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She hadn’t told him.
When his seed had taken root and his child grew within her, causing her to become tired and sickly, she’d said nothing to him. For months, she stayed silent as he came to her bed each night, leaving before she woke in the mornings.
Stannis heard the whispers of course. Members of the court talking about how he couldn’t produce an heir. About how his wife was as barren as the land she came from. The moon turned and turned and still Sansa seemed as slim as ever.
Nearly a nameday’s turn after they were wed, a feast was held for Sansa’s nameday.
Stannis hated feasts. He hated crowds of people staring at him. He hated dancing. He scowled down at the revelry, moodily poking at his food.
“Stannis?” her voice was soft and Stannis looked sideways at his wife. Her eyes were unfocused and her fingers were tightly gripping the edge of the table, her knuckles turning white.
“My lady?” he questioned, but she seemed not to hear him.
She clutched at her belly and cried out, causing everyone in the hall to halt and stare at her. She panted, trying to regain her breath, but a few seconds later, she screamed in agony. Stannis looked at her in horror.
“Take the Queen to Maester Leo immediately,” he commanded, getting to his feet.
It was the maester who informed him, finally. He hadn’t been sure if he should wait outside the room, or in his solar to find out what was wrong with his wife. He settled for waiting outside the room with Davos. Sansa’s screams and cries did not abate, but still, he waited.
“Her Grace is with child.”
Stannis’ frown deepened.
“When is the child expected?”
“Soon,” he replied. “An hour, perhaps.”
Stannis froze in shock. The Queen was with child?
“Will it survive?” Selyse had given birth to only malformed, tiny, stillborns. With her size, Stannis did not believe Sansa could possibly be terribly far along with her pregnancy.
“I will not know until the child has come,” the Maester told him before returning to the Queen.
“Congratulations Your Grace,” Davos told him.
Stannis didn’t look at him.
“I didn’t know,” he replied dryly.
“You didn’t know?” Davos asked in astonishment. “How did you not notice?”
“No one else noticed either,” he replied.
“Perhaps her Grace was unaware herself. She’s quite young…” Davos suggested.
“Perhaps,” Sannis answered shortly.
In actual fact, Davos was correct.
In the early moons of her pregnancy, Sansa had felt the occasional bout of nausea, but not regularly. She also bled every month, very lightly, but she had never been told the signs of being with child. That coupled with her knowledge that Stannis’s first wife had given him only a daughter and still-borns, the thought that she might be with child had not entered into her mind. Her breasts had gotten larger, of course, but she had taken this as a sign of growing older, rather a sign of a child growing within her.
Perhaps, if Stannis had been different, she would have confided in him about having felt slightly unwell or the lessening of her moon-blood. If she’d had anyone in King’s Landing whom she could trust, she’d have spoken of the slightly odd changes that she had noticed. It was not that she disliked or mistrusted her husband, in fact, she found him one of the first people in a very long time that she felt she could, indeed, trust. He was never warm, but she found his presence comforting.
Every night, when he came to bed with her, he seemed to do so grudgingly and finished with her as quickly as he could. Even so, Sansa found she enjoyed him. She liked his thin, well-muscled body, liked feeling him there, moving inside of her. She supposed others found his blunt and honest nature off-putting, but she found it a pleasant and welcome change from the pretty manners and sneaking lies of most of the courtiers.
Now, suddenly, she was told she was having a child without any time to prepare. She supposed items for the babe could be easily acquired, but… but she had always wanted to sew for her child, even if she was now queen. The pains had happened all day, but they weren’t so bad, she had expected that it was just her moon blood until she had suddenly felt as though she were dying in the middle of the feast. Since then, the pain had not ceased, and in fact, had gotten far worse.
The child would come very soon now, they told her. She wondered if Stannis knew, wondered what he thought of it all seeming to happen so unnaturally quick. Was he angry at her for not having told him? Did he even know that she hadn’t known she was with child? A scream tore its way from her throat and her mind was wiped blank from the agony of it all.
She didn’t suppose Stannis would ever be the sort to come into the birthing room, but she wondered what he was doing. If he would have left the castle entirely like his brother always had, or if he waited outside the room, listening to the racket she could not help but make. She didn’t think he would stand for her screams. He had probably gone to his solar to work where he could not hear her cries.
Stannis sat silently on a bench outside his queen’s chambers. His frown deepened when she would scream and cry out, but he was otherwise still and silent. Davos looked on with an expression of slight worry. It seemed like ages, but it mustn’t have been terribly long before the cries and screaming came to a crescendo before stopping entirely. Stannis glanced toward the door, but said nothing. There were muted voices from the chamber, but aside that, nothing.
“A son,” Maester Leo told her, placing the babe on her chest. He was the size a healthy newborn should be. He looked curiously up at her with deep blue eyes that matched his father’s, and, as she knew it would be, his hair was a shock of black, plastered to his head. She ran her finger over his forehead, smoothing his hair back and feeling how very soft his skin was.
“Is he healthy?” She asked finally.
“He is Your Grace,” Maester Leo told her as maids cleaned the room around them. “It would seem that you have carried him fully, though you haven’t shown outward signs of it. It must have been the position he was in.”
“You’ll tell the King,” she told him, then returned her attentions to the boy she held.
“Your Grace,” Stannis looked up from the spot on the stone floor he’d been staring at for the past half-hour. Maester Leo stood before him, his face expressionless.
The child must be stillborn, he thought, he hadn’t heard the babe’s cries, and though it was a disappointment, he did hope the Queen had survived the birth. She was slim and young but perhaps she was still strong enough to birth a child. If she was dead… well, he would have to go through the ordeal of finding another wife. And… and he supposed he’d come to nearly like the girl’s presence. She was quiet and charmed the Lords he could not stand and while she never spoke out of turn, she knew what to say when and was well loved by the people. She would not be easily replaced. Stannis supposed he should have her body sent to Winterfell to be entombed with her relatives. She certainly did not love him, nor like him enough to wish to be buried beside him.
“Her Grace has birthed a son,” the maester told him, and Stannis nodded absently.
“I think a private funeral would be most appropriate,” Stannis told Davos, who was staring blankly at him. “You’ll arrange it, won’t you? I don’t want a large fuss.”
“Pardon me, Your Grace,” Maester Leo cleared his throat. “The prince lives. He was born a healthy size and Her Grace awaits you within. They are both well.”
Stannis frowned at him, then got to his feet, and hesitated a moment before entering his wife’s chambers.
Her hair was damp and messy, her skin was pale, she looked exhausted. And yet… and yet, when he entered the room, she looked up and smiled brightly at him. A genuine smile, the first he’d ever seen from her.
“A son, Stannis,” she told him happily, even though he’d already heard it from the maester.
“And… he is well?” he asked, still unsure.
“He is. Do you wish to hold him?” she asked. “He has your look.”
Stannis took their son from her and looked terribly awkward holding him, but even so, Sansa could tell he was pleased. He stared down at the boy, not speaking.
“What will you name him?” she wondered. “I thought a name of the Stormlands would be fitting… after your father, perhaps?”
“The living should not be named for the recently deceased,” he said with a slight shake of his head.
“A hero from history then, perhaps? I would name a son after King Torrhen, if it were my choice,” she told him quietly.
“Does Lyonel please you?” Stannis asked her. “Lyonel Baratheon was called the Laughing Storm. He fought with Ser Duncan the Tall during the Trial of Seven.”
She knew he was not one for songs and stories and for him to bend to her wishes on the name of their firstborn, his heir, made her smile widen. He was strange and as old as her father had been and most people did not like him, but Stannis was gentle and kind to her and she thought that perhaps she could grow to love him. Certainly the fact that he had fathered her child endeared him to her.
“It pleases me greatly,” she replied. “And Stannis?” She waited until he looked down at her. “If I had known I was with child, I’d have told you.”
“Davos said the same,” he muttered, looking back to his boy.
It was terribly sweet watching the two together, and though she longed to hold her son again, Sansa was too pleased that Stannis seemed to not want to let the boy go. He eventually sat in a chair beside her bed and just as she was drifting to sleep, she glanced over to see that Stannis had fallen asleep with Lyonel resting against his chest.