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Jon Snow was an object of curiosity to all the North. It was considered rude to pry into the origins of a man’s natural children, but Ned Stark had made it acceptable by bringing his bastard to his seat and refusing to speak of the lady he had dishonored.
Initially the speculation consisted of no more than naming women whom he might have met, with no evidence to support the rumors that shamed them, but as the years passed that changed.
Jon grew up, and as he did, his resemblance to his father lessened. He grew tall and slender, his eyes changed color from a babe’s blue to violet instead of Stark grey, and his complexion darkened to olive.
Now everyone in Winterfell whispered the name “Ashara Dayne,” not merely his wife’s handmaidens, and Ned could not send them all away, not even for slandering a dead woman who had committed no wrong and yet suffered all the same.
Ned had reconciled himself to the fact that Lyanna had, with Benjen’s help, run away with a married man in defiance of their father and the betrothal he had arranged for her — a betrothal to Ned’s dearest friend, a match finer than any made for a lady of House Stark since the daughter of the King Who Knelt wed the King Who Flew. He had reconciled himself to what resulted from that decision, and he did not blame her for it.
He had taken in her son as his own out of love for her and to protect him from Robert’s wrath, but how wroth could Robert be?
Jon Snow was no more the son of Rhaegar Targaryen than he was the son of Eddard Stark.
Lyanna, what did you do?
The evidence was before them. Even Benjen noted, “He looks like Dayne more than one of us,” on his last visit to Winterfell, and he was as shocked as Ned by that discovery.
Ned had not thought it possible of Ser Arthur Dayne. All spoke well of the Sword of the Morning. No one doubted his honor or his friendship with Prince Rhaegar, but they should have. How could he have betrayed Rhaegar and shamed Lyanna? Perhaps Ser Arthur had fallen in love with Lyanna in their time together as a war waged to the north, but a man truly in love would not dishonor the lady in such a manner.
Lyanna, why did you do it?
Ned could not ask Lyanna or Ser Arthur what they were thinking — and Lyanna was surely as complicit to the disgrace as Ser Arthur. She had begged her brother to bring Dawn back to Starfall and to bury the knights of the Kingsguard with honor in the same breath she had used to beg for Jon's life.
Perhaps he should have realized then.
He struggled to remember ever seeing Lyanna with Ser Arthur Dayne. They had spent nearly two years in close quarters in that tower, but before that — Had they danced together at Harrenhal? Had Ser Arthur sought out the Knight of the Laughing Tree to praise her horsemanship? Had Lyanna’s eyes grown soft whenever she looked at him as they never did when she gazed at Robert?
Did you love him, Lya? I thought you loved Rhaegar, but perhaps you loved them both. Perhaps you loved neither. You died before you could tell me anything, and now I can tell Jon nothing.
No one but Ned pondered these questions. They had come to their own conclusions when their observations were met with silence.
Soon there was no hiding the false truth of Jon’s parentage. If Ned could not name another as his bastard’s mother, all would assume that Ashara Dayne was she. Even Catelyn, who grew so cold that a man could think her the Stark instead.
Jon heard the whispers too. People spoke carelessly in front of the Bastard of Winterfell.
“Who is my mother?” he asked Ned one day when he was fourteen, with a determined jut to his jaw that revealed he knew.
Or so he thought.
Ned could no longer rely upon evasions and delays, but he could keep Lyanna’s most dangerous secret still. “Your lady mother is dead,” Ned answered. It was the most he had ever said of Lyanna to Jon, and Jon thought he spoke of another. “She loved you, and she asked me to raise you and care for you with her last breath.”
Jon’s eyes were bright and damnably violet, not indigo like his other false father’s. “Will you tell me of her?” he asked.
“Another time, perhaps.”
Jon’s shoulders slumped. He knew Ned would never speak of his mother again if he could help it.
Rhaegar or Arthur, it didn’t matter. The circumstances of his birth were too dangerous to be shared.
Robert would never believe that Lyanna had borne Arthur Dayne's son when she was abducted by Rhaegar Targaryen, and his Dornish appearance would be excused in the name of Rhaegar’s ancestors Mariah Martell and Dyanna Dayne, most probably the latter. Jon would be slaughtered, like Rhaenys and Aegon, and Ned alone would know the truth while all the world followed in assuming the obvious. Then he too would die for his treason.
Lyanna kept her secrets, and Ned kept his promises. Both would follow them to the grave.
And sometimes when Ned dreamed his old dream, the dream of the tower, it shifted and shimmered until he saw Lyanna standing in a corner of the Hall of a Hundred Hearths with Ser Arthur and one of Princess Elia’s ladies, a Blackmont in pink and black. Lyanna’s white gown was covered in blood, and Ser Arthur bore the wounds that killed him, but both laughed at the Blackmont’s jests.
A dream, he thought when he woke.
A memory, he wished.