The Historical Nights' Entertainment by Rafael Sabatini (most important books to read .txt) 📖

people were stirring now in

the convent, aroused by the screams of the woman.

 

Thrice, so the story runs, came the monks to the Queen’s door to

knock and demand her orders for the disposal of the body of her

husband without receiving any answer to their question. It remained

still unanswered when later in the day she departed from Aversa in

a closed litter, and returned to Naples escorted by a company of

lances, and for lack of instructions the monks left the body in the

Abbot’s garden, where it had fallen, until Charles of Durazzo came

to remove it two days later.

 

Ostentatiously he bore to Naples the murdered Prince - whose death

he had so subtly inspired - and in the cathedral before the

Hungarians, whom he had assembled, and in the presence of a vast

concourse of the people, he solemnly swore over the body vengeance

upon the murderers.

 

Having made a cat’s-paw of Giovanna - through the person of her

lover, Bertrand d’Artois, and his confederate assassins - and thus

cleared away one of those who stood between himself and the throne,

he now sought to make a cat’s-paw of justice to clear away the other.

Meanwhile, days grew into weeks and weeks into months, and no attempt

was made by the Queen to hunt out the murderers of her husband, no

inquiry instituted. Bertrand d’Artois, it is true, had fled with

his father to their stronghold of Saint Agatha for safety. But the

others - Cabane, Terlizzi, and Morcone - continued unabashed about

Giovanna’s person at the Castel Nuovo.

 

Charles wrote to Ludwig of Hungary, and to the Pope, demanding that

justice should be done, and pointing out the neglect of all attempt

to perform it in the kingdom itself, and inviting them to construe

for themselves that neglect. As a consequence, Clement VI issued,

on June 2d of the following year, a Bull, whereby Bertrand des Baux,

the Grand Justiciary of Naples, was commanded to hunt down and

punish the assassins, against whom - at the same time - the Pope

launched a second Bull, of excommunication. But the Holy Father

accompanied his commands to Des Baux by a private note, wherein he

straitly enjoined the Grand Justiciary for reasons of State to

permit nothing to transpire that might reflect upon the Queen.

 

Des Baux set about his task at once, and inspired, no doubt, by

Charles, proceeded to the arrest of Melazzo and the servant Pace.

It was not for Charles to accuse the Queen or even any of her nobles,

whereby he might have aroused against himself the opposition of

those who were her loyal partisans. Sufficient for him to point

out the two meanest of the conspirators, and depend upon the torture

to wring from them confessions that must gradually pull down the

rest, and in the end Giovanna herself.

 

Terlizzi, alive to his danger when he heard of the arrest of those

two, made a bold and desperate attempt to avert it. Riding forth

with a band of followers, he attacked the escort that was bearing

Pace to prison. The prisoner was seized, but not to be rescued.

All that Terlizzi wanted was his silence. By his orders the

wretched man’s tongue was torn out, whereupon he was abandoned once

more to his guards and his fate.

 

Had Terlizzi been able to carry out his intentions of performing

the like operation upon Melazzo, Charles might have been placed in

a difficult position. So much, however, did not happen, and the

horrible deed upon Pace was in vain. Put to the question, Melazzo

denounced Terlizzi, and together with him Cabane, Morcone, and the

others. Further, his confession incriminated Filippa, the Catanese,

and her two daughters, the wives of Terlizzi and Morcone. Of the

Queen, however, he said nothing, because, one of the lesser

conspirators, little more than a servant like Pace, he can have had

no knowledge of the Queen’s complicity.

 

The arrest of the others followed instantly, and, sentenced to death,

they were publicly burned in the Square of Sant’ Eligio, after

suffering all the brutal, unspeakable horrors of fourteenth-century

torture, which continued to the very scaffold, with the alleged

intention of inducing them to denounce any further accomplices. But

though they writhed and fainted under the pincers of the executioners,

they confessed nothing. Indeed, they preserved a silence which left

the people amazed, for the people lacked the explanation. The Grand

Justiciary, Hugh des Baux, had seen to it that the Pope’s injunctions

should be obeyed. Lest the condemned should say too much, he had

taken the precaution of having their tongues fastened down with

fish-hooks.

 

Thus Charles was momentarily baulked, and he was further baulked by

the fact that Giovanna had taken a second husband, in her cousin,

Louis of Taranto. Unless matters were to remain there and the game

end in a stalemate, bold measures were required, and those measures

Charles adopted. He wrote to the King of Hungary now openly

accusing Giovanna of the murder, and pointing out the circumstances

that in themselves afforded corroboration of his charge.

 

Those circumstances Ludwig embodied in a fulminating letter which

he wrote to Giovanna in answer to her defence against the charge of

inaction in the matter of her late husband’s murderers: “Giovanna,

thy antecedent disorderly life, thy retention of the exclusive power

in the kingdom, thy neglect of vengeance upon the murderers of thy

husband, thy having taken another husband, and thy very excuses

abundantly prove thy complicity in thy husband’s death.”

 

So far this was all as Charles of Durazzo could have desired it.

But there was more. Ludwig was advancing now in arms to take

possession of the kingdom, of which, under all the circumstances,

he might consider himself the lawful heir, and the Princes of Italy

were affording him unhindered passage through their States. This

was not at all to Charles’s liking. Indeed, unless he bestirred

himself, it might prove to be checkmate from an altogether unexpected

quarter, rendering vain all the masterly play with which he had

conducted the game so far.

 

It flustered him a little, and in his haste to counter it he

blundered.

 

Giovanna, alarmed at the rapid advance of Ludwig, summoned her

barons to her aid, and in that summons she included Charles,

realizing that at all costs he must be brought over to her side.

He went, listened, and finally sold himself for a good price the

title of Duke of Calabria, which made him heir to the kingdom.

He raised a powerful troop of lances, and marched upon Aquila,

which had already hoisted the Hungarian banner.

 

There it was that he discovered, and soon, his move to have been a

bad one. News was brought to him that the Queen, taken with panic,

had fled to Provence, seeking sanctuary at Avignon.

 

Charles set about correcting his error without delay, and marched

out of Aquila to go and meet Ludwig that he might protest his

loyalty, and range himself under the invader’s banner.

 

At Foligno, the King of Hungary was met by a papal legate, who in

the name of Pope Clement forbade him under pain of excommunication

to invade a fief of Holy Church.

 

“When I am master of Naples,” answered Ludwig firmly, “I shall count

myself a feudatory of the Holy See. Until then I render account to

none but God and my conscience.” And he pushed on, preceded by a

black banner of death, scattering in true Hungarian fashion murder,

rape, pillage, and arson through the smiling countryside, exacting

upon the whole land a terrible vengeance for the murder of his

brother.

 

Thus he came to Aversa, and there quartered himself and his

Hungarians upon that convent of Saint Peter where Andreas had been

strangled a year ago. And it was here that he was joined by Charles,

who came protesting loyalty, and whom the King received with open

arms and a glad welcome, as was to be expected from a man who had

been Andreas’s one true friend in that land of enemies. Of Charles’s

indiscreet escapade in the matter of Aquila nothing was said. As

Charles had fully expected, it was condoned upon the score both of

the past and the present.

 

That night there was high feasting in that same refectory where

Andreas had feasted on the night when the stranglers watched him,

waiting, and Charles was the guest of honour. In the morning Ludwig

was to pursue his march upon the city of Naples, and all were astir

betimes.

 

On the point of setting out, Ludwig turned to Charles.

 

“Before I go,” he said, “I have a mind to visit the spot where my

brother died.

 

To Charles, no doubt, this seemed a morbid notion to be discouraged.

But Ludwig was insistent.

 

“Take me there,” he bade the Duke,

 

“Indeed, I scarce know - I was not here, remember,” Charles answered

him, rendered faintly uneasy, perhaps by a certain grimness in the

gaunt King’s face, perhaps by the mutterings of his own conscience.

 

“I know that you were not; but surely you must know the place. It

will be known to all the world in these parts. Besides, was it not

yourself recovered the body? Conduct me thither, then.

 

Perforce, then, Charles must do his will. Arm-in-arm they mounted

the stairs to that sinister loggia, a half-dozen of Ludwig’s

escorting officers following.

 

They stepped along the tessellated floor above the Abbot’s garden,

flooded now with sunshine which drew the perfume from the roses

blooming there.

 

“Here the King slept,” said Charles, “and yonder the Queen.

Somewhere here between the thing was done, and thence they hanged

him.”

 

Ludwig, tall and grim, stood considering, chin in hand. Suddenly

he wheeled upon the Duke who stood at his elbow. His face had

undergone a change, and his lip curled so that he displayed his

strong teeth as a dog displays them when he snarls.

 

“Traitor!” he rasped. “It is you - you who come smiling and fawning

upon me, and spurring me on to vengeance - who are to blame for what

happened here.”

 

“I?” Charles fell back, changing colour, his legs trembling under

him.

 

“You!” the King answered him furiously. “His death would never

have come about but for your intrigues to keep him out of the royal

power, to hinder his coronation.”

 

“It is false!” cried Charles. “False! I swear it before God!”

 

“Perjured dog! Do you deny that you sought the aid of your precious

uncle the Cardinal of Perigord to restrain the Pope from granting

the Bull required?”

 

“I do deny it. The facts deny it. The Bull was forthcoming.”

 

“Then your denial but proves your guilt,” the King answered him,

and from the leather pouch hanging from his belt, he pulled out a

parchment, and held it under the Duke’s staring eyes. It was the

letter he had written to the Cardinal of Perigord, enjoining him to

prevent the Pope from signing the Bull sanctioning Andreas’s

coronation.

 

The King smiled terribly into that white, twitching face.

 

“Deny it now,” he mocked him. “Deny, too, that, bribed by the

title of Duke of Calabria, you turned to the service of the Queen,

to abandon it again for ours when you perceived your danger. You

think to use us, traitor, as a stepping-stone to help you to mount

the throne - as you sought to use my brother even to the extent of

encompassing his murder.”

 

“No, no! I had no hand in that. I was his friend - “

 

“Liar!” Ludwig struck him across the mouth.

 

On the instant the officers of Ludwig laid hands upon the Duke,

fearing that the indignity might spur him to retaliation.