior had deflated into helpless despair.
Anke did not know when Murron released her. She barely felt the chill of the stone at her back as she slumped against the corridor wall and shook like a weeping child.