THE BLOODS OF BOLTON | GAME OF THRONES

CHAPTER 21

AFTER NEARLY A FORTNIGHT of regular visits to her bedchamber, Maester Uthor had quickly become an annoyance to Drucilla.

He served her three hearty meals a day: thick stews, salads of sweetgrass, spinach, and turnip greens, and meats so red they bled on her plate. But it was for her own good, he liked to remind her. "It will bring the color back to your cheeks and put some meat on those bones." As if that made it go down any easier. In truth, it was more food than Drucilla could stomach, but the old man sat there in his chair and watched her swallow bite after bite and wash it down with a flagon of red wine. For all his efforts, Drucilla had gained one stone and that pleased him greatly. 

He wants to see me fat and rosy-cheeked like some helpless babe. 

At night, he provided her with sweetmilk and dreamwine to mend her frayed nerves and send her into a deep, dreamless sleep, ... only it was never dreamless. If anything, the maester's poisons made her dreams worse, more difficult to restrain. Ofttimes they would seep into the day, turning her waking hours into nightmares so vivid she would question the truth of every glance, but neither the maester nor her brother seemed to care. Her brother didn't trust her anymore, not after that night.

It was foolish of her to think she could kill the bastard herself, yet the leeches had made the plan sound so sweet when they whispered it to her. She should have known better than to trust those blood-drinkers. One of the guardsmen (Sour Alyn, she guessed, though he had a different face each time she tried to remember) had found her in the bastard's bedchamber with a dagger in her hand. If I had been quicker, I might've been able to do it, but the sweetmilk had dulled my senses so ... I probably would have missed and stabbed the pillow. The guardsman took her wrists, his grip tight as iron shackles, and Drucilla saw the bastard smiling at her from his bed. I'd played right into his hand. Stupid, stupid girl! 

When Domeric found out what she'd tried to do, he put her on bed rest and sent Maester Uthor to attend her, put guards at her door day and night. He might as well have thrown her into the Torturer's Tower.

"You're not well, sister," he had said with a pitiful look in his eyes. Of course I'm not well, she had wanted to scream back. You've brought the bastard to my home, and that thing followed him! "You need to rest." I need to kill him. I need to kill him before he before he kills me. But he had taken her knives, nearly destroyed her bedchamber to find them all.

Still, he'd missed one, and Drucilla wasn't about to let him get his hands on it. She'd hidden it in a place where he would never find it.

"My brother thinks I'm going mad," she told Alison as she broke her fast at the small table. Willow had the meal ready as soon as Drucilla arose from her bed: warm bread with butter and blueberry preserves, a soft-boiled egg, and honeyed tea. Alison sat across from her and nibbled quietly on the salt fish Drucilla refused to eat. Sara and Jeyne were busy preparing her bath beside the fire, a task normally reserved for Violet and Myranda, but Drucilla forbade them from entering her chambers. She didn't like the way they smiled at her now.

"I'm sure he doesn't," Alison said. "He's just worried about you, is all. You've been under a great deal of stress, m'lady."

"Yes, I suppose." Drucilla took her spoon and gave the egg a sharp tap, tap, tap. "Maester Uthor says we Bolton women have a history of madness. My aunt Rowenna was mad, or at least that's what I heard. She would go around talking to shadows, spend days in the godswood without taking food or drink, and then one day she vanished — poof! — just like that. She left the Dreadfort and sailed across the narrow sea, to the shadow city of Asshai. Why? Only the gods know for certain. It happened so very long ago, long before I was born, before even Domeric was born. Father was just a boy back then. And nobody has seen her since." Drucilla paused and turned. Jeyne and Sara had stopped to listen. She gave them both a stern look, and they bent their heads and resumed their work. "But a few years back," she continued, "Father received a letter from her. He said to burn it, but I snuck a peek before the flames took it. She's forsaken the old gods for this red god, and now she's dawned red robes and talks to fire. Seems a queer thing to do, doesn't it?"