He felt well. Perhaps, if any commoner were to examine the reasons why, they would attribute it to his accumulation of wealth, or more specifically, of their wealth. For he slept in woven bed sheets, dined on roasted beef and walked through corridors adorned with his very picture, as if his image emulated beauty. However, despite the efforts to pinpoint his content, the commoners would be wrong. For a king is not made well by riches that have become so standard to his way of living, but rather, by the feeling of immunity. He felt well, because of one, universal truth.
Kings don't get sick.
The plague was a gift reserved only for the lowest of the low. From the poor to the thieves and the Jews. And for their inexcusable practice of existence, God's hell came spilling from the cracks of earth. It infected the city streets, where the people waded through the filth that came with daily life. Their pathetic cries soaked the nights, begging for preservation and forgiveness in exchange for tears. But their pleas went unheard, and they continued to suffer the repercussions of sins.
But no one else needed to fret, especially not the man who sat atop the throne, because kings don't get sick.
And so he told himself, even when the plague spread beyond the scum of society, and made company with the peasants. The ones who had found new wealth through travel and trade, and adorned their bodies with admirable clothing. Their days, which were once strung together with music that echoed from taverns and churches, had fallen silent. If one was not dying, they were tending to someone who was. Or perhaps they were praying, or discussing medicine prices with the demonic excuse for doctors that owned the concept of deceit.
Not that it mattered, for at the end of the day, even the doctors fell ill. But not kings, no, because kings don't get sick.
Nobles, perhaps, he had to accept when the marquis succumbed to the plague like a common rat. And soon the duke, and eventually the earl. But while they may have held a higher status in the society, the blood loss was not royal, and therefore, of little value. At least, that was what the king scratched into his mind.
Or perhaps, it was vulnerability. The notions that one's deeply held belief of security was merely a construction of fragmented naiveties, placed delicately a top one another.
However, there was no need to dwell on concern for the impossibly. While copper stained green with age, gold remained pure throughout the ages. Any metal that adorned royalty simply could not fester with disease, so one could only assume, that royal flesh worked in the same sense.
But nobody could deny the half-truths that fell from his lips when his son and daughter fell ill. The young prince, who would spend his youthful days with a wooden sword in hand, and the vision of a battlefield in heart, had been lost of all the strength that came with childhood. The princess, who while just a little girl now, managed to imitate the fragments of the beautiful woman she would become, looked as though she was already a corpse. They laid in their beds and waited for God's mercy to put them to sleep.
And when he did, the king wept, and the queen wept. And perhaps, in another world, their wounds might have healed over the years, maybe with time and love and another baby to bring into life. But this was not that world. And eventually, the queen met the same revolting fate as those around her.
But while his heart ached for the loss of loved ones, the king needed not fret. Queens, while pure in royalty, possessed a genetic inferiority, one which left them vulnerable to the plague. But of course, even the wickedness of nature respected the position of a monarchy.
The stench of rotten bodies piled upon one another in pits had become ordinary, almost comforting. Even the king could not help but find familiarity in the death that surrounded his castle walls.
And slowly, while breathing in the scent, he pulled his robe, made from only the finest silk, closer, to contain his shivers. To provide him with some sense of touch. To hide the decaying skin beneath.
Kings don't get sick.
He told himself, refuses to look at the disease shrouded in his riches.
Kings don't get sick.
As his lungs collapsed in on themselves, threatening to burst with the blood that clawed from his throat.
Kings don't get sick.
As he felt the energy draining from his now dying body, unable to support the crown that rested atop his royal head all these years.
Kings don't get sick.
Kings don't get sick.
Kings don't get sick.
Supposedly, he was never really a true king after all.
