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Jerusalem was quiet.
Too quiet.
She hated it—when the palace was empty and the wine-drinking and merrymaking was over, when guests had come and gone. When the city slept, and the hallways emptied.
The silence allowed her to think.
A fresh, mild wind whispered through the white silk curtains that framed the grand arched window. The earthy, pleasant scent of Egyptian musk oil passed through the spacious bedroom—frankincense, myrrh, patchouli, and cedarwood.
A haunting symphony of crickets crooned in the distance as the stars appeared in the darkening twilight. The endless night beckoned her, offering her a tranquility she hadn’t felt in some time.
Hopelessly, Aurelia tore herself away from it and looked over her shoulder.
Her heart bragged, throbbing painfully against her sore ribs. Her chest felt heavy from the many hours spent weeping as he slept deeply beside her.
He could never know how mournful she felt. She didn’t want him to feel even worse.
Pillar candles towered around the King's bedside as two Arab physicians tirelessly cleaned his bloody lesions. He looked weary, despondent, as they worked.
The ghastly sores slithered up his once-muscular arms like a serpent leaving death in its wake. His tender, limp flesh was withered. The purulent drainage of his serpiginous ulcers shimmered in the glowing candlelight.
His lean frame was now covered with them, eating away at his chest, stomach, neck, legs, and sides. Upon looking at him, one would never know he had been a brawny, skilled warrior who led soldiers into victorious battles.
His nose—once prominent, long, and one of Aurelia’s favorite features of his—had since caved in. The disease, the physicians had told her, had eaten away at his nasal cartilage. Something about damaging the nerves in his face. His left lower lip was also being slowly devoured, gradually exposing his lower gums and teeth, creating a perpetual snarl.
The leprosy was eating him alive, morphing him into a walking corpse.
Yet still, he was resilient, ruling the Holy Land with patience and a charismatic calmness that garnered high regard from his court, the people of Jerusalem, and his enemies.
Another physician quietly entered the room, gauze in his hands. He looked to the King, then slightly bowed to Aurelia, and murmured, “My Lady, in your delicate condition, and for your safety, I don’t advise…”
She didn’t even look at him. Her tone wasn’t rude, it wasn't harsh. It was exhausted. “I’m staying here.”
The physician looked at her, apprehensive, and nodded before going to join the others to wrap his wounds.
She cupped her growing abdomen out of habit. Her belly was swelling, now, noticeably straining against the confines of her black-and-gold satin gown.
It was beginning to feel so real.
But she wasn’t even excited, and the guilt of that killed her.
Since falling in love with the King as a child, she had dreamt of this—being his wife, his queen, and the mother of his children. She had long wanted to bring little kings and queens into the world for him, to help create their family, but now it felt like a harbinger of ill fate.
With the coming of the babe, that meant time was moving, and the King would only get sicker.
Though it was an honor to carry the King’s baby, to provide a child and heir for the man that she loved so deeply, this wasn’t how she wanted it. Not with the icy hands of death looming over the palace like a seething black cloud.
The child would be born to be his successor, to be crowned as soon as his father died, and she to be made queen regent until the babe came of age.
She knew it had to be done, and even dismissed his worries when the King told her it was too dangerous, that the leprosy could spread to or harm her and their child.
Though they were unsure if the illness had affected his fertility, they knew they had to try.
Aurelia remembered the night they conceived. The love she felt for him in that moment couldn’t have been deeper, but there was a somberness that hung in the air. It was suffocating; the couple knew that the child wouldn’t know their father and that she would have to raise their baby alone.
In an ideal world—in a reality where the King wasn’t sick—they would have taken their time and conceived purely out of love. Not of fear, worry, and haste.
But the debilitating illness had pinned them into a corner, and they had no other choice.
Aurelia wouldn’t allow a fiend like Guy de Lusignan to claim the crown and destroy everything that the King had worked so hard to build, to cut ties with Saladin and eviscerate the peace with the Muslims.
She wouldn’t let the innocent be killed, and she would not let the King down—not in life, nor death.
She had to be strong for him.
It was her duty as Queen of Jerusalem.
“Aurelia?”
She broke from her thoughts to look up at her king.
She had always loved his gentle voice. Despite his young age, he spoke with the wisdom of an age-old monarch. But still, it worried her. While he was naturally soft-spoken and mild-mannered, she noticed that he was growing weaker even in tone, now.
“Are you alright?” He asked, and she could tell he was trying to hide how short of breath he was.
She gave him a knowing, slightly teasing look. “I think I should be asking you that.”
The King half-smiled. Aurelia was barely able to catch it through the strips of gauze that criss-crossed over his features. She wished she could unravel them, touch his slender, handsome, warm face, and free his thick, tawny locks from their prison of bandages.
“I’m alive,” he said, exhaling a shallow, uneven breath. “...Somehow.”
His physicians finished and bid their king good night, passing by Aurelia with pitied looks on their faces. She’d seen looks like that hundreds of times before.
She always wondered what people thought when those expressions of mawkish empathy twisted on their faces.
The Slave Queen and the dying Leper King. What a dismal pair.
She knew that Guy and his Templars—especially the boorish Raynald of Châtillon—had called her far worse. She even pondered if they’d slaughter her before the babe was born so they could lay claim.
Slave Queen wasn’t that bad. It’s not like it wasn’t true. She didn’t have a drop of noble or royal blood in her.
She was a former slave of the royal house through her parents—who had also been slaves—and had grown up alongside the King and his sister, Sibylla.
She remembered admiring the King, lusting after him, even when she was young. He had been such a beautiful boy—blond hair, spirited, well-mannered, responsible. A formidable fighter. A respectable and honorable prince.
As they approached their teenage years, she and the King had fallen in love. When he returned from his victory at Montgisard against Saladin, he had asked her to marry him. Though he was only 16 and she was 14, there was never a doubt in her mind.
At the time, their union influenced whispers and gossip to spread through the Holy Land like a plague. But the King didn’t care. He didn’t think any less of her for being a slave. He loved her, and that was that.
She went to him.
“You’re tired,” Aurelia soothed, sitting on the soft sheets of his bedside. “You should sleep.”
“I’m always tired,” he said, trying to make light of it. “I’ll sleep when—”
“Don’t say, ‘when I’m dead’,” The Queen interjected. She offered him a sad smile. “Spare me your dark humor, just for tonight.”
“Just for tonight,” The King echoed, trying to smile back at her, but grimaced instead. “Are you sure you’re alright?”
She nodded, but she knew she wasn’t convincing him.
He looked at her, unsure, but let it go when he realized she wouldn’t say more. His breathing was heavy again.
“Can I get you anything?” She asked him, touching his wrapped hand.
“Mm. Would you pass me the mask?”
Aurelia’s heart sank as she looked into his eyes.
So blue, and so filled with sorrow.
His left had failed him completely, now, the leprosy beginning to tug at and overtake the sac of fatigue under that eye, creating tiny, crater-like pockets of decaying, angry red flesh that was becoming ulcerated. A whitish film was beginning to overtake his cornea, rendering him partially blind.
His right eye was as it had always been—the disease hadn’t gotten there yet, but tiny red splotches were beginning to crawl up that side of his face. It wouldn’t be long now.
His eyes, kind and understanding and so deeply blue, were the only part of him anyone saw anymore. That wretched mask, made of sleek, expensive silver and fitted perfectly for his face, hid the rest of him from the world.
“You know you don’t have to wear that in front of me,” she murmured.
He was quiet for a moment, turning away from her. Shame shone in his sullen eyes. “I don’t want you to have to look at what’s become of me.”
Aurelia’s eyes stung with unshed tears. She cupped his head in her hands, stroking the rough skin of his cheeks with her thumbs. She sighed. “You always have been and always will be beautiful, Your Majesty.”
The King’s eyes glistened in the flickering glow of the bedside candle. It made Aurelia’s chest ache. She smiled sadly at him and leaned forward, kissing his clammy forehead.
The King exhaled a shaky breath.
She let him go, eyes raking over his feeble frame.
She would give anything to see him healthy again. She had begged God to cure him but realized long ago that her pathetic prayers would go unanswered.
To her surprise, the King stood, weak but unwavering. He offered her his hand. She took it and got up to meet his imposing height.
He placed his bandaged right hand—the one that still had feeling—on the swell of her belly, and looked down at her, his cerulean stare sending a flutter of adoration through her.
“You’re getting bigger by the day,” he said.
“Sometimes, it feels more like the hour,” she laughed lightly.
The King looked down at her growing abdomen, gently stroking there.
“You’re afraid,” he stated. It wasn’t a question.
She was quiet.
He prompted her again. “My love.”
“My king?”
He looked at her knowingly.
She dropped her eyes to the smooth mosaic beneath them.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry that this is what has become of us. I hope you understand that though I wanted this, this isn’t how I wanted it. Any of it.”
She mustered a smile up at him. “It’s what’s right for you, and for me. And for Jerusalem.”
“You’re sounding more like me every day,” he chuckled softly. “At this point, they won’t even notice when I’m gone.”
“Everyone will notice when you're gone,” she said, looking up at him. A lump tugged in her throat. “The Holy Land will not be home without you.”
With his bandaged right hand, he pushed stray tendrils of gold out of her sullen, dark eyes.
He sat her down and weakly knelt before her, kissing her stomach.
He then put his head in her lap.
His breathing was shallow and heavy, his short inhales and exhales rasping, hitching in his throat. The King shut his eyes, basking in the silence, in the intimate moment with the woman who knew him better than anyone—the woman who had been there for him all his life.
Aurelia gently placed her hand on his head, wishing she could run her hands through his soft, golden locks. Instead, she carefully ran her hand down his gauzy dressings, down to his neck and upper back. She kept repeating the motion, soothing him.
She looked out to the night again with tearful eyes, and silently prayed to God one last time.