The Song Of Ice and Fire (498 page)

“How do you distinguish one High Septon from another?”

“With difficulty. One has to say, ‘the fat one,’ or ‘the one before the fat one,’ or ‘the old one who died in his sleep.’ You can always winkle out their birth names if you like, but they take umbrage if you use them. It reminds them that they were born ordinary men, and they do not like that.”

“My lord husband tells me this new one was born with filth beneath his fingernails.”

“So I suspect. As a rule the Most Devout elevate one of their own, but there have been exceptions.” Grand Maester Pycelle had informed her of the history, at tedious length. “During the reign of King Baelor the Blessed a simple stonemason was chosen as High Septon. He worked stone so beautifully that Baelor decided he was the Smith reborn in mortal flesh. The man could neither read nor write, nor recall the words of the simplest of prayers.” Some still claimed that Baelor’s Hand had the man poisoned to spare the realm embarrassment. “After that one died, an eight-year-old boy was elevated, once more at King Baelor’s urging. The boy worked miracles, His Grace declared, though even his little healing hands could not save Baelor during his final fast.”

Lady Merryweather gave a laugh. “Eight years old? Perhaps my son could be High Septon. He is almost seven.”

“Does he pray a lot?” the queen asked.

“He prefers to play with swords.”

“A real boy, then. Can he name all seven gods?”

“I think so.”

“I shall have to take him under consideration.” Cersei did not doubt that there were any number of boys who would do more honor to the crystal crown than the wretch on whom the Most Devout had chosen to bestow it.
This is what comes of letting fools and cowards rule themselves. Next time, I will choose their master for them.
And the next time might not be long in coming, if the new High Septon continued to annoy her. Baelor’s Hand had little to teach Cersei Lannister where such matters were concerned.

“
Clear the way!
” Ser Osmund Kettleblack was shouting. “
Make way for the Queen’s Grace!”

The litter began to slow, which could only mean that they were near the top of the hill. “You should bring this son of yours to court,” Cersei told Lady Merryweather. “Six is not too young. Tommen needs other boys about him. Why not your son?” Joffrey had never had a close friend of his own age, that she recalled.
The poor boy was always alone. I had Jaime when I was a child … and Melara, until she fell into the well.
Joff had been fond of the Hound, to be sure, but that was not friendship. He was looking for the father he never found in Robert.
A little foster brother might be just what Tommen needs to wean him away from Margaery and her hens.
In time they might grow as close as Robert and his boyhood friend Ned Stark.
A fool, but a loyal fool. Tommen will have need of loyal friends to watch his back.

“Your Grace is kind, but Russell has never known any home but Longtable. I fear he would be lost in this great city.”

“In the beginning,” the queen allowed, “but he will soon outgrow that, as I did. When my father sent for me to court I wept and Jaime raged, until my aunt sat me down in the Stone Garden and told me there was no one in King’s Landing that I need ever fear. ‘You are a lioness,’ she said, ‘and it is for all the lesser beasts to fear you.’ Your son will find his courage too. Surely you would prefer to have him close at hand, where you could see him every day? He is your only child, is he not?”

“For the present. My lord husband has asked the gods to bless us with another son, in case …”

“I know.” She thought of Joffrey, clawing at his neck. In his last moments he had looked to her in desperate appeal, and a sudden memory had stopped her heart; a drop of red blood hissing in a candle flame, a croaking voice that spoke of crowns and shrouds, of death at the hands of the
valonqar.

Outside the litter, Ser Osmund was shouting something, and someone was shouting back. The litter jerked to a halt. “Are you all dead?” roared Kettleblack. “
Get out of the bloody way!”

The queen pulled back a corner of the curtain and beckoned to Ser Meryn Trant. “What seems to be the trouble?”

“The sparrows, Your Grace.” Ser Meryn wore white scale armor beneath his cloak. His helm and shield were slung from his saddle. “Camping in the street. We’ll make them move.”

“Do that, but gently. I do not care to be caught up in another riot.” Cersei let the curtain fall. “This is absurd.”

“It is, Your Grace,” Lady Merryweather agreed. “The High Septon should have come to you. And these wretched sparrows …”

“He feeds them, coddles them,
blesses
them. Yet will not bless the king.” The blessing was an empty ritual, she knew, but rituals and ceremonies had power in the eyes of the ignorant. Aegon the Conqueror himself had dated the start of his realm from the day the High Septon anointed him in Oldtown. “This wretched priest will obey, or learn how weak and human he still is.”

“Orton says it is the gold he really wants. That he means to withhold his blessing until the crown resumes its payments.”

“The Faith will have its gold as soon as we have peace.” Septon Torbert and Septon Raynard had been most understanding of her plight … unlike the wretched Braavosi, who had hounded poor Lord Gyles so mercilessly that he had taken to his bed, coughing up blood.
We had to have those ships.
She could not rely upon the Arbor for her navy; the Redwynes were too close to the Tyrells. She needed her own strength at sea.

The dromonds rising on the river would give her that. Her flagship would dip twice as many oars as
King Robert’s Hammer.
Aurane had asked her leave to name her
Lord Tywin,
which Cersei had been pleased to grant. She looked forward to hearing men speak of her father as a “she.” Another of the ships would be named
Sweet Cersei,
and would bear a gilded figurehead carved in her likeness, clad in mail and lion helm, with spear in hand.
Brave Joffrey, Lady Joanna,
and
Lioness
would follow her to sea, along with
Queen Margaery, Golden Rose, Lord Renly, Lady Olenna,
and
Princess Myrcella.
The queen had made the mistake of telling Tommen he might name the last five. He had actually chosen
Moon Boy
for one. Only when Lord Aurane suggested that men might not want to serve on a ship named for a fool had the boy reluctantly agreed to honor his sister instead.

“If this ragged septon thinks to make me
buy
Tommen’s blessing, he will soon learn better,” she told Taena. The queen did not intend to truckle to a pack of priests.

The litter halted yet again, so suddenly that Cersei jerked. “Oh, this is infuriating.” She leaned out once more, and saw that they had reached the top of Visenya’s Hill. Ahead loomed the Great Sept of Baelor, with its magnificent dome and seven shining towers, but between her and the marble steps lay a sullen sea of humanity, brown and ragged and unwashed.
Sparrows,
she thought, sniffing, though no sparrows had ever smelled so rank.

Cersei was appalled. Qyburn had brought her reports of their numbers, but hearing about them was one thing and seeing them another. Hundreds were encamped upon the plaza, hundreds more in the gardens. Their cookfires filled the air with smoke and stinks. Roughspun tents and miserable hovels made of mud and scrap wood besmirched the pristine white marble. They were even huddled on the steps, beneath the Great Sept’s towering doors.

Ser Osmund came trotting back to her. Beside him rode Ser Osfryd, mounted on a stallion as golden as his cloak. Osfryd was the middle Kettleblack, quieter than his siblings, more apt to scowl than smile.
And crueler as well, if the tales are true. Perhaps I should have sent him to the Wall.

Grand Maester Pycelle had wanted an older man “more seasoned in the ways of war” to command the gold cloaks, and several of her other councillors had agreed with him. “Ser Osfryd is seasoned quite sufficiently,” she had told them, but even that did not shut them up.
They yap at me like a pack of small, annoying dogs.
Her patience with Pycelle had all but run its course. He had even had the temerity to object to her sending to Dorne for a master-at-arms, on the grounds that it might offend the Tyrells. “Why do you think I’m
doing
it?” she had asked him scornfully.

“Beg pardon, Your Grace,” said Ser Osmund. “My brother’s summoning more gold cloaks. We’ll clear a path, never fear.”

“I do not have the time. I will continue on afoot.”

“Please, Your Grace.” Taena caught her arm. “They frighten me. There are hundreds of them, and so dirty.”

Cersei kissed her cheek. “The lion does not fear the sparrow … but it is good of you to care. I know you love me well, my lady. Ser Osmund, kindly help me down.”

If I had known I was going to have to walk, I would have dressed for it.
She wore a white gown slashed with cloth-of-gold, lacy but demure. It had been several years since the last time she had donned it, and the queen found it uncomfortably tight about the middle. “Ser Osmund, Ser Meryn, you will accompany me. Ser Osfryd, see that my litter comes to no harm.” Some of the sparrows looked gaunt and hollow-eyed enough to eat her horses.

As she made her way through the ragged throng, past their cookfires, wagons, and crude shelters, the queen found herself remembering another crowd that had once gathered on this plaza. The day she wed Robert Baratheon, thousands had turned out to cheer for them. All the women wore their best, and half the men had children on their shoulders. When she had emerged from inside the sept, hand in hand with the young king, the crowd sent up a roar so loud it could be heard in Lannisport. “They like you well, my lady,” Robert whispered in her ear. “See, every face is smiling.” For that one short moment she had been happy in her marriage … until she chanced to glance at Jaime.
No
, she remembered thinking,
not every face, my lord.

No one was smiling now. The looks the sparrows gave her were dull, sullen, hostile. They made way but reluctantly.
If they were truly sparrows, a shout would send them flying. A hundred gold cloaks with staves and swords and maces could clear this rabble quick enough.
That was what Lord Tywin would have done.
He would have ridden over them instead of walking through.

When she saw what they had done to Baelor the Beloved, the queen had cause to rue her soft heart. The great marble statue that had smiled serenely over the plaza for a hundred years was waist-deep in a heap of bones and skulls. Some of the skulls had scraps of flesh still clinging to them. A crow sat atop one such, enjoying a dry, leathery feast. Flies were everywhere. “What is the meaning of this?” Cersei demanded of the crowd. “Do you mean to bury Blessed Baelor in a mountain of carrion?”

A one-legged man stepped forward, leaning on a wooden crutch. “Your Grace, these are the bones of holy men and women, murdered for their faith. Septons, septas, brothers brown and dun and green, sisters white and blue and grey. Some were hanged, some disemboweled. Septs have been despoiled, maidens and mothers raped by godless men and demon worshipers. Even silent sisters have been molested. The Mother Above cries out in her anguish. We have brought their bones here from all over the realm, to bear witness to the agony of the Holy Faith.”

Cersei could feel the weight of eyes upon her. “The king shall know of these atrocities,” she answered solemnly. “Tommen will share your outrage. This is the work of Stannis and his red witch, and the savage northmen who worship trees and wolves.” She raised her voice. “
Good people, your dead shall be avenged!
”

A few cheered, but only a few. “We ask no vengeance for our dead,” said the one-legged man, “only protection for the living. For the septs and holy places.”

“The Iron Throne must defend the Faith,” growled a hulking lout with a seven-pointed star painted on his brow. “A king who does not protect his people is no king at all.” Mutters of assent went up from those around him. One man had the temerity to grasp Ser Meryn by the wrist, and say, “It is time for all anointed knights to forsake their worldly masters and defend our Holy Faith. Stand with us, ser, if you love the Seven.”

“Unhand me,” said Ser Meryn, wrenching free.

“I hear you,” Cersei said. “My son is young, but he loves the Seven well. You shall have his protection, and mine own.”

The man with the star upon his brow was not appeased. “The Warrior will defend us,” he said, “not this fat boy king.”

Meryn Trant reached for his sword, but Cersei stopped him before he could unsheathe it. She had only two knights amidst a sea of sparrows. She saw staves and scythes, cudgels and clubs, several axes. “I will have no blood shed in this holy place, ser.”
Why are all men such children? Cut him down, and the rest will tear us limb from limb.
“We are all the Mother’s children. Come, His High Holiness awaits us.” But as she made her way through the press to the steps of the sept, a gaggle of armed men stepped out to block the doors. They wore mail and boiled leather, with here and there a bit of dinted plate. Some had spears and some had longswords. More favored axes, and had sewn red stars upon their bleached white surcoats. Two had the insolence to cross their spears and bar her way.

“Is this how you receive your queen?” she demanded of them. “Pray, where are Raynard and Torbert?” It was not like those two to miss a chance to fawn on her. Torbert always made a show of getting down on his knees to wash her feet.

“I do not know the men you speak of,” said one of the men with a red star on his surcoat, “but if they are of the Faith, no doubt the Seven had need of their service.”

“Septon Raynard and Septon Torbert are of the
Most Devout,
” Cersei said, “and will be furious to learn that you obstructed me. Do you mean to deny me entrance to Baelor’s holy sept?”

“Your Grace,” said a greybeard with a stooped shoulder. “You are welcome here, but your men must leave their swordbelts. No weapons are allowed within, by command of the High Septon.”