Chapter Text
As all stories that deserve reading, I suppose mine ought to begin with an introduction. And as is custom, I should start at the beginning. The circumstances from which it all stemmed might sound absurd, perhaps even fictitious, knowing where I ended up, here, as I set this down. But that is precisely why I write it, and why I believe it worth leaving behind. I will tell the whole truth of it, or at least the truth as I came to understand it.
There would be some things to say about my childhood, interesting for some, perhaps, yet repetitive after a few pages, for my early days did not differ much one from another. I see no reason to dwell upon them. I could not forget if I tried. Still, I risk losing some of the sharper memories, for they blur together now, half-hidden beneath incense smoke and the waxen breath of candles, by the coarse damp linen of the habits we hung to dry. Yet those years remain vivid to me, their essence sealed in silence, something that only those who lived them could ever truly grasp. To explain them would be to diminish them. Those were good years. And though Mother Enid, the leader of our Motherhouse in King’s Landing, strove to suppress all signs of joy or mischief, my sisters and I were still children, and we did as children do, between lessons, chores, and prayers.
I was born in the year 176 after Aegon’s Conquest, during the reign of Aegon the Fourth Targaryen, may the Stranger have mercy on him, Unworthy as he was. A king remembered, I am sure, first and foremost for the number of bastards he sired, which says both too much and too little for a monarch and a man. I was a bastard myself, though I doubt I was one of his, however large the shadow he cast. I had neither his amethyst , but blue, nor the golden-silver hair of Valyria, but black.
Still, I was Ellyn Waters, and if my sire had not been a nobleman, whoever he might have been, I doubt I’d have been given so pretty a name. My dearest friend in childhood was called Una and she had a giggle like a bell knocked askew, always a little off, always sweeter for it. She could steal an extra heel of bread from the platter and make you believe it had fallen there by the Mother’s grace. Her name had three letters, plain ones, and she had not even a Waters tacked after it, though her parents had been wed. Her father was meant to be forgotten while mine left a shadow, though he never meant to claim me. The Faith taught us that bastards were the fruit of shame and weakness, yet, curiously, the bastards of fine blood were still deemed less shameful and less weak than the trueborn children of humble folk. Names are a kind of arithmetic the Faith never taught, perhaps because the sums run crooked. A girl with a father everyone knows but no one names is more marriageable than a girl whose father is a good man with a good trade. A bastard with Waters after her will be received at doors that a butcher’s daughter must scrub. Tell me where the sin lies, in the bed where she was made, or in the hall where she is welcomed? Alas, I did not trouble myself with such thoughts back then.
Life in a Motherhouse, that endless preparation to become a septa, is as tedious as it is dull, I’ll tell you that. We were taught all that noble ladies learn yet kept with the modesty of beggars. Ours was a long stone womb, cool even in high summer, unlike the halls I inhabit now, where you’ll sweat just from lying down. In the refectory the tables were knife-scarred and clean, the dormitory windows took the dawn on their faces, and the pigeons kept their own vespers on the roof, soft and plodding. When the wind was south, we smelt the tanners, when it turned west, the sea would carry in, and with it a longing I did not yet know to name. Still, my little sisters and I found our entertainment where we could. We began embroidering the linings of our habits in secret, careful that the elder septas never caught sight. It was our rebellion, the hidden beauty no sermon could scold away. Thread-flowers and bright birds stitched close to our skin, unseen, yet known to us alone.
Of all the memories I have from those cloistered days, sneaking honeyed figs from the kitchens after curfew, nodding off in the back pew while Una held me upright and stifled her laughter, stealing red died wool from the alms basket and confessing before sunrise just to feel honest again, there is one that lingers sharpest. It is neither the kindest nor the cleverest, but it is the truest. If you would know the kind of child I was, then it is that day you must be told of first.
We were not allowed past the gates of the Motherhouse alone, but sometimes we were sent out in little companies: to fetch tapers from the candlemaker, or buy fruit, or pick flowers for the altar. I remember one such errand, when I was nine. It was in the spring, just after morning prayer when Una, Myna, and I were sent to collect a parcel of thick pale parchment that had been commissioned. The scribe’s counter smelled of glue and lampblack. His wall held a curling sheet in a foreign hand, sharp, slanting marks I could not read yet but burned to. We skipped along the cobbles on our way back from the Street of Sisters, laughing about some sers who’d been laid low by too much wine at the Cat’s Tail Inn, where we’d seen them slumped like sacks along the benches outside. Then the baker’s two sons came strutting.
They were wretched little bullies, not the first we had met, but that day their courage outgrew their sense. They snatched at Una’s parcel. The parchment rasped but she held fast. The other boy’s hand went for Myna’s hem. His nail snagged. The lining ripped and Myna made that small noise she made when a needle pricked her. She had embroidered there her finest work, a small butterfly that shimmered in colored thread, Myna’s pride. She was a shy girl who kept her hair too tidy for a child and slept with her ribbon under her pillow to keep it from creasing. When she sewed she stuck her tongue out the corner of her mouth. She wept easily and did so that day.
They did not try me. I was taller than both of them, as tall as some grown women even then, and not nearly as timid as my sisters. Let not thy hand be hasty to strike, nor thy tongue to boast thereof. I remembered the verse later, but when I saw what they’d done, fury flared in me like a spark upon flint. Before I could think, I shoved one boy hard into the dust, then the other. They scrambled, wide-eyed. When they reached for me, I found a fallen stick and gave them cause to remember me. They ran bawling down the road, and Myna dried her tears while Una laughed so hard she nearly dropped the parchment. We hurried back to the Motherhouse, swearing to keep our secret since the cane was as good as promised if word got out that I brawled, in the middle of the street at that.
But secrets rarely last. That same evening, the baker came, dragging one of his sniveling whelps by the elbow, to demand justice. We were lined up, and the boy pointed straight at me while the others scattered like sparrows. I tried to explain myself, that I had only acted in defense, but the man grew red as a furnace and louder with every word. Septa Morgylle, who wore a moustache like a hedge and possessed a soul twice as bristly, would have no patience for my reasoning. She made me kneel, apologize, and beg forgiveness while assuring the baker that I would be chastised properly. When he’d gone, she turned her wrath upon me. Very fiercely I said I had done as the Warrior would do: protected the weak and shown courage. Septa Morgylle looked at me as if I’d sprouted horns. She tightened her sorry hairy lip and reminded me that valor is a man’s work and that I was a girl, a novice even, and would better serve with obedience and piety. She set me to scrub the floors of the common baths for a moon.
Lye bit my knuckles till they cracked and wept; the stone was a hard catechism for my knees. Steam beaded in my hair and made a veil of my lashes. I prayed to the Seven while I served my sentence. At first for them to set matters right, then for gentleness, and at last for a little wisdom to sit quietly in my bones and teach me the patience that would have spared me of such endeavors. I grumbled all the while, not understanding for the life of me why I might not be like my favorite. We are told each face is for us, the Maiden for a girl, the Mother for a woman, the Crone for the dry stick at the end. That is what the Faith teaches, or rather what its teachers prefer to teach. Whether the Seven themselves ever meant such tidy divisions, no one troubled to say. Yet men are given three faces for their deeds and we two for our bodies and one for our ending. Besides, septas were not meant to marry, nor bear children and unruly as I was then, I did not hope prudence would ever find me, so there was little sense of aspiring to those anyway.
I also did not like men much. Not then. I was proud of it, in fact. Tolerating them came later, and love, when it arrived, was something of an ambush. It never sat comfortably in me, not the way justice had. But little Ellyn had no such troubles. She disliked men with the full, guiltless vigor of a child who had never needed them, and I dare say she went to sleep many nights quite satisfied with herself for it.
In truth, I was quietly pleased with my skirmish with the baker’s boys. I fancied that if someone would give me a sword, I could put to flight a dozen faithless squires I had seen dicing and pawing serving girls at the Chipped Goblet. In my head they scattered like starlings, and I alone was the wind. None of them would make a better Warrior than I could. I promoted myself in secret, you see: Ellyn, Captain of Righteousness and Scourge of Louts. It makes me laugh even now, 26 years later, to set it down, yet I cannot help a tenderness for that girl, and I would kiss that foolish brow if I could reach across the years. She mistook height for strength and anger for justice, and still there was something clean in her error. She believed goodness might be sharp enough to cut. Perhaps, for an afternoon, it was.