Chapter Text
The fever arrived like an insult.
It crept in quietly, turning the great Richard, King of England, into a man who could not sit upright without feeling the world tilt.
“This is ridiculous,” Richard muttered, pushing away the cup offered to him. “I have fought in worse conditions.”
“You are currently losing to your own body,” his physician replied. “This is not a battle you can win by glaring at it.”
Richard attempted to glare anyway. It did not help
Days passed. The fever did not. Instead, it worsened.
By the time the messenger arrived, Richard was too exhausted to argue properly, which was perhaps the only reason he was allowed inside.
“A physician,” the guard announced carefully. “Sent by… him.”
Richard did not need clarification.
“Of course he did,” he muttered.
The physician was annoyingly calm.
He spoke little, worked efficiently, and carried himself with the quiet confidence of someone who knew exactly what he was doing.
“Drink this,” he said.
Richard eyed the cup suspiciously. “Is it poisoned?”
“If I intended to poison you,” the physician replied, “I would not announce myself.”
He drank it anyway. It tasted terrible.
“This is awful.”
“It is medicine.”
“That does not justify it.”
Recovery was unbearably slow.
And during it, something far more inconvenient than illness took hold.
Thoughts.
“This means nothing,” Richard told himself.
It meant something.