Merman's Court

The Merman's Court is the principal audience chamber of the New Castle in White Harbor, the seat of Wyman Manderly, Lord of White Harbor and Warden of the White Knife. It is here that Davos Seaworth, the smuggler turned King's Hand, makes his most desperate plea for the north, and here that Lord Wyman stages the elaborate deception that will allow him to defy the Iron Throne while keeping his captive son alive.

Architecture and Decoration

The hall is constructed entirely of wooden planks notched cunningly together, its walls, floor, and ceiling decorated with all the creatures of the sea. As Davos approaches the dais, he treads on painted crabs and clams and starfish, half-hidden amongst twisting black fronds of seaweed and the bones of drowned sailors. Pale sharks prowl painted blue-green depths on the walls, whilst eels and octopods slither amongst rocks and sunken ships. Shoals of herring and great codfish swim between the tall arched windows. Higher up, near where old fishing nets droop from the rafters, the surface of the sea has been depicted: to his right a war galley strokes serene against the rising sun; to his left, a battered old cog races before a storm, her sails in rags. Behind the dais, a kraken and a grey leviathan are locked in battle beneath the painted waves. The room is a complete immersion in the maritime identity of House Manderly, a space where every surface tells the story of a people who came to the north from the Reach and made the sea their own.

The Confrontation with Davos Seaworth

When Davos is brought before the court, he finds it crowded. The women outnumber the men by five to one; what few males he sees have long grey beards or look too young to shave. Septons and holy sisters in white robes and grey are present. Near the top of the hall stand a dozen men in the blue and silver-grey of House Frey, their faces bearing a likeness a blind man could have seen. Lord Wyman Manderly himself sits on a cushioned throne wide enough to accommodate three men of common girth, yet he threatens to overflow it. His skin is pallid, with an undertone of grey; he looks half a corpse. Left of the high seat stands a maester nigh as fat as the lord he serves, a rosy-cheeked man with thick lips and a head of golden curls. Ser Marlon Manderly claims the place of honor at his lordship's right hand. On a cushioned stool at his feet perches a plump pink lady, Leona, wife to Lord Wyman's captive son Ser Wylis. Behind Lord Wyman stand two younger women, sisters: Wynafryd, with her brown hair bound in a long braid, and Wylla, no more than fifteen, with an even longer braid dyed a garish green.

Davos refuses to kneel, declaring himself a King's Hand. The Freys accuse him of treason and lies, and Ser Jared of House Frey draws his sword, demanding satisfaction. Lord Wyman halts the bloodshed, but the court turns against Davos. Lady Leona sobs that the red witch Melisandre will turn them against the Seven. Ser Marlon Manderly interrogates Davos, exposing the weakness of Stannis's position: few northern lords have declared for him, he holds only the Nightfort, Storm's End, and Dragonstone, and he has too few men. Davos, cornered, makes his final appeal: "What does Stannis offer you? Vengeance. Vengeance for my sons and yours, for your husbands and your fathers and your brothers. Vengeance for your murdered lord, your murdered king, your butchered princes."

Wylla Manderly's Defiance

The only voice to support Davos comes from the half-grown child with the long green braid, Wylla Manderly. She cries out that the Freys murdered King Robb, who was brave and good, and that if Lord Stannis will avenge him, they should join Lord Stannis. When her sister warns her that one of the Freys will be her lord and husband soon, Wylla declares she will not wed them: "They killed the king." Lord Wyman threatens to send her to the silent sisters. Wylla then invokes the ancient promise: a thousand years before the Conquest, oaths were sworn in the Wolf's Den before the old gods and the new. When the wolves took the Manderlys in and protected them, they swore that they should always be Stark men. "Stark men!" she insists. The maester counters that Winterfell has fallen and House Stark has been extinguished, but Wylla retorts, "That's because they killed them all!" Rhaegar Frey responds that the younger Stark girl is coming north to wed Ramsay Bolton, but Wylla throws back, "Ramsay Snow," and recounts how he made Lady Hornwood eat her own fingers. A murmur of assent sweeps the court; a stocky man in white and purple declares that Roose Bolton's bastard son is mad and cruel, a monster.

The Sentence and the Deception

Rhaegar Frey argues that the War of the Five Kings is all but done and that Tommen is the only king. Lord Wyman Manderly, after a pause, gives a ponderous nod and agrees: "A dog, aye. He brought us only grief and death. A vile dog indeed." He then sentences Davos, declaring him no lord, no knight, no envoy, only a thief and a spy. He commands Ser Marlon to take Davos to the Wolf's Den and cut off his head and hands, to be brought before he sups: "I shall not be able to eat a bite until I see this smuggler's head upon a spike, with an onion shoved between his lying teeth."

This public condemnation is a mummer's farce. Lord Wyman later reveals to Davos that the entire performance was staged to deceive the Freys. The man whose head and hands were mounted above the Seal Gate was a criminal, his features twisted by tar and an onion shoved between his teeth. Lord Wyman's son Wylis was a captive of the Lannisters, and he dared not defy King's Landing while his last living son remained a hostage. The rancor he showed in the Merman's Court was a lie, and the Freys, watching day and night for any whiff of treachery, were completely taken in. The north remembers, Lord Wyman tells Davos, and the mummer's farce is almost done. His son is home.