Chapter 14: Caught!
Cesare had written to the King about the Queen's dire illness. The letter stated she had begged Arthur to visit her instantly on their bedchambers. Fearing for his wife's state, he immediately cancelled all appointments and went with the messenger delivering the lying letter.
He had arrived before nightfall, three days earlier than the expected date.
The King brushed aside all the Queen's ladies-in-waiting and Julius' loyal friends who tried to hold him back.
He was simply dumbfounded. Why was everyone trying to restrain him?
The King opened the door. In their bedchambers he found the Queen and Julius held close in each other's arms, violating the sanctity of marriage. The betrayal had stabbed him like a knife goring his insides. He would have forgiven his wife if she had an affair with a different man.
Not his own nephew.
One question dominated his mind: Why?
King Arthur began to retrace his actions. He was a good father figure and a loving husband. He wasn't numb enough to notice his wife's cold attitude towards him. Every time he came near her, she would frown and find some excuse to leave. The king had tried his best to make her happy, to no avail. Their age gap was a distant thirty years. Everything was just too awkward from the start.
The king was aware of their tragic backstabbing for some time, although not directly. He had overheard his vassals whispering how the Queen would enter Julius' chamber whenever he was not around. He was a patient who killed his doctor and loved his illness. He knew yet he refused to believe the truth that was too painful to bear.
Wrath clouded his thoughts, a fire enveloping his very flesh. He ordered the guards to throw the adulterous couple into the dungeons. They were going to rue the very day they were born, the king thought angrily.
He was going to make them taste the fires of hell- especially the little harlot.