Yesteryear Fiction

Not The King’s Child
By Andrew Carpenter


I stand at the base of the throne and try not to look up, try to avert my eyes. I know what is coming. I know what my sentence, my punishment must be. This is my trial, and yet my fate has already been decided. There is only one punishment for interloping with royalty, for polluting the king’s line with the seed of my own lowly peasant family.

Solemn, heavy with child, the queen lays my fate out in ink and on parchment held over my bowed head, masks her tears with a pale hand. I close my eyes. One word passes her lips.

Death.


- - -
I am a fleeting moment in your mind. Next time you stop to smell the roses, realize that one of them might be me.