The King of Winters

Chapter - 76

Jorah

The cell was warmer than any cell had the right to be. It was dark, yes. Flickering orange light fell through the ancient iron bars from the torch in the sconce on the wall outside, but the back half of the cell remained drenched in gloom. It was dank as well, as might be expected on the Hightower, where the sea was never far. And there were rats, as many as any dungeon could expect to have and a few more besides.

But Jorah could not complain of chill. The smooth stony passages beneath the great mass of Hightower were always warm, and Jorah had often heard it said how the Hightower was built by magic and the fortress was made with the help of the mazemakers or by the Deep Ones. He was well below the castle, he judged, and the wall of his cell often felt warm to his touch when he pressed a palm against it. Perhaps the old tales were true, and the Hightower  was built with true magic.

He was sick when they first brought him here. The cough that had plagued him since the battle grew worse, and a fever took hold of him as well. His lips broke with blood blisters, and the warmth of the cell did not stop his shivering. I will not linger long, he remembered thinking. I will die soon, here in the dark and my dishonour and shame with me.

Jorah soon found that he was wrong about that, as about so much else. Dimly he remembered gentle hands and a firm voice, and young Maester Torbett looking down on him. He was given hot garlic broth to drink, and milk of the poppy to take away his aches and shivers. The poppy made him sleep and while he slept they leeched him to drain off the bad blood. Or so he surmised, by the leech marks on his arms when he woke. Before very long the coughing stopped, the blisters vanished, and his broth had chunks of whitefish in it, and carrots and onions as well. And one day he realized that he felt stronger than he had since Balerion shattered beneath him and flung him in the river.

He had two gaolers to tend him. One was broad and squat, with thick shoulders and huge strong hands. He wore a leather brigantine dotted with iron studs, and once a day brought Jorah a bowl of oaten porridge. Sometimes he sweetened it with honey or poured in a bit of milk. The other gaoler was older, lean and tall, with greasy unwashed hair and rough skin. He wore a doublet of blue velvet with six yellow flowers worked upon the breast in bright yellow thread. He would bring Jorah plates of meat and mash, or fish stew, and once even half a lamprey pie. The lamprey was so rich he could not keep it down, but even so, it was a rare treat for a prisoner in a dungeon. But he was no normal prisoner, he knew. He was the goodson of Lord Leyton Hightower and hence the family to the Hightowers.

Neither sun nor moon shone in the dungeons; no windows pierced the thick stone walls. The only way to tell day from night was by his gaolers. Neither man would speak to him, though he knew they were no mutes; sometimes he heard them exchange a few brusque words as the watch was changing. They would not even tell him their names, so he gave them names of his own. The short one in the brigantine he called Porridge, the tall, lean one in the colors of House Cuy, he called as Lamprey, for the pie. He marked the passage of days by the meals they brought, and by the changing of the torches in the sconce outside his cell.

A man grows lonely in the dark, and hungers for the sound of a human voice. Jorah would talk to the gaolers whenever they came to his cell, whether to bring him food or change his slops pail. He knew they would be deaf to pleas for freedom or mercy; instead he asked them questions, hoping perhaps one day one might answer. "What news of the war?" he asked, and "Has there been any battle?" He asked after the Princess Daenerys, and what was the news from King's Landing. "What is the weather like?" he asked, and "Have the autumn storms begun yet? Do ships still sail the Sunset sea?" Were there anyone coming her to rescue them?

It made no matter what he asked; they never answered, though sometimes Porridge gave him a look, and for half a heartbeat Jorah would think that he was about to speak. With Lamprey there was not even that much. I am not a man to him, he thought, only a stone that eats and shits and speaks. He decided after a while that he liked Porridge much the better. Porridge at least seemed to know he was alive, and there was a queer sort of kindness to the man. Once he had heard the man talking to the rats as if they were children. Perhaps he is as lonely as me as well.