Solomon’s Crown by Natasha Siegel EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Author: Natasha Siegel
- Language: English
- Formats: PDF / EPUB
- Status: Available For Free Download
- Genre: Medieval Historical Fiction
- Price: Free
- File Size: 2 MB
- Publish Date: March 14, 2023
Bhilip
At thirteen years old, I almost died.
I had gone riding with the court and ventured out too far. The
forests outside of Paris are lovely in the spring, carpeted with bluebells,
sunlight weaving between the oaks; but as night fell that day, and the clouds
roiled, the trees became a labyrinth of clawing fingers. Stumbling between
them, the flowers tugged at my feet, pulling me into the mud. I could do little
but sit curled-up amongst the roots of a wizened beech, praying I would
survive the storm. I remained lost in the darkness with only the torrential rain
to keep me company; and when they found me in the morning I was
coughing and shivering, clinging to consciousness.
I was only half formed at that age, and the sickness came quickly. I was
laid out upon my bed, flushed and trembling, sprawled like a prisoner on the
rack. I spent most of my childhood swaddled in luxuries—furs, tutors, vellum
—but when I think of my youth, the first thing I remember is the tang of my
sweat in the air, my mother digging her nails into my forearm as she chanted
prayers, the bitter taste of herbs and the fog of fever.
I made the perfect picture of a martyr. Outside the wind shrieked and
rattled at the windows in zealous accusation; the foundations of the castle
groaned with me. Physicians came and went like visiting pilgrims. They bled
me until my pallor became corpselike, and they argued incessantly over
courses of treatment; they all wanted to be the one to save the life of a future
king. One recommended my head be shaved; another thought I ought to be as
warm as possible, to draw the fever out; and a third, hardly a doctor at all,
loomed over me murmuring in funereal Latin. In my delirium, the layer of
sweat on my skin became a horde of insects. I scratched and clawed at
myself, scoring scarlet lines over my arms. I was slathered in a paste of
stinking moss, which soon dried to a thick green crust. I must have looked
like a leper.
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