Читаем A Feast for Crows полностью

It was a relief when the singing finally ended. The smell coming off her father’s corpse seemed to have grown stronger. Most of the mourners had the decency to pretend that nothing was amiss, but Cersei saw two of Lady Margaery’s cousins wrinkling their little Tyrell noses. As she and Tommen were walking back down the aisle the queen thought she heard someone mutter “privy” and chortle, but when she turned her head to see who had spoken a sea of solemn faces gazed at her blankly. They would never have dared make japes about him when he was still alive. He would have turned their bowels to water with a look.

Back out in the Hall of Lamps, the mourners buzzed about them thick as flies, eager to shower her with useless condolences. The Redwyne twins both kissed her hand, their father her cheeks. Hallyne the Pyromancer promised her that a flaming hand would burn in the sky above the city on the day her father’s bones went west. Between coughs, Lord Gyles told her that he had hired a master stonecarver to make a statue of Lord Tywin, to stand eternal vigil beside the Lion Gate. Ser Lambert Turnberry appeared with a patch over his right eye, swearing that he would wear it until he could bring her the head of her dwarf brother.

No sooner had the queen escaped the clutches of that fool than she found herself cornered by Lady Falyse of Stokeworth and her husband, Ser Balman Byrch. “My lady mother sends her regrets, Your Grace,” Falyse burbled at her. “Lollys has been taken to bed with the child and she felt the need to stay with her. She begs that you forgive her, and said I should ask you. my mother admired your late father above all other men. Should my sister have a little boy, it is her wish that we might name him Tywin, if. if it please you.”

Cersei stared at her, aghast. “Your lackwit sister gets herself raped by half of King’s Landing, and Tanda thinks to honor the bastard with my lord father’s name? I think not.”

Falyse flinched back as if she’d been slapped, but her husband only stroked his thick blond mustache with a thumb. “I told Lady Tanda as much. We shall find a more, ah. a more fitting name for Lollys’s bastard, you have my word.”

“See that you do.” Cersei showed them a shoulder and moved away. Tommen had fallen into the clutches of Margaery Tyrell and her grandmother, she saw. The Queen of Thorns was so short that for an instant Cersei took her for another child. Before she could rescue her son from the roses, the press brought her face-to-face with her uncle. When the queen reminded him of their meeting later, Ser Kevan gave a weary nod and begged leave to withdraw. But Lancel lingered, the very picture of a man with one foot in the grave. But is he climbing in or climbing out?

Cersei forced herself to smile. “Lancel, I am happy to see you looking so much stronger. Maester Ballabar brought us such dire reports, we feared for your life. But I would have thought you on your way to Darry by now, to take up your lordship.” Her father had made Lancel a lord after the Battle of the Blackwater, as a sop to his brother Kevan.

“Not as yet. There are outlaws in my castle.” Her cousin’s voice was as wispy as the mustache on his upper lip. Though his hair had gone white, his mustache fuzz remained a sandy color. Cersei had often gazed up at it while the boy was inside her, pumping dutifully away. It looks like a smudge of dirt on his lip. She used to threaten to scrub it off with a little spit. “The riverlands have need of a strong hand, my father says.”

A pity that they’re getting yours, she wanted to say. Instead she smiled. “And you are to be wed as well.”

A gloomy look passed across the young knight’s ravaged face. “A Frey girl, and not of my choosing. She is not even maiden. A widow, of Darry blood. My father says that will help me with the peasants, but the peasants are all dead.” He reached for her hand. “It is cruel, Cersei. Your Grace knows that I love—”

“—House Lannister,” she finished for him. “No one can doubt that, Lancel. May your wife give you strong sons.” Best not let her lord grandfather host the wedding, though. “I know you will do many noble deeds in Darry.”

Lancel nodded, plainly miserable. “When it seemed that I might die, my father brought the High Septon to pray for me. He is a good man.” Her cousin’s eyes were wet and shiny, a child’s eyes in an old man’s face. “He says the Mother spared me for some holy purpose, so I might atone for my sins.”