A Feast for Dragons

as the gods made her before the good people of
the city.”
    Septa Scolera finished. “So now this sinner comes before you
with a humble heart, shorn of secrets and concealments, naked before the eyes
of gods and men, to make her walk of atonement.”
    Cersei had been a year old when her grandfather died. The
first thing her father had done on his ascension was to expel his own father’s
grasping, lowborn mistress from Casterly Rock. The silks and velvets Lord Tytos
had lavished on her and the jewelry she had taken for herself had been stripped
from her, and she had been sent forth naked to walk through the streets of
Lannisport, so the west could see her for what she was.
    Though she had been too young to witness the spectacle
herself, Cersei had heard the stories growing up from the mouths of washerwomen
and guardsmen who had been there. They spoke of how the woman had wept and begged,
of the desperate way she clung to her garments when she was commanded to
disrobe, of her futile efforts to cover her breasts and her sex with her hands
as she hobbled barefoot and naked through the streets to exile. “Vain and proud
she was, before,” she remembered one guard saying, “so haughty you’d think
she’d forgot she come from dirt. Once we got her clothes off her, though, she
was just another whore.”
    If Ser Kevan and the High Sparrow thought that it would be
the same with her, they were very much mistaken. Lord Tywin’s blood was in her.
I am a lioness. I will not cringe for them
.
    The queen shrugged off her robe.
    She bared herself in one smooth, unhurried motion, as if she
were back in her own chambers disrobing for her bath with no one but her bedmaids
looking on. When the cold wind touched her skin, she shivered violently. It
took all her strength of will not to try and hide herself with her hands, as
her grandfather’s whore had done. Her fingers tightened into fists, her nails
digging into her palms. They were looking at her, all the hungry eyes. But what
were they seeing?
I am beautiful
, she reminded himself. How
many times had Jaime told her that? Even Robert had given her that much, when
he came to her bed in his cups to pay her drunken homage with his cock.
    They looked at Ned Stark the same way, though
.
    She had to move. Naked, shorn, barefoot, Cersei made a slow
descent down the broad marble steps. Gooseprickles rose on her arms and legs.
She held her chin high, as a queen should, and her escort fanned out ahead of
her. The Poor Fellows shoved men aside to open a way through the crowd whilst
the Swords fell in on either side of her. Septa Unella, Septa Scolera, and
Septa Moelle followed. Behind them came the novice girls in white.
    “Whore!”
someone cried out. A woman’s voice.
Women were always the cruelest where other women were concerned.
    Cersei ignored her.
There will be more, and worse.
These creatures have no sweeter joy in life than jeering at their betters
.
She could not silence them, so she must pretend she did not hear them. She
would not see them either. She would keep her eyes on Aegon’s High Hill across
the city, on the towers of the Red Keep shimmering in the light. That was where
she would find her salvation, if her uncle had kept his part of their bargain.
    He wanted this. Him and the High Sparrow. And the
little rose as well, I do not doubt. I have sinned and must atone, must parade
my shame before the eyes of every beggar in the city. They think that this will
break my pride, that it will make an end to me, but they are wrong
.
    Septa Unella and Septa Moelle kept pace with her, with Septa
Scolera scurrying behind, ringing a bell.
“Shame,”
the old hag
called,
“shame upon the sinner, shame, shame.”
Somewhere off to
the right, another voice sang counterpoint to hers, some baker’s boy shouting,
“Meat pies, three pence, hot meat pies here.” The marble underfoot was cold and
slick, and Cersei had to step carefully for fear of slipping. Their path took
them past the statue of Baelor the Blessed, standing tall and serene upon his
plinth, his face a study in benevolence. To look at him, you would never guess
what a fool he’d been. The Targaryen dynasty had produced kings both bad and
good, but none as beloved as Baelor, that pious gentle septon-king who loved
the smallfolk and the gods in equal parts, yet imprisoned his own sisters. It
was a wonder that his statue did not crumble at the sight of her bare breasts.
Tyrion used to say that King Baelor was terrified