Chapter Text
Prologue
The Green Bitch of Oldtown
Sometimes you must make do with vinegar where there would be wine. The phrase hadn’t left Alicent’s head all morning.
She usually rose early, but that day she waited until the light that shone through the one, high window of her keep was full and bright. She usually tried to eat or drink something. They fed her well; indeed these men were vassals of her family, but not richly. The food was often old, although there was a lot of it. The cheese was hard, the bread was hard, the soup was overflowing and full of oil.
It had been her mother’s phrase, the phrase about making do with vinegar, and there were yet more examples that she had given. Cotton rather than silk, brine rather than honey, tansy rather than jasmine - this was to say, you don’t always get everything you want. Alicent had little claim of great achievements or accolades in life but one thing she could certainly contend for was the title of she who knew most about not getting what you wanted.
The Septa had news today.
The Septa’s name was Toil, at least that’s what she said her name was, but in truth her name was Clarise. Alicent had discovered her true name when one of the guards who stood daily outside her door called to her as she entered, having known her from childhood. It wasn’t, as far as she knew, usual for Septas to change their names upon taking their oaths.
She hadn’t asked the girl why she had.
“Can I call you Clarise?” Alicent had asked her.
“It’s better if you don’t.” Clarise had said. Then added, after some thought, “Your Grace.”
“‘Lady Alicent’ will suffice.” Alicent had said, or something like that. She had felt cold at the use of her title, it brought back unwilling memories, many of which she had buried deep in her mind for her own sanity.
Clarise’s news was that King Aegon III was to marry Jaehaera. The news shouldn’t have come as a shock to Alicent, she should have known that it would be announced sooner or later, but it still made her stop to catch her breath. Jaehaera, the last remaining trace of her family.
The girl had never visited her, but Alicent was no longer allowed visitors especially as Oldtown was ravaged evermore with plagues and famine.
Jaehaera, who Alicent had held moments after her birth. Jaehaera. She looked over the top of the child’s head and saw Helaena lying there, small and defeated, stricken and grey. There. It had been that moment. The first true regret Alicent had felt for what she had begun. The first in a long series of regrets to come, regrets that would pile like plywood at her feet, regrets that would hammer on her door, break the windows of her cell and fill her dreams with a hundred faces, a hundred voices and they would all then become just one: Helaena’s.
“It’s good news,” Clarise said, gently. “It will be good for the Realm.”
“Yes.” Alicent whispered.
“They are ringing the bells in the city,” Clarise said. “Once the ceremony is over.”
“That’s good.” Alicent turned her eyes back to her prayer book. The words were often blurry these days. The darkness of the room meant that her eyesight often failed her, even in broad daylight. She had not seen her own face in many years, but she imagined she must look far older than her fifty years.
“Your throat sounds dry.” Clarise said. “Would you like me to make some barley tea?”
“Yes, please.” Said Alicent. “Thank you, Toil.”
Some inmates live within their memories to find comfort in their long hours, but Alicent only held them at arm's length. Not many of them were good anyway.
Alicent remembered when she was first touched by bitter, reddish spite. Seeing Rhaenyra embraced warmly by both her mother and her father. She had stifled the feeling at the time, feeling shame that she should be so small-minded, but it had sat there like a stone in her soul.
She also remembered other injustices, the first time she had eaten something sour when her brother had promised her it would be sweet, her father’s iron glare, other ladies sweeping past her brushing her with their elbows and making her stagger on her feet.
She could also, vaguely, remember what had been good. Honeycakes, for one. The smell of the rain when it had fallen on the flowers: a pungent aroma that rose during the night and reached her bedchamber. The people of Oldtown holding celebrations in the streets at the time of her nameday. Rhaenyra reciting old rhymes and purposely getting them wrong just to annoy… Rhaenyra. It was dim, but there it was. An old wound throbbing. Regret, despair.
The door shook as a guard leaned on it too heavily from the outside and Alicent was disturbed from her dark thoughts.
She took the remaining barley tea to her bed and enjoyed the final, cold sweetness.
The air in her chamber was always musty, but the next morning it was bitingly cold. Alicent kept her blankets wrapped around her as she attempted to finish her stitches from yesterday. The crisp light was decent enough to see the pattern, but her hands were too frozen to manouvre the needle.
Clarise didn’t arrive until much later and when she did she had on large black boots, a heavy brown cloak and gloves. The cloak was wrapped up around her neck and jaw and, upon seeing her, Alicent smiled for the first time in a long while. “Do I look strange?” Clarise said, unwrapping herself. “Forgive me, my lady, it is a frightful chill that has settled across the land.”
“Is that so?”
“Aye, all the roads have been blocked because too many folks were becoming stuck,” Clarise was originally from the Northern lands and her voice, although enunciated from years of elocutary teaching, still echoed the accent. “They say it is to last the next few weeks at least.”
“How is the town?”
“It’s a desperate picture, my lady, many are being struck down by the Winter Fever.”
“I see.” Alicent looked at her hands.
“You may have to go without meat or ale until the supplies arrive.” Clarise said. “But I can make you a warm compress for your knees, my lady.”
“My knees?”
“My grandmother often gets a stiffness in her knees when it’s chill outside.” Clarise said, brightly.
“Oh, I see.” Said Alicent. I really must look old.
Clarise read to her a little and left promptly, saying that she had to make it back to the Sept to help shovel snow from the steps. Alicent often wondered if Clarise actually enjoyed keeping her company, or if she held any resentment at the thankless task that was being the only companion of the evil queen.
Clarise had never shown Alicent anything other than kindness. She was, Alicent thought, rightly under the assumption that Alicent was no more than a helpless prisoner and there was no need to be cruel, that life had already been cruel enough.
.
The next day Alicent awoke feeling the chill in her bones. Her teeth chattered as she contracted her shoulders and legs, trying to restore warmth in her body. She knocked twice on the door, hunched over in her blankets.
“Please, could you fetch me a warm compress?”
A gruff voice replied, “You’ll have to wait for your little waiting maid, I’m afraid.”
Alicent returned to her bed, hearing the guard snort behind the door at the audacity of her request. Alicent waited all day for Clarise, eating as much as she could of the watery soup and bread they served her, but the girl never arrived.
The next day, it was even colder. Alicent found that she couldn’t so much as move from her bed, let alone go to the door. She could see her breath in the air. Throughout the night, her face had gone numb. She waited, at the edge of her pallet, eyes closed, trying to focus her mind on anything to get her thoughts away from the cold. She only moved to use her chamber pot and when they placed a piece of bread and a cup of hardly-brewed tea on her floor.
The tea was ice cold.
When the light had died, the door opened and, instead of Clarise, there was another girl there. Not a Septa, but a girl dressed like she was from the kitchens.
She curtsied, keeping her eyes down. “I’m here to fetch your pot, my lady.” She said, shortly. Understandably, she thought the task beneath her.
“Please,” Alicent said, managing to raise her voice above a whisper. “Where is my Septa?” The girl shrugged.
“They said she was took sick, my lady.”
“Sick? With that?”
“I don’t know, my lady,” the girl seemed eager to leave. “Goodnight.”
As she left, Alicent realised that she had probably left it so late thinking that she would be asleep. There came no word about Clarise the next day or the one after until, once again, the days became simply one stretch of time where the only differentiation was the light. Alicent lay many nights in her bed, waiting to die. This cold dried her throat, mangled her breathing, froze her joints - the least it could do was end her suffering. Her meals had become less and less as if her captors were also hoping for her slow demise. Alicent whispered to death at night, calling him lovingly forward in a way that she had never called a lover - but it, like many things she had wanted, never came.
Finally, there came a new Septa, this one red-faced and very tall with straw-like hair that was so thick it could barely be concealed underneath her habit.
“Do you have news of Clarise?” Was the first thing that Alicent asked her.
“Who?”
“Of…Toil? The previous-”
“Oh, Toil,” the new Septa said, breezily. “Yes, she is long dead, my lady. Taken with the rest of them from the Sept. They were fools enough to clear snow into the night and each got struck by the Winter Freeze.” She folded her arms. “I don’t care much for reading or embroidery, my lady, I hope you won’t mind if we twist rope instead. We can give it to the fishermen for their nets.”
.
Alicent was accustomed to sorrow. Indeed, it was one of the few things she could endure like no other. She was thinking of Rhaenyra that morning.
Perhaps because it was the morning that King Aegon was to marry her granddaughter, but they had given her porridge instead of bread - this was either intended as mockery or pity. No doubt, preparations for the nuptial celebrations were afoot, despite the chill weather.
Rhaenyra had sprained her arm whilst dismounting Syrax - it came after a few warnings to armor herself properly. She hadn’t wept, she wouldn’t allow herself to, but she had put her face into Alicent’s shoulder and Alicent had held her like a child as the Maester had applied a soothing lotion.
“There now,” Alicent had whispered. “Sweet child.”
“Don’t mock me.” Rhaenyra’s voice had been muffled. Her silvery hair was sticking up, mussed, smelling of smoke.
“I’m not,” Alicent had said. “After this I shall rock you to sleep.”
“And I shall put salt in your milk at dinner.”
The sound of the door being unlocked at the end of the hall interrupted Alicent’s thoughts. Her new Septa’s visits were never prompt, she spent an hour sometimes flirting with the guard at the door for whom she seemed to have some kind of penchant. Alicent would often listen to them go back and forth, not quite fond enough of either of them to be amused but having nothing to do made this a small light in her day.
“Here she comes,” the guard said. “Here to tarry.”
“I’m here to see to Her Queenship.”
“Ah, yes.” The guard said. “That dour old bat.”
The Septa laughed. “I can’t believe an old crone like her ever managed to turn a King’s head.”
“In her day she was said to be the comliest wench in the Kingdom.”
“Oh-er,” the Septa snorted. “The Green Bitch of Oldtown.”
“Now, you know she can likely hear.”
“She’s too deaf by now to hear anything but her own thoughts.”
“At least she is quiet so you needn’t tend her long.”
“You think I’d rather be out here with you?”
“I say you would.”
Alicent stared up at the window as they argued behind her. The clamour echoed her own thoughts which were inescapable today: the memories which she never usually dwelled upon.
“Here she is,” a new voice, indeed it was Prince Daemon’s. “The Green Bitch.”
Those words had been whispered to Rhaenyra and Rhaenyra had inclined her head to him and they had both smiled. This memory was fresher than the others. She could hear Daemon’s voice perfectly, crystallised in her mind. She could see the shine in Rhaenyra’s long hair. There had been a time, there had, when Rhaenyra would smile at her like that.
.
Alicent could not sleep. She had gone to bed as the light fell but these days the light fell before the hours of sleep. The sound of the town that was usually deadeningly quiet was suddenly alive with voices, the faint sound of music. The shadow of the guard at the door was gone - he had left to enjoy the party and the company of the Septa, knowing that Alicent would make no attempt to leave anyway.
As soon as Alicent had settled her thoughts on something else, she remembered a horrible picture. The sight of dragonfire. Rhaenyra’s cry. Not a scream, but a cry.
Then Rhaenyra’s voice: “I will read you a poem before you sleep.” Her face, from many, many years ago, alight and playful. Her large eyes, wide features, warm breath. “Will that make you feel better?”
And then the cry came again, as if from above.
“ENOUGH!” Alicent rose from her bed, taking the jug at her side and thrashing it against the stone wall where it shattered. “How long must I be tormented?! Have I not suffered?! Have I not lost?! Would I not join them all in the next life given half the-?!” She broke off into a coughing fit, her sore throat not able to mount the final words. The cough became a low moan, then a scream, then she wept.
It had been long enough since she had last let her tears fall. The more she allowed herself to consider the bitterness of her miserable existence, the more she fell into despair. But despair was her friend that night. Despair sat beside her and took her hand. Despair said, I will read you a poem before you sleep.
There was a change to the light, a shadow that swept across the room like a bird, a wing’s length of darkness.
Alicent looked up to catch it and her eyes fell upon a woman sitting upon her sewing stoop, her face covered by a shroud.
“It is come,” she whispered, a miraculous feeling of relief filling her chest, a rush of warmth. “Death is come for me.”
“Death is not my name.” The figure said. The voice was hollow, it echoed into nothing.
“It isn’t?” Alicent said. As her wits returned, she looked towards the door and back again. “How did you get in? Who are you?”
“Ask me only one question at a time.”
“Who are you?”
“Who I am is not important for now.” The figure said.
“How did you get in?”
“I have no need for human entry.”
Alicent sat back against her pillow. “You are here to torment me,” she concluded. “Some wandering witch who is come to toy with me.”
“Aye,” the figure said. “That is close enough.”
“What do you want?”
“I’m here to call upon you.” The figure said. Although the voice seemed to belong to a living thing, the figure's shape was as still as a corpse and Alicent couldn’t see if the mouth moved beneath the shroud. “I am here to see if the past can be rewritten or if it is destined to be repeated.”
“What do you mean?”
The figure paused. “You don’t remember me, do you?”
“I have met you before?”
“Very long ago.”
Alicent shook her head. “No, I don’t remember.”
“I thought you would recognise my voice."
"I don't recognise a single thing about you, witch." Alicent snapped. "If you're here to torment me then get on with it."
"You never were any good at listening." Alicent opened her mouth to reply, but the figure cut her off. “If you choose to accept my terms, Alicent Hightower, I will allow you to try and change your fate.”
Alicent sat back up, her joints screaming with pain. “Change my fate? What do you mean?”
“Exactly what I say. Go now to that place where you first encountered your fate and do battle. I will send you there. Do you wish to hear my terms?”
Alicent stared at her in silence. With nothing in the world to lose she finally said, “I do.”
“The first,” finally the figure moved. It extended one ghostly finger. “You will tell no one of your first life or imply that you know the future.”
“My first life?”
“The second,” the figure said. “You will not run away.” She paused. “And finally, the third condition, you will use the hourglass no more than thrice by every full moon."
Alicent wondered if she really was going mad after all. The confinement, the loss of Clarise - perhaps her mind had finally given way.
“Do you agree?”
“Agree to what?”
“My conditions.”
“I…yes, I agree.” Alicent said. “But I don’t understand. Where are you taking me?”
“I’m taking you to the past.” The figure rose to her feet, it was one fluid motion where she hovered just shy of the ground. “Through near thirty years worth of time.”
Alicent stiffened as the figure moved closer.
“Don’t be afraid,” the figure said. “It’s not such a long journey, even so, you might want to close your eyes to avoid seeing something you should not see.”
Outside the bells rang for her granddaughter’s wedding, but Alicent was not present to hear them.
.
The night that Alicent had been born, there had been a terrible storm. She knew this because her father and brother had often brought it up, reflecting on how she as a babe had wailed even louder than the wind. It had been a way to irritate her, one of the few inside jokes the three of them had had, but when she was much younger Alicent had always thought that the storm had been her fault. That she must have conjured it inland from the sea. As an adult, she would never have dreamed herself up such an arrogant fantasy, the very idea that she could conjure up anything from anywhere was ludicrous. Even when she was a girl of fifteen, she had understood how powerless she was.
The strange creature that threw her, it seemed, from the height of the high tower had thrown her into a wailing storm.
Maybe she could will herself back to the day she was born before death inevitably found her during that cold night. Alicent waited for the embrace of her mother’s arms in a wild moment of exhaustion.
When she regained gravity, she felt her cheek against something soft. She smelled a faint smell of candle smoke. This must be a further dream, she thought. As they would never allow me a candle.
She awoke briefly to a waking twilight where she shifted from one side to the other. Her hair fell over her face and, rather than pain, she felt a tingle in her limbs.
At least, she thought, the pain is gone and so is the cold.