She had evaded him as they all evaded him. He alone must decide----

Decide! He thought of the mockery Maria’s flight would throw on him,

and his first resolve was to run Carlo through, then that fell to

chaos, and his one thought was Giovanna--Giovanna…

He flung himself in the chair Sancia had sat in, putting off facing

the shame and scandal of his betrothed’s flight--blown abroad by now,

perhaps, over the whole palace--and then--the Queen, waiting for him…

He thrust these things away from him. His sick head fell forward in

his hands. He saw, through a mist of pain, the titles of the books on

the even shelves, the undisturbed dust lying over them; the lilies of

Anjou stamped on wood and leather. The quiet was broken by the opening

of the heavy door, and the flash of a page’s scarlet dress.

The King looked up, frowning.

The boy went on his knee.

“The Lord Konrad of Gottif is here, my liege,” he said, “and

importunate to speak with you.”

The King stared. He had thought Konrad in Hungary. Then he remembered

the galley from home.

“He arrived last night?”

“Yes, my liege.”

“Bring him here,” said Ludovic somberly.

The page slipped through the darkness of the open door. The King sat

frowning, staring on the ground.

He heard Konrad enter and the latch slip back into place. He knew the

other was waiting, and for a space he kept him so, and would not look

up.

Then he raised his eyes, and said curtly:

“Had ye my commands to return here?”

Konrad of Gottif flung back the green brocaded mantle that hung over

his armor, and the mail rung pleasantly.

“God wot, King Ludovic, I had no commands of ye,” he said easily.

“Your people sent me, and for them I stand here now.”

He came farther into the room. He was completely armed, save for his

head, and that he had but just removed his helmet was seen by his

heavy hair pressed into the line of the basnet.

“Ye ride well armed,” said the King curtly, aware of the difference in

his own attire--the silk houppeland to the ground, fastened round the

waist with gold, the velvet shoes, and the fine chains about his neck.

“I find the streets of Naples dangerous,” answered Konrad. His black

eyes dwelt on the King steadily. “There are those at home, my liege,

think them too dangerous for you.”

“There are those at home whom I will hang for meddling varlets,”

flashed Ludovic. “Have ye made yourself the spokesman of such, Konrad

of Gottif?” He rose and pushed back his chair. Above his high ermine

collar his face showed pale and set in angry lines.

“I am the spokesman of your people and your mother,” said Konrad. “For

those--and for King Andreas, lying in his bloody grave a bowshot from

where ye dally with his vengeance.”

“I have avenged my brother,” answered the King quickly.

“No!” cried Konrad. “The Queen still lives!”

The two men looked at each other.

“I know not why I take this from ye,” said Ludovic. “Little do I care

what they say of me at home--yet let not these impertinences reach too

high, lest I return--over-suddenly.”

Konrad of Gottif folded his arms across his breast.

“Still ye do not answer me, Lord of Hungary. I say the woman, Giovanna

of Naples, still lives.”

“And I say--ye are not her judge,” replied Ludovic hotly.

“Yet I stand for justice--is it for you to palter with the truth? From

autumn till the spring have ye stayed here in idleness. I do think

Christendom will smile to see such as ye beguiled by such as she.”

The King gave him a ghastly look.

“Come,” he said hoarsely. “Put it more plainly--ye think I have been

fooled, cajoled--ye think this little cousin of mine--” he

paused--“murdered my brother?” he finished.

“I believe it,” was the answer. “And so they think in Hungary.”

The King caught hold of the bookcase.

“Mother of God, if it should be so!”

Konrad of Gottif spoke quietly:

“It is so.”

Ludovic stood silent, looking down; his brow gathered into lines of

pain, his right hand grasping the embossed back of “Les Trois Vertu,”

his left hanging by his side, and the dusty gold light touching the

silk and fur of his robe, the jewels round his throat and on his

fingers.

Konrad of Gottif moved nearer. His breath began to come quickly.

“Even now,” he said in an intense tone, “as I rode through Naples, I

saw them fortifying the Castel di Duras--they told me Maria d’Anjou

was within, and that her cousin would hold her against the world.

Shall Hungary take that insult? Shall she, also, laugh at you? Shall

that fool Carlo prove himself the better man? Oh, Hungary, Hungary, up

and act! Shake Naples about their heads--bring this woman to

punishment--show them we breed no puppet kings--no hesitating men!”

The King looked up with a flushed face.

“What do ye goad me to?” he asked thickly.

“The man’s part,” breathed Konrad. “Take your sword and go to her--in

the name of God, of Andreas, and of Hungary!”

Ludovic sat down in the massive chair.

“’Tis a woman,” he muttered.

“The fouler was the deed--would ye soften murder because a woman’s

hand wrought it?”

Ludovic raised tortured eyes.

“’Tis a woman I have kissed,” he said. “And she--looks to me--and--oh,

that is all of it,” he finished passionately. “’Tis a woman I have

kissed!”

In the silence was the clink of Konrad’s armor as he moved slightly,

then his voice:

“Still ye will deal judgment on her none the less because of--kisses.”

“Do ye _know_ she is guilty?” demanded Ludovic.

“You know it,” was the answer.

It was true. In his soul he knew it now. Thinking on all the evidence

against her--of Maria, of Sancia, he saw her guilt and his folly. Yet,

though the thought of Andreas’s foul death shook him with fury, he

could not associate Giovanna with her crime--remembering her, he

strove to silence the accusation in his heart.

“I am waiting,” said Konrad of Gottif.

“For what?” asked Ludovic.

“For your decision, my liege.”

Ludovic sat up in his chair. He trembled exceedingly.

“If she is guilty----”

“I say she is--guilty of her husband’s death, guilty of Raymond de

Cabane’s death, guilty of lies innumerable----”

“Then, if she cannot answer me when I accuse her of these things, I

will shake her from her throne as I placed her on it----”

“And nothing more?”

Ludovic rose.

“If ye mean what I think ye mean,” he said hoarsely.

“I mean ye vowed in Buda to slay this woman----”

“Then I did not know myself--or her--if she was twice damned with

blood, I could not do it----”

“Ye shall,” said Konrad of Gottif through set teeth, “or deliver her

to some more dishonorable death--a death like his--over the balcony of

Aversa!”

The King faced him fiercely.

“I say I cannot do it. Do you know how we parted--last night, only

last night? And to-day I am to go to her--and murder her?”

“So--is this foreign woman more to ye than your blood--your own land?”

Ludovic steadied himself against the wall. “They have all been in

league to deceive me,” he said brokenly. “This morning I heard--for

the first time--Maria was too cold, too silent--but let it pass----”

Konrad of Gottif’s voice filled the pause with quiet weight:

“Remember what ye vowed in Buda!”

Ludovic clenched his hand against the bookcase.

“Peace of what I vowed in Buda!” he cried. “Have I not said--I am not

convinced?”

Konrad flung up his head. “Will you go to her--will you accuse her to

her face? And if she braves it out, ye must see her guilt then--come,

will you do this?”

“And what then--what if I do?” breathed the King. “What if I see her,

speak to her, and know this horror true--man, ye goad me past bearing.

What then, I say?”

“What then? Ye ask me what then? Ye who are his brother, and wear a

sword--ye could face her and know her guilty, and wonder what to do?”

He struck his hand down on the great weapon he wore as he spoke, and

his brows scowled heavily. “By God’s Heaven, if the King hesitates,

there is one from Hungary will not! I, even I, will strike down at

sight the cold wanton who slew my young lord Andreas!”

With the last words, his voice fell to softness. Ludovic looked up at

him and the color rose into his haggard face.

“Ye always loved him,” he said.

Konrad of Gottif was silent, but his breast heaved under the shining

armor, and his hand tightened convulsively on his sword hilt.

“Let her go,” continued the King. “I--I would not see her again. Let

her be banished to Naples--let God decide----”

“A coward’s decision, Ludovic of Hungary! Let the sword decide!”

“My God!” answered the King thickly. “Ye forget your station.”

“And you yours,” said Konrad of Gottif bitterly. “But ye are one for

the women to manage--a man might speak to ye in vain, while ye would

respond to the flutter of a lady’s hand. I--I--have not moved ye?”

There was a soft sound of silk as the King stirred in his place.

“No!” he answered sternly.

The other smiled sourly.

“Mind ye of a little princess at your mother’s court who once had some

influence with ye?”

Ludovic stared at him.

“She crossed the seas with me,” continued Konrad grimly. “By your

mother’s desire--to move ye if I failed.” He turned toward the door.

“Shall she come in?”

“Carola of Bohemia!” cried Ludovic. “Carola of Bohemia here?”

Konrad’s bitter smile deepened as he marked the success of his last

move. The change in the King’s voice and face, his half movement from

the wall.

“Come,” he said quietly. “We will see if we of Hungary cannot set a

woman against the Neapolitan enchantress.”

The King put his hand to his ermine collar and drew himself up, as if

he would make some motion to stay the other, but Konrad of Gottif had

opened the door.

“Princess!” he said.

A light footstep sounded without. In a second she was within the room,

and Konrad had closed the door behind her. She wore a heavy traveling

mantle, the hood pushed back from her black hair, and clasped with a

great emerald at the base of her white throat. She looked at the King

with eyes as dark as his own. The rich color of her lips and cheeks

had faded, and she trembled exceedingly.

Ludovic glanced from her to Konrad.

“You put some fine tricks upon me,” he said hotly.

Carola of Bohemia crossed the room and went on her knees by the King’s

side and took his hand. “Ludovic!” she said. “You will deal with this

Queen, and you will return, Ludovic--for Andreas, for Hungary--home?”

He strove to free his hand, to raise her up. The sudden sight of her

face made him weak before her. She would not loose her hold on him.

She spoke again, low, insistent:

“For the sake of the time we danced and sang and laughed in Buda--we

three. The time when you loved me a little, Ludovic! For the sake of

his mother, who cannot sleep thinking of him--alone--alone in his

grave! For the sake of the people who wait for you in Hungary--for the

glory of the eagles--for--for----”

She broke off abruptly, and rose in front of the bookcase. She looked

at Ludovic and he at her. The golden light glittered over her plain

attire and burned a green flame in the jewel at her throat.

“You will do it?” said Carola of Bohemia. “I have always known you

were--magnificent! You will do this--magnificently!”

The King, looking at her steadily, with gleaming eyes, held out his

hand, but before he could speak----

“Hush!” said Konrad of Gottif, and the door opened.

Carola put her hand in his. It was a page in Giovanna’s livery who

entered.

“The Queen bid me say she waits,” he said to the King. “And the

matters will not brook delay.”

Ludovic of Hungary, still looking at the woman whose hand he held,

answered:

“Tell her I come.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX.

THE ECLIPSE

The sick, cloying smell of the lilies troubled Ludovic. As he closed

the door, his eyes slowly, reluctantly, sought the slight figure of

the Queen, and the hot resolution that had brought him there, full of

loathing for her, died within him. Many things had combined to rouse

him to the full limit of his hate: Konrad’s urgings, aroused thoughts

of Andreas, a conviction of her guilt, and the sight of Carola of

Bohemia.

This, perhaps, most of all, though unconfessed to himself: Maria had

slighted him, Sancia repulsed him, but Carola had crossed the seas to

throw herself at his feet and beseech him to do it “magnificently.”

His wounded pride could salve itself with that consideration--to her

he was still a hero.

These things had brought him fiery to the Queen’s chamber, to redeem

himself, to punish her--for the murder of his brother and the fooling

of himself. He had brought the casket with him, meaning to fling the

accusation at her and deal judgment, even as Konrad of Gottif would

have done.

But the close, sick atmosphere of the room, her still figure, unnerved

him instantly. He let the seconds slip by and could not speak.

Giovanna turned her head. She sat by the wall of her bedchamber; her

page stood beside her. A low table, scattered with parchments, was

close to her, and behind her a bright tapestry, worked with pheasants

and unicorns. She wore a pale blue velvet gown that was gathered about

her closely as she sat, slightly hunched together in the deep, massive

chair. Her bedroom door was open, and from it could be heard the soft

voices of women.

“How long you have been!” said Giovanna to the King. She looked tired,

and as if she was cold, though the Italian sunshine was strong in the

room.

Ludovic crossed to the table.

“Ye are very pale,” said the Queen. A passion of impatience shone in

her eyes. Her little hands were clenched in her lap. “And is this a

moment to be silent? Ye know that des Beaux has left Naples, and there

is a rising in Sicily?”

Her words gave Ludovic a curious shock. So--her mind ran on nothing

but politics, ambition. Always her kingdoms…

“Send away the boy,” he said heavily.

Giovanna motioned the page away instantly, keeping her intense eyes on

the King.

“Come,” she breathed ardently. “You were to make me Queen and keep me

Queen. I want money--men. These Lombard loans are due.” She pointed to

the parchments on the table. “And the infamous interest to the

Genoese----”

Ludovic moved away from her. She paused to watch him. He closed her

bedchamber door and bolted it on the women within.

“Well, we are private now,” she continued. “What will you do for me?”

“I am considering,” said Ludovic. He kept his eyes from the Queen and

stared at the tall lilies in the window, and their vivid shadows in

the square of the sunshine.

Giovanna rose.

“What has happened?” she demanded. “Why will you not look at me? You

have heard of Maria--do you blame me for that?”

Still he was silent.

“We will hang my fair cousin for this insult,” continued the Queen

rapidly. “And shut his widow in a convent, and ye shall have her

lands, Ludovic--only--help me.”

He turned to gaze at her. The heavy auburn hair hung in a gold net in

the nape of her slender neck. Her violet eyes, shadowed underneath,

were frantic with impatience, her underlip swollen where she had torn

it with her teeth.

“Help you?” he echoed.

“Yesterday ye held a different language,” she answered hotly. “What

has come to ye to-day, Ludovic of Hungary?”

His fingers tightened over the casket concealed in the silk folds of

his houppeland.

“This action of Carlo’s has raised you another enemy,” he said,

striving to gain time--to probe her.

“I know,” she replied desperately. “He must go----”

Swiftly he turned on her.

“Can ye bring a prince of the blood to execution for what he has

done?”

Giovanna sank into her great chair.

“Perhaps not by daylight,” she said; “but there are other means.”

“Such as--murder?” demanded Ludovic.

At his tone she blanched with terror. “No! No! Ludovic--why are you so

strange to-day?” In her agitation she again rose. And again sat down.

When she changed from her cold talk of state affairs to womanly

trembling, she seemed very young and piteous. Ludovic could not nerve

himself. He sat down opposite and hid his face with his hand.

“Are you ill?” she said, distracted. “Are you grieving for Maria?”

“No, no,” he answered. He was trembling, and she marked it. During all

these months she had never seen him overcome--never otherwise than gay

and bold. She beat her hands together.

“Do you, also, fail me--when I was looking to your strength--your

courage?”

As he sat motionless, with averted face, she rose and came round to

him.

“You said yesterday,” she whispered, her fine hands fell to his

shoulders, her velvet gown touched his knee, “that you loved me,” she

finished, speaking like a child.

As she touched him, the deadly sickness of utter cowardice smote

Ludovic. He lifted a ghastly face, distorted from its beauty into a

mere mask, but he could not move or speak--only sit there, cold to the

heart, listening to the trembling beat of his pulses.

Her hands tightened on his shoulder.

“Why did you kiss me yesterday?” she demanded, “to look so on me

to-day?”

With an inarticulate sound, he pushed her off and staggered up,

meaning to face her standing, but his feet would not bear him. He had

to lean against the wall.

He put his hand to his damp forehead and groaned. She stood looking at

him, her head strained forward.

The rank scent of the lilies was overpowering. The dazzle of the

sunlight on the floor, in her hair, seemed to sear his eyes. He tried

to shape the words he wished to brand her with, but his tongue would

not obey him.

Giovanna smoothed down the soft folds of her dress with a curious,

slow gesture.

“What am I to think of ye, Ludovic?” she asked.

With an effort that shook him, he turned and set the casket on the

table, among her parchments. With a trembling hand he pointed to it.

She picked it up quietly, traced the motto with her finger, and read

it aloud:

“Remember thy later end, and thou shalt not sin for ever.”

Then she raised her head and laughed coolly, at which his blood was

stirred to answer her:

“Open and see--your damnation,” he said, and he put his hand to the

sword he had brought to slay her.

She lifted the lid, then dropped the casket from between her hands,

leaving them out as if she still held it, while she turned a blank

face to him.

“Ye--are--my brother’s--” Ludovic choked into silence. Her eyes were

unbearable. He struggled with himself, cursing her that he was weak.

Her hands fell to her side. His ragged voice broke again into the

stillness:

“Ye murdered Andreas!”

“No,” she said mechanically. “No.”

“The proofs lie at your feet.” He put shaking hands on the sword by

his side, fumbling with it.

She looked down at the floor. The piece of brocade Raymond had cut

from her gown lay by her hem.

“Found in his hand,” said Ludovic hoarsely.

“He was--clinging to you… I think… your hair too…”

“Whose word?” cried Giovanna clearly. “On whose word do ye judge me?”

He pointed to what lay on the floor between them.

“’Tis enough.”

“This?” She set her foot on the brocade. “Did _you_ find it in his

hand?”

She spoke steadily. The white color of her face had not changed.

“Sancia knows--and Maria,” breathed Ludovic. “And I know----”

“The women lie,” cried Giovanna. “Are _you_ their tool?”

Her eyes held scorn. “_You_,” she repeated, “who have been my friend

and desired to be my lover, who believed me when I came to you

first--you to be moved by their malice, their jealousy?”

Incredulous of her calm, her poise, he stared at her and his hand fell

from his sword--would guilt dare so to face it? “However she outbrave

it, you must see then,” Konrad had said, and he saw nothing, only the

same inscrutable eyes, the same even voice.

“They lie,” said Giovanna. “Sancia may cut a fragment from my robe to

swear she found it in his hand, Maria may bring his letter to move

you--but I am innocent!”

Ludovic stumbled into the chair and rested his head in his trembling

hands. He strove to recall what there was against her. Before it had

seemed obvious, a thing crying aloud. Now, as she said, what was it

but the word of malice and jealousy?

Maria had refused to speak further. Sancia would not confirm it,

and--“God forgive me!” she had said.

The Queen’s voice broke upon his tortured thoughts.

“If ye think I did this thing--take me before my peers at Avignon!”

“God guide me,” muttered Ludovic. “If I knew--if I was sure----”

She moved slowly toward the table, her long shadow, the shadow of the

lilies were distinct on the polished boards. She took a crucifix from

the wall and held it up in her two hands--by her dress lay her dead

husband’s bloody curls.

“If I swore,” she said, “on this?”

He rose in his seat.

“Would you dare?”

She put her lips to the crucifix.

“I call Christ, God and all his angels to witness that I am innocent

of the murder of Andreas, my husband.”

She put the crucifix down, and looked into Ludovic’s eyes.

“And may God bring instant judgment upon me if I lie!”

He could not challenge what she had said. He stood vanquished, not

daring to disbelieve.

“Does that satisfy you?” she asked. She laughed as she had laughed

when she read the motto on the casket. Ludovic moved away sharply to

the window and leaned there.

“Do you believe me?” she said again.

A heavy silence filled the low chamber for slow seconds. Then she

crept toward him, and for the third time:

“Do you believe me? You see, God does not strike me down.” She touched

the edge of his sleeve, then drew away again. He looked at her

sideways.

Certainly they had lied about her. Remembering the terrific oath she

had taken and her calm, he could not but think they had spoken false.

Yet it galled him to be the shuttlecock of these women’s words.

“I think ye have persuaded me,” he said slowly.

She had returned to her chair and sat there, one hand among her

parchments.

“Ye can be just,” she answered. There was no warmth in his confession,

nor in her acceptance. Again a dragging silence.

Ludovic, gazing at the floor, saw the vivid sunshine less vivid, the

shadows fainter, and marveled dully and told himself it was deception.

The Queen spoke steadily: “Is this to come between us?”

He answered brokenly: “God wot, I am enmeshed with doubts…”

“Is this love?” said Giovanna. “Is this a King’s word, Ludovic?”

Beyond question, now, the shadows on the floor, the shadows cast by

the Queen’s chair, the table, the lilies and the fallen casket were

growing fainter. The King glanced swiftly at the sky. It was utterly

cloudless.

“You will believe me, yet abandon me,” continued the Queen hoarsely.

“You will neither love nor hate me--you will stand aside--the coward’s

part!”

He hardly heard her. As she spoke the light was paling--not as when it

fades into twilight, but with no softening of the shadows that

remained clear and defined, yet faint, as if it was all looked at

through thick glass. Slowly, yet unmistakably, the chamber was

darkening. And it was early in the afternoon, while the sky was

cloudless.

“What is happening?” whispered Ludovic. He thought she had bewitched

him--that he was going mad, going blind.

Now she had noticed it.

“A storm comes on,” she cried, and sprang up, knowing that the sky was

clear; that no storm was ever heralded by this.

The steady darkness gathered. The sunlight was like faint stains in

the unnatural gloom. Man and woman looked at each other with

unutterable terror.

One thing was plain to both.

The sun was going out like a dying lamp. On the stillness of their

horror broke a wild clamor of fear--the women locked in the inner room

beat on the door.

Ludovic mechanically crossed the chamber and drew the bolt.

The two women stumbled across the floor.

“The end of the world,” said one, and the other shrieked.

In a second they had fled through the outer door, leaving it swinging

wide behind them. It was now so dark they could see each other only as

vague shapes--the wild clang of bells from the three hundred churches

rang through the room.

Giovanna had stood erect, rigid, since she first rose. Now she flung

herself on her knees and threw out her hands toward Ludovic, who

cowered against the wall. He could just see the pale oval of her face

and the shape of her arms as they waved up and down.

A wild voice rose, beating down the bells--he could hardly believe it

hers:

“I confess! I confess! God have mercy upon me!”

The blackness descended as a thick veil over his eyes. He cried out in

the agony of his terror and helplessness. The last glimmer of the

window disappeared, swallowed into the huge darkness. Still that voice

continued:

“I have murdered--I have lied--I opened the door to them--I saw him

slain at my feet, Ludovic! Kill me! Let me pay that God may have mercy

on me! I am red with blood! Let not the world end before I atone!”

Outside other voices, shrieking, and the tramp of panic-stricken feet.

Ludovic strove to cling to his senses. This was the end of the world.

God had come at last to Judgment, and she--she was confessing.

“Ye murdered him?” he shouted. He could not see his own hand before

him.

Her answer came as if from a great distance. “Yes--for the crown of

Naples I murdered him--I lured him there--I conceived it--I saw it

done--I had Count Raymond slain that he might not speak! Slay me! Slay

me! Purge me with the sword before the Devil snatches me to Hell!”

There was a sound as if she dragged herself along the floor. Her words

rang about him like the bells, bearing no meaning--he was striving to

number his own sins. His lips formed a broken prayer.

She tore her dress, her hair, fighting against the darkness as if it

were a living thing. Details of her crimes, dragged from her own soul

at last, made the blackness thick with horror. Steadily words poured

from her. Ludovic listened at length, and through even the terror of

the judgment day, the monstrous thing she had done hurried his heart

beats.

Her fiery confession, painted on the blackness as in pictures of

blood, her husband’s miserable death, the fires of San Eligio, and the

distorted head of her fellow murderer. His hand went to his sword.

Even now, on the edge of eternity, that poor weapon could drink her

wretched blood--her death would be one thing to him when he came

before the judgment seat.

Still she spoke on, as if she told prayers to her beads, assailing his

ears with her foul thoughts, her foul deeds.

“He knelt down by my bed. He was bleeding, bleeding--I felt I should

like to slay him myself… he would not die… he was very pale… ah, they

beat on the door! ‘Bind up my arm, cousin,’ he said… I ran and opened

the door. He had no weapon--I opened the door--they rushed in----”

Up through the blackness rose Ludovic’s sword.

“Witch!” he howled. “Devil!” and came at her where he thought her

voice rose from.

“Oh, I am blind!” she yelled. “He died in the light!”

His sword plunged. Something clung to his knees. He dropped his weapon

in a shrieking terror, and stooped to grapple with her by his hands.

With all the strength of his frenzy he caught hold of soft flesh and

trailing hair, and flung it from him…

A vast sobbing filled the darkness as if a thousand women wept

together. In his madness he thought her kindred devils echoed her. He

felt her where she lay and trampled her… then by the silence he knew

he had set his foot on her face… on her mouth.

He fled--where, he could not tell, or if he ran forward or round--if

he was still in her chamber or not. He seemed to have gone a vast

distance, and yet he listened for her sobbing, the steady patter of

her confession.

He did not know why he fled. It was not in his mind to escape. Often

he ran into objects, bruising himself; yet still he fled.

Presently a red light swung across his vision. He hid his face,

thinking Hell had broken loose… someone passed him, walking steadily.

Ludovic looked up. It was a tall man in armor, holding a torch, whose

rich glow picked out him and the wall behind him.

“Where is the Queen?” he said calmly.

“’Tis the end of the world,” answered Ludovic wildly, and he fled from

the flicker of the torch into the darkness again.

Luigi of Taranto stood still a moment and listened. In the streets and

in the gardens the people were gathered, thronging toward the

churches. Their clamor pierced the thick walls, but in the palace was

silence--it seemed empty.

The Prince of Taranto mounted steadily to the Queen’s room. The utter

blackness had changed the aspect of the palace, but presently he found

her open door.

“Giovanna!” he said.

He swept the torch round the stillness. Its flaring smoky light

revealed her, flung across the floor, with her arms wide apart.

Her dress was torn, her hair tangled over her bare shoulders. Along

her face was a little mark of blood. For a moment he could not believe

that this half-naked, tattered woman was the grave and splendid Queen.

As he gazed at her, the bells ceased. Even the churches had lost hope.

He looked up quickly. There was no alteration in the utter darkness.

He moved round the room, searching for some other means of light,

looking at the Queen now and then over his shoulder. With the torch in

his hand he was helpless to even lift her up, and there was no place

to set it.

As he came to the door, one ran past with a lamp--a slim squire,

wailing prayers.

Luigi of Taranto gripped him by the shoulder and dragged him into the

room.

The youth shrieked in terror.

“Is there no courage left in Naples?” cried the Prince scornfully. “I

am no devil, boy, but Luigi of Taranto.”

The Squire stared at him blankly.

“Help me with the Queen,” commanded the Prince of Taranto. He took the

lamp from the youth’s passive hand, set it on the table, and gave him

the torch to hold. Then he loosened his cloak and flung it over the

Queen’s dishevelment.

The heavy clink of his armor and the cross lights of torch and lamp

disturbed the black silence.

“Lift her up,” he said, and raised her head himself. The boy, stayed a

little from his terror by the sight of one who retained his calm,

obeyed. Between them they carried her into her bedchamber and laid her

on her curtained bed.

“God wot, she is very little weight,” said Luigi of Taranto softly.

But the Squire lapsed fresh into his fears. “’Tis the world’s end!” he

cried. “I should be in the church!”

The Prince of Taranto looked at him grimly.

“If it is the world’s end,” he said, “which I wot well it is

not--being nothing but a sudden darkness, the Devil will claim his

own, whether they be in churches or no--and as for God,” he smiled

somberly, “He will find us here as well as in the streets----”

“Ye think--?” stammered the Squire.

Luigi of Taranto was putting back the twisted hair from the Queen’s

white brow.

“I think,” he said, “I shall be King of Naples to-morrow!”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN.

KONRAD OF GOTTIF’S WIFE

/The/ evil glow of Vesuvius, against which the flames rose and leaped,

the multitudes about him bearing torches, lanterns, candles, showed

Ludovic that he was in the street.

He strove to draw himself aside from the surging throng. It was

impossible, the King was swept along next the beggar on the tide of

panic and despair. Now the clamor of the bells had ceased, the guiding

sound of the crowd had gone, and with it their last hope. They took it

that God had forsaken the wicked city, since even the churches were

overcome. Fighting and shrieking among themselves, they swayed to and

fro, trampling each other under foot, pressing themselves to death

against the high houses. One, gibbering with fear, dropped his torch.

It caught the wooden threshold of a dwelling and the whole leaped into

soaring fire. In the glow of it they scrambled, drawn like moths to a

candle, yelling for “Light! Light!” Some, laughing horribly, threw

themselves in, and the flames closed over them as they called for

“Light! Light!” Like a runner bending to the race the fire curled low

before the wind and leaped from house to house, till all to the right

of Ludovic was scarlet and all to the left black, while the sounds of

broken timber and falling walls mingled with the sobbing of the

flames.

And now the terror of fire mastered the terror of the dark. The crowd

turned and rushed back to the Palazzo San Eligio.

A troop of soldiers on panic-stricken horses dashed past, hurling down

and trampling the people in their way.

Ludovic knew them for some of his Hungarians, but they did not see him

in the press.

Forced along in the shouting confusion with the flames urging them

behind, Ludovic found himself opposite a building blazing with light.

Some one cried out that it was the Castel di Durazzo and that the Duke

had drawn the bridge up. Ludovic thought in a sick way of Maria and

struggled on. A wild thought had come to him. The dead would rise at

Judgment Day. Andreas was buried in San Gonnaro--if he would be there

to meet him.… He forced his way to the cathedral. Again a horseman

clattered by with a troop behind him. The torchlight fell on the face

of Luigi of Taranto riding in the direction of the palace.

Ludovic, abreast of the crowd, entered the church. Tumultuous prayers

rose to the roof and the air was thick with incense; a hundred wax

candles lit up jeweled altars and gorgeous tombs, soaring columns and

splendid carvings.

The King made his way to the chapel beside the altar, where his

brother lay, and fell across his gravestone face downward.

This corner was unlit and empty. Ludovic thought himself alone until

voices broke across his swounding prayers. He looked up to see the

whole church sway together, the columns spring up, the lights break

into innumerable stars, the people reel in the incense smoke, and

above it all the face of Carola of Bohemia.

He rose to meet it standing.

“Andreas!” he cried, and fell forward.

* * * * *

Ludovic of Hungary opened his eyes on neither Heaven nor Hell, but on

the empty church of San Gonnaro, and the placid sunlight about his

feet. He dragged himself up, sick, bruised, exhausted, and gazed about

him.

The evening sun, pouring through the rich glass, glowed on the tall

pillars, the quiet tombs, the splendor of the altars. Ludovic rose and

staggered from the chapel into the body of the church. Though there

were traces of confusion, benches overturned, articles of clothing,

books scattered about, there was not one person left of the hundreds

who had crowded there, deafening the ears of the priests.

For the sun had come forth again.

Ludovic leaned against one of the smooth pillars a long while,

striving, with a numb brain, to retrace what had occurred.

Had he slain her--had he seen Luigi of Taranto riding by torchlight

like a war god toward the palace with soldiers clattering after

him?--had that man seized the moment?

Slowly, painfully, he made his way to the door, crept into the porch

beneath the semicircle of saints and angels, and stared down upon the

city.

The earth had not opened and swallowed it; neither had the sky rent

apart and showered fire upon it. The white houses with their colored

roofs, the vivid palaces, showed in the softened light of evening.

Ludovic gazed at the purple shadows gratefully and drank in the

sunshine with a shiver of pleasure.

Many people hurried past. Officials of Naples on horseback,

endeavoring to restore order; thieves creeping by with booty snatched

in the confusion; tradesmen rushing to protect their shops; dark

companies of nuns and monks bearing the wounded to the hospices;

solitary passers-by wandering with dazed countenances and idle feet.

None noticed the young man in the tattered silk houppeland who stood

in the shadow of the porch with his sick head resting against the

stone feet of San Gonnaro.

Once a number of Hungarians in red and blue swept by, and Ludovic

called out to them, but they passed without hearing, and he could not

marvel at it, for to himself his voice sounded very faint.

Presently, as he waited with tumultuous thoughts and quiet face,

another rode by, shading his eyes with a mailed hand on which the sun

glittered, and looking from left to right.

“Konrad!” said the King. He came out on to the steps and the horseman

drew rein. It was Konrad of Gottif; his helmet hung at his saddle, and

his horse was red from the spur.

“The King!” he said, and leaped to the ground. Ludovic descended the

steps to meet him. Konrad, holding the bridle in one hand, spoke

again. “Up and down have I sought for ye--know ye what has happened at

the palace?”

Ludovic shook his head wearily.

“Luigi of Taranto has flung himself and all the men he could gather

into the Castel del Nuovo, and they have taken the drawbridge up--” He

looked at the King intently. “Swiftly now, my liege, or we lose

Naples.”

“He will oppose me?” asked Ludovic with his hand to his head.

“He has threatened to drive us as dogs from Naples--he will marry the

Queen.”

The color rose into Ludovic’s swarthy face. Had he not slain the

Queen? He dare not speak of it for fear he was distraught.

“Give me your horse,” he said abruptly, and sprang into the saddle.

“Now, where are my Hungarians?”

As curtly Konrad answered:

“We have mustered in the Grand Palazzo.”

Before he gathered up the reins, Ludovic put his hand furtively to his

side. His sword was gone. He had left it in Giovanna’s chamber.

Certainly she was not alive to marry Luigi of Taranto.

With Konrad of Gottif at his horse’s head, he rode to the Grand

Palazzo.

The sight of his men, the sound of their shouts as they saw him, the

banners of Hungary against the evening sky, the blazoned arms, the

pomp and glitter, roused Ludovic into his former gayety. Fear and

horror had fled like phantoms before the sun. He galloped along the

line of his soldiers, smiling at them.

“Shall we lose Naples?” he flashed to Konrad. “No!” and he stopped

before one of the knights.

“Give me your sword,” he said, and thrust it into his belt. “Now am I

armed again! Glory to God!”

They shouted furiously for their King in the tattered silks, and

Ludovic cast his sparkling eyes to where Carola of Bohemia sat on a

white palfrey close to the straining banner poles that bore the

Hungarian eagles.

Like the first star when the storm clouds have passed was her pale

fair face to him. Giovanna, Maria, Sancia were but memories dim with

horror, while she, with eyes that spoke of home--she who crossed the

seas to him after he had left her for his Italian bride--she who had

been a child with him. His weary senses dwelt with an exquisite

pleasure on her gentle presence. He turned the white horse toward her,

in anticipation of her sweet welcome.

As he came alongside her, he spoke, in his marvelous soft voice:

“Carola--were you frightened?”

She looked at him straightly. Above her head the flag made a strong,

fluttering sound.

“My husband was with me,” she said simply. “Yet even then, my liege,

was I a little afraid.”

A great faintness came over Ludovic. He felt as he had felt when he

stood in the church porch and idly watched the crowd hurrying past.

“Your husband?” he repeated.

“Konrad of Gottif,” answered Carola. “We have been wed these two

months.”

For a second the King was silent, then he laughed. “I give you

joy”--then he flushed--“of the better man,” he added, “though ye might

have had a throne.”

Then he rode up to Henryk of Belgrade, and his hazel eyes were the

eyes of a soldier.

“I have done with the women, Henryk,” and he laid his hand on the

other’s shoulder. “Now,” and his breath came quickly, “I play with

Kingdoms.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT.

THE QUEEN’S SECOND HUSBAND

/Giovanna/ lay in her great bed. Her head rested on a silk pillow with

a heavy gold fringe, and the coverlet, striped green and purple, was

drawn up to her pointed chin.

The room was shielded from the sun by purple velvet curtains and lit

by red lamps on hanging chains. By the bedside sat Sancia di Renato

with a great painted book on her knee and an ivory and jasper rosary

in her hand; both, it seemed, forgotten, for she looked across the

room with musing eyes, as if she traced pictures of her own on the

dark walls.

From the next room drifted the scent of the lilies and pale gleams of

sunshine, and from outside came heavy, unusual sounds, the metallic

clink of hammers, the thud of wood on wood, men’s voices, eager and

strained.

Presently Sancia rose, put aside the book and the rosary, and stood

looking down at the Queen.

Giovanna opened her eyes.

“What are those noises?” she said. She had not spoken since Ludovic of

Hungary had thrust her from his knees.

“The engines they bring into the palace,” answered Sancia softly, “and

the masons fortifying the walls.”

“I have heard them for a long time,” said the Queen, and she closed

her eyes again.

A sudden chatter of birds flying past fell across the hammer strokes,

and Sancia shuddered.

“The Prince of Taranto is in the palace,” she whispered. “And you have

been sick these many days.”

“Naples, Naples,” murmured the Queen, and did not open her eyes.

Sancia crept to the door of the antechamber. An old man sat half

asleep before a table spread with bottles and glasses, and two women

were spreading herbs and roots to dry in the sun.

“The Queen hath spoken,” whispered Sancia. “Will one tell the Prince?”

The physician roused himself with a start.

“Did I not say so?” he muttered, “on the third or seventh day,

according as Jupiter is in conjunction with Mars--well, keep the sun

off her----”

“And tell the Prince,” repeated Sancia. “He did most earnestly desire

it.”

Softly she returned to the bed, took up her book and rosary, and sank

into her old place.

The steady rise and fall of the hammers, the impression they created

of sunshine and life outside this darkened sick chamber, the Queen’s

low breathing, and the red flicker of the lamps, swayed her senses

into dreaminess.

Suddenly Giovanna moved and the weary violet eyes opened again.

“Who rules in Naples?” she asked.

“You are the Queen,” said Sancia.

For a while she was silent as a child thinking over a problem, then

she spoke again:

“Where is my cousin Ludovic?”

Sancia winced. Giovanna’s face and voice were so expressionless, it

seemed she must have forgotten.

“He holds half Naples,” answered Sancia, in a low tone. “Against the

Prince of Taranto--he fled hence in the great darkness--he----”

Giovanna did not notice the unfinished sentence.

“And Maria?” she whispered, turning her head on the pillow.

“She is the Duchess di Duras now.”

The Queen turned her head away again, as if she had not heard.

“It is surely the springtide,” she murmured, “for the hammer strokes

sound so clearly and the flowers smell so sweet--like the violets

round the villas at Baiae.” As she spoke one of the women came to the

outer door.

“The Prince would see the Queen.”

Giovanna caught the words, softly as they were spoken. “Bring him to

me,” she said. “Oh, aye, bring him here.” She sat up in bed. Her heavy

silk nightgown, edged with fur, fell open at the throat, and her

auburn hair twisted on to her shoulders. Then she dropped back against

the pillows, with her frail white hands on the coverlet.

“She remembers nothing,” thought Sancia, and she said:

“Shall I bind up your hair, Madonna, and put some robe on you?”

“It was a beautiful dress,” whispered Giovanna; “with gorgeous

embroideries on it--peacocks, apples and flowers. Do you remember the

thirteenth day of September? But bring him up.”

Sancia shrank away from the bed. Outside a quick step sounded, and

Luigi of Taranto appeared in the doorway. Over his armor he wore a

loose scarlet robe and his heavy face was set and stern.

He crossed at once to the bed and held aside the curtains.

“Oh, you!” said Giovanna. “You!”

He lifted her hand from the shimmering coverlet.

“Do you know me?” he said earnestly.

A troubled look passed across her face.

“Yes,” she assented, but half fearfully.

He was silent a while, looking at her, and his gray eyes grew hard

with calculation. The lamplight flickered in the black damascening of

his armor, where it showed on the opening of his robe.

Sancia, standing against the wall, watched them--the great knight and

the lady on the vast bed, his roughly shaped hand holding her fragile

fingers.

“Listen,” said the Prince at length. “I have saved you from your

enemies--do you understand, Giovanna?”

She nodded.

“Ludovic of Hungary, who is no great King after all,” and he smiled

grimly, “I have already driven to the very gates of Naples. I seized

the palace, and with it great quantities of his treasure. The people,

hating the foreigner, are gathering round me again. Do you understand,

Giovanna?”

“Yes,” she said faintly.

“And because of these things,” he continued, “I shall marry you, and

the Pope shall recognize me as King of this land. And it is the only

way for you, even if you mislike me, for you are in my power. But I

swear by Christ, you need not mislike me, for I like you as well as

ever I liked a woman, and, if you do not cross me, I will make life

pleasant for you.” At the end of this speech he let go of her hand and

leaned against the bedpost, frowning at her, and she turned her face

to the pillow, while her long throat was caught with sobs.

“Fetch the notary,” said Luigi to Sancia, and when she had gone he

bent over the Queen and touched her shoulder.

“My kingdom,” she moaned.

“Would ye rather Hungary had your kingdom?” he answered fiercely. “Ye

shall rule it with me--for truly I like you well.”

At that she sat up and faced him, putting aside the tangle of her

hair. Under the heavy silk her shoulders heaved.

“I slew my first husband,” she said wildly.

Luigi of Taranto looked at her somberly. “I knew it--always. Do you

think I am afraid? I am not such an one as Andreas.”

She wrung her hands together.

“Oh, how I hated him! A boy--to snatch my crown from me! Yet it was

black sin, and Ludovic--” She stopped as if her memory had suddenly

failed her.

“Ludovic,” repeated the Prince. “What is he to you? He dallied round

you. He has a fair face, God wot, yet I think he is a man of little

worth, or he had settled this before--come, do you care for him?”

“For none,” she answered dully. “Least of all for him.” Then her face

suddenly brightened. “Luigi, he was a fool, was he not? Finely I

cajoled him, and then--ah, what has happened to me? I cannot think--”

She sat up, with her fingers to her lips, staring at him.

“Listen to me,” he said. “I know--and some others. This King knows,

does he not? But what I found on the floor in yonder chamber I burned.

He has no proof. He came for his vengeance and has failed--by God, I

think so--and I shall know how to deal with defamers of my wife. Once

more, do ye understand me--that ye are safe?”

She turned her head away and would not speak, but when the notary

entered with his parchments, she put her name to the marriage

contract, and wrote it steadily beside her cousin’s signature, and, at

his request, they brought her royal seal and she set that on it. But

when they had gone she put her face in her hands and wept.

“Am I a footstool to your ambition?” she sobbed. Then, “Have I lost my

kingdom?”

Luigi of Taranto stood watching her, frowning and biting his

forefinger. On the other side of the bed Sancia waited, with a weary

face.

“Will you arise?” he said at length. “I have the Legate in the chapel

to marry us.”

She looked up at him with wild, wet eyes.

“I did read of a man once--’twas in a great clasped book--and he

sinned, sinned, yet for nothing. And still he served the ends of

others, sinning deeper, and when he came to die, he was poor and old.

The Devil fetched him, and he said, I might have lived honorably--for

ye are a bad paymaster.” The tears rolled slowly down her face, as she

stared at him blindly.

“Ye are weak,” he said. “Where had ye been without me? At the mercy of

Hungary’s tardy vengeance.”

She choked back her tears.

“Let me arise,” she said. “Help me.”

She laid her hand on his arm and rose, setting her bare feet on the

green carpet of the bed steps. She sat so, with her hand to her

forehead, and Sancia brought her scarlet velvet shoes.

Silent the Prince took them, and, kneeling, put them on the Queen’s

feet, while Sancia folded a golden silk robe about her.

She sat quite still, until the Prince got onto his feet. Then she rose

also, and tried to walk, but, being very weak, she fell against the

hard armor on his breast, and lay there, silent for shame and rage at

her helplessness.

He set her in a chair by the bed.

“Would you have your sister see you?” he asked. “For Carlo and I are

in league.”

She shook her head. “It was black sin,” she said, “but I hated him.

Why am I always driven into sin? I would be Queen. Queen! Why”--she

flashed a desperate look on him--“did I not take his kisses because he

would make me Queen? What was he to me--or any man?” She put her hand

to her throat, gathering the silks together. “Did I not promise Maria

to Raymond if he would make me Queen?”

“I will do that for you,” answered the Prince. “Will I not clear your

kingdom of the invaders? Ludovic would not leave you your throne--now

he knows.”

“Aye,” she cried feverishly. “He knows--and all the world beside! Yet,

how I kept my secret--though it made me mad----”

“These things are not things to speak of,” he answered, and made to

bend closer to her, but she held him off with a weak resistance by her

feeble hand on his arm.

“Oh, you!” she said. “I never thought of you--you seemed to me an

unambitious man.”

“God wot, I waited.”

“And now,” she answered, “ye snatch the greatest prize of all--my

Kingdom!”

He moved away from her somberly.

“Bring her to the chapel,” he said to Sancia, and was gone.

Giovanna sat slackly, her long fingers playing with her hair.

“My cousin Luigi,” she murmured. “Why, I am very tired, and the

flowers smell so sweet--if I could remember!”

Sancia crossed the room, with a pale gleam of yellow draperies in the

gloomy light, and in her hand a girdle of plates of gold set with

amethyst, that she clasped round the passive Queen.

As she was turning again, Giovanna caught her by the white wrists and

held her with a sudden strength.

“Could we escape?” she whispered hurriedly. “If I could get among the

people they might shout for me as they did when the old King died--I

might be Queen again.”

“It is not possible,” answered Sancia. She thought she had never seen

the Queen’s upturned face look so lovely as it did now, softened by

tears.

The golden girdle heaved under Giovanna’s bosom. “What he said he

would do for me! You--have you ever loved?”

“Let me free,” breathed Sancia. “Aye, I have loved and repented.”

“And been loved?” questioned the Queen.

“I know not,” shuddered Sancia, and dragged her hands away.

“Love! It is but a word!” cried Giovanna. “Nothing he did for

me--nothing!” She leaned forward and clung to the other’s arm with

cold fingers. Her voice changed and sank.

“I have lain so long--listening to the hammers, and I fancied they

were building my tomb. See! they make it splendid! Let me lie with a

crown on my head, and a scepter in my hand; under my feet a lion, and

beside me a shield, thick with lilies of the Angevin Kings----”

She paused, then whispered:

“For, even if my soul is in Hell, let my body be housed magnificently

with enamel, gems and carved angels. So I may lie a thousand years--a

crowned Queen!”

“I deck you for a wedding, not a funeral,” answered Sancia quickly.

Giovanna let go of her.

“My wedding! When they married me before, I clenched my hand that I

might not strike his proxy in the face, but the men stood close as

gathered spears about me to see it done. These men--shall we be never

better than their tools!”

She rose up, drawn to her full height, held her hand out and looked at

it. “I took his ring from off that finger as they slew him outside my

door,” she said passionately. “And shall my cousin Luigi bind me to

slavery with another ring?”

“Much misery has distracted you,” answered Sancia, trembling. “Yet

speak more quietly, or I, also, shall run mad.”

The fire died out of the Queen’s eyes. She sat down in a quiet silence

and let Sancia dress her hair, put gold on her neck and arms, and

fasten an ermine côtehardie over the yellow silk.

Leaning on Sancia’s arm, she came passively to the chapel at the end

of the corridor. Soldiers were gathered round the entrance, and she

looked at them strangely.

Luigi of Taranto stood by the little altar, with his hand on the

gilded rails, talking to the Legate. The light from the rose window

that glowed in overlapping petals of purple, gold, orange and Turkish

blue, fell upon his close red hair and scarlet mantle, casting a dusky

shadow behind him.

Into this glory of color, the Queen crept, holding her gown off her

shoes.

The Legate turned to her: “Is this by your full consent, my liege?” he

said, surveying her wisely through half-closed eyes.

The color slowly rose into her face. A wild thought of defying them

shook her for a moment. Yet, if she did, they would drag her before

the court at Avignon. She looked at her cousin’s quiet gray eyes, at

his clasp of the altar rails. She moistened her lips, and said

lifelessly:

“Yea.”

The chapel was full of nobles and their wives, bribed by some means to

follow the Prince of Taranto. Her mad eyes swept the circle of their

faces, then she sank on her knees on the violet cushion placed for

her.

Luigi of Taranto knelt beside her. She heard his armor strike the

flags. She looked at his hand, still clasped on the rails.

The pale notary unrolled his parchment, and commenced reading the

marriage contract between the very illustrious Luigi, Prince of

Taranto, and Giovanna d’Anjou, Queen of Naples, Jerusalem and Sicily.

This was followed by the grand almoner’s reading of the apostolical

letters (supplied on his own authority by the Legate, and yet lacking

confirmation from Avignon) of His Holiness, which sanctioned the

marriage and gave his well-beloved son and daughter his benediction.

At that, the Legate put the Queen’s hand in her cousin’s, and he

helped her to her feet as he rose himself.

“Before God and man,” Luigi said, in a strong voice, half turning,

“this is my wife.”

“And this is my husband,” Giovanna replied dully.

The gathered witnesses began leaving the chapel. Giovanna took no heed

of them. She was leaning against the wall, and, by the shimmering of

the yellow silk above her broad girdle, it might be seen how pantingly

her breath came. There were white roses on the altar, and she had

picked up one from the steps. She looked at it now, then presently

dropped it, on purpose, it seemed.

Luigi of Taranto, pausing in his conversation with the Legate,

stooped, picked up the flower, and gave it her.

She took it, moved a little forward, and dashed it in his face with

such force that the fine petals were scattered over his robe and

armor, and the stem snapped in her hand.

There were many curious eyes watching her, upright, with a white face

and furious, narrow glance, and him, gazing at her quietly and slowly,

flicking the petals from his sleeve.

Then, suddenly, she turned from his steady eyes, put out her hands,

and fell down by the wall as if an arrow had touched her heart.

“Take her away,” said the Prince.

In silence they took her up, two of the women at her head, and two of

the men at her feet.

Luigi fell into his trick of biting his forefinger as he watched her

carried out. One of the red shoes had been dropped, and he saw her

white foot against her gown, and her white face against her hair, all

stained red from the scarlet blazonry of the window.

After a little silence, he, also, left the chapel.

Without the door stood Sancia. First he passed her, but, looking back,

retraced his steps and spoke to her.

“Do you not desire, Madonna, to return to Padua?”

“I am content here,” she answered.

“Ye have been very devoted to the Queen,” he said, as if he could not

understand. “I would not keep you here when you are not of this

Kingdom. Truly there will be great fighting, and, if you will, I can

see you safely out of Naples.”

She lifted her lovely face, and fixed on him large, earnest eyes.

“What is my life to me?” she answered. “You know, I think, that I

betrayed the Queen, who was my mistress and had not harmed me--God

wot, I would a little make amends.”

“The Queen,” he said softly, “does not remember you, nor what you did.

Something I learned--from Maria, I do think,” and he looked down at

the ground, “we cannot judge one another. I--who have always known--do

not rate her the less for this”--he broke off--“nay, if you will,

depart in friendliness.”

“Let me stay,” she said.

He frowned. “Why, if you will.” He went from her heavily. At the end

of the corridor he paused and listened.

Dull, thick sounds filled the palace. He flung himself down the

stairs. Half-way, he met some running up.

“The Hungarians!” they cried.

He swept off the scarlet robe on to the stairs and shouted for his

helmet.

Steadily came the noise of the catapult and battering ram, the distant

cry of the enemy.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE.

THE BATTLE IN THE STREETS

/The/ great engines of war, dragged by straining men and horses, the

companies of heavy cavalry, blocked the streets about the Castel del

Nuovo. The drawbridge was up and above the high outer wall. The gleam

of the armed warders and the fine line of their spears might be seen

as they moved to and fro. At the side rose the high bastions that

enclosed the palace gardens, and over them waved the poplar trees,

reflected in the moat below.

All was crowned by the standard of Anjou, floating against the

cloudless blue from the highest watch tower in a flutter of gold and

white.

Ludovic of Hungary, pressing forward, raised his visor and eagerly

scanned the enemy’s ramparts. He had not brought his men as far as

this unopposed. The populace had striven, with the rude weapons of a

mob, to drive them back, and some of the nobles had made sorties upon

them as they passed; but overwhelmingly strong in numbers and arms,

the Hungarians had fought their way to the heart of the city with

little loss.

Ludovic gazed at the castle where he had spent those months of

pleasant idleness, Giovanna’s fool, and Maria’s scorn, the suitor of a

tirewoman, and the dupe of a court of knaves. His blood was up. He

vowed to bring it level with the ground, stone by stone, and hang

Luigi of Taranto over the ruins.

There was nothing now to come between Naples and his wrath. He would

lay it waste from end to end, sparing none. That great mysterious

darkness which the astrologers had declared a portent of disaster, had

passed from his mind. With the show of battle round him, it was not

possible for him to be anything but elated. Splendid with his weapons,

his horse, his swift victories over the Turks had won him the name of

“The Triumphant” even in his early youth. The thought of these days

came to him now, and nothing was good in his sight but the clangor of

arms and the unfaltering decision of the sword.

With a company of knights, he rode up to the great gates that guarded

the moat, and turning in his saddle, looked at his host gathered in

the Grand Palazzo.

As some relief from the insupportable heat of the blazing sun on the

plate armor, the gentlemen wore surcoats, mantles, and lambrequins of

cloth, silk, and even fur, while their followers, the footmen, wore on

their breasts the badge of their masters. So the whole army was a mass

of color, like a vast mosaic, upon which the sun glittered from a

purple sky, showing crests, banners, the smooth shapes of horses,

while, brown and black between their studded harness, the rude

carriages and monstrous shapes of the catapults and mortars, the

bright tufts of the arrowheads in their quivers on the backs of the

bowmen, and on all that array of scarlet and silver, embroidery and

feathers learned by Hungary from the East and at once fierce and

splendid.

The drawbridge gates were unguarded, and the castle made no sign when

the Hungarian cavalry took them at a gallop, and the engineers, under

the shouted commands of the King, began to span the moat with scaling

ladders, while some of the horsemen urged their steeds to swim the

dark water.

Without any opposition the ladders were grappled to the masonry of the

bastions, and the footmen swarmed across, a chain of eager figures.

Then from the quiet ramparts descended a stream of living fire,

boiling water, and hot stones, while from every loophole flew an

arrow.

Men and ladders fell into the moat. Shrieks and groans rose from the

invaders, and from the warders on the battlements cries of triumph. A

great movement swept through the gathered army. The mortars, belching

flame and turned full on the stubborn walls; fresh ladders were thrown

across; regardless of those writhing in the water, others flung

themselves against the castle, hurling fuses of gunpowder into the

interstices of the stone. Arrows and missiles came in a second volley;

the moat began to be full of struggling men and horses; they could not

get the battering rams near enough to use them. Konrad of Gottif

yelled with rage to see his men hurled like flies off the walls. Among

the seething confusion, he next to the King was noticeable, spurring

his horse to and fro.

Then there arose a great shout from the rear. A party of horsemen,

bearing the lilies of Anjou as their device had rushed up one of the

narrow streets and were attacking the Hungarians.

At that the castle was abandoned, and Ludovic flung himself on the new

enemy. They were too near to use the arrows, so it became a

hand-to-hand fight between the knights and lancers.

The leader of the Italians, calling on “Santa Maria,” came at Ludovic

and his band of knights, spears shivered against the uplifted shields,

crests were lopped off, mantles and surcoats rent; more than one man

fell swooning from his horse, vanquished by the weight of his armor

and the heat beating on his helm.

Many, too, were unhorsed in attempting to wheel round their cumbersome

chargers to meet the unlooked-for attack, and Hungarians trampled

their fellows down as they fell on the enemy.

From the ramparts the garrison of the castle watched, standing by the

fires, where water and stones were heated in readiness for the next

attack. For an hour the lilies strove with the eagles, and neither

side gave way, though the dead became numerous and the living faint.

It was now full noon and the heat intolerable. Ludovic struggled in a

great press of knights, and the leader of the Italians strove to get

at him through the enclosing spears.

Henryk of Belgrade dropped from his horse with a spear thrust between

the rivets of his armor. A companion of the King, unlacing his helmet

for air, had his head swept off at the bare throat, and his blood

scattered over Ludovic’s white horse.

The King ground his teeth and swung up his sword. “At the King!”

shouted the Italian to his men, and he pointed with his gold gauntlet

to Ludovic, conspicuous by the crown studded with gems on his helmet

and the peacock feathers rising high above it. The Hungarians again

rallied, again fell back, yet stubbornly, and Ludovic’s clear voice,

strained by a very fury of fighting, urged them on.

Then there was a quick sound of grinding chains, the new thunder of

hoofs, a fresh battle cry.

“St. Luigi for Anjou!”

And Luigi of Taranto, at the head of his men, made a sally over the

lowered drawbridge into the heart of the mêlée.

Wild cries of joy rose from the Italians; the Hungarians, hemmed in on

each side, turned at bay, intrepid, without a sound.

Like the huge waves, foaming with the glitter of metal, they met,

retreated with the sheer shock of the encounter, met again and

grappled.

At last Ludovic found himself face to face with the knight who had

brought up the Italians. He did not know who he was. His inlaid armor

was dented, his crest gone, his surcoat torn to rags. Through the slit

of his helmet his eyes flashed wrath, and Ludovic struck at him,

hating him exceedingly. The weapon caught the shield and sparks flew;

the King’s horse backed; the other swung his battle-ax; Ludovic caught

it on his vambrace and winced with pain. His opponent shouted, came at

him with the sword and cut the silken eagles from his breast. The

King, transported with rage, brought down his weapon on the other’s

helm.

The knight swayed for a moment, then gave a great groan. Ludovic,

rising in his stirrups, felled him with his battle-ax.

“Who are you?” he shouted, and leaning forward, he caught the falling

man by the throat and forced up his visor.

The smooth features, stained and pallid now, of Carlo di Durazzo were

revealed.

“You!” cried Ludovic. “You bought your last follies dear!”

And with that he gave him the “coup de grace” with his studded mace

and sent him with a split head backward into the moat, where the gold

armor glittered for a moment in the dark water before the waves, thick

with blood, closed over what had been Carlo di Durazzo, Duke di Duras,

prince of the blood of Anjou, cousin to the Queen, light cavalier,

shallow idler, and for a week husband of Maria d’Anjou, and a

courageous knight, showing something of the Charles Martel blood in

him, after all his softness.

Ludovic, swinging the wet mace, galloped among his men.

“The Duke di Duras is dead!” he shouted. “Up, Hungary. Serve his

cousin of Taranto so!”

A groan rose from the Italians. One had seen the Duke slain and rushed

to Luigi of Taranto with the news, and even that Prince could not

repress a sound of wrath and sorrow. More than a young knight had

fallen. The man who held Maria’s lands, his greatest folly, had died

heirless, leaving confusion.

The personal followers of Carlo now fell back disheartened, nor could

the Prince of Taranto urge them on. The Hungarians, seeing their

advantage, pressed it. The Italians began to yield. Luigi, fearful for

the castle, tried to make for the drawbridge, which he had commanded

to be left down in case of retreat; but the enemy intercepted him with

shouts of “Seize the bridge!”

A wild struggle ensued on the edge of the moat. The few men left in

the castle and the women rushed onto the ramparts and hurled down

stones and steaming water, but their missiles fell on friends as well

as enemies, and Luigi of Taranto, his arm half broken by a paving

stone flung by one of his own masons, shouted to them to desist. Above

the sounds of battle his voice was not heard, and arrows, fire, and

boiling water continued to fall on the struggling mass below.

The Prince of Taranto, holding back his curses to save his breath, but

white with passion to think that he had ever left the castle, gripping

his reins in his maimed right arm and wielding his sword with his

left, strove, as valiantly as a man may, to hold the bridge against

the rush of the Hungarians.

But Ludovic, exalted by the death of Carlo and the breaking of his

ranks which followed, cheered on his men to gigantic exertions. Horse

and foot went down before the Hungarian cavalry. The bowmen slipped in

the blood of the knights; many were flung backward into the moat. One

company of lances broke and fled.

Luigi of Taranto shouted to those within the castle to raise the

drawbridge, but they did not understand, and it never occurred to them

to cut off the sole retreat of the Italians. But Luigi was thinking of

the Queen and the treasure. If he could save them he would gladly lose

any man he possessed. Now the spirit of fury, of revenge, rose higher

in the ranks of Hungary. Konrad of Gottif had whispered “Andreas!” and

the name shuddered from knight to knight.

Imprecations on the witch, the devil, who had slain their prince,

mingled with their war cries: “Andreas! Andreas!”

And Luigi of Taranto was beaten back. Konrad of Gottif struck his

horse down. On foot among the slain, he tried to rally his men,

shouting out that the Queen was within unprotected. But her name had

no power to stir them. One even fled, saying:

“I fight no more for the devil!”

With thunderous yells of triumph, the Hungarians swept up to the

drawbridge. The King, spurring the white horse over the dead, was

galloping through when the Prince of Taranto, still surrounded by a

circle of faithful swords, leaped forward and seized the blood-stained

bridle.

“Not while I live!” he said.

Ludovic looked down at him.

“Ah, cousin,” he said, his visor was up and his hazel eyes danced

merrily, “you play the losing game!”

But Luigi of Taranto, with all his great strength, was holding back

the horse. He began to speak when Konrad of Gottif struck at him with

his battle-ax. A shriek arose from both Italian and Hungarian as the

Prince of Taranto fell back fainting among his little knot of men, and

the white charger plunged across the drawbridge, while a great wail

rose from the women on the ramparts when they saw the peacock plumes

glitter under the archway of the courtyard.

The mere handful who opposed them were struck down at once in their

furious onslaught. In the courtyard the knights flung themselves from

their horses and came running into the palace, sword in hand. The

desperate last bowshots wounded a few, but could not stop them. The

pages and grooms in the outer chambers were quickly overcome.

Headlong, with Ludovic before them, they rushed into the banqueting

hall.

And there they paused and ceased from their shouting for the Queen.

For she stood under the dais at the far wall, facing them.

Her hands were out against the woodwork either side of her, head

raised so that they could clearly see the hollow lines of her cheeks

and the sweep of her long throat. Her ermine côtehardie was all

unbuttoned over the yellow silk as if she had stifled in the heat or

torn it in fright, her lips were strained, her eyes shadowed

underneath; but she looked at them dauntlessly, and they saw she had a

great sword fastened to her side. “Ah!” she said. “Hungary! Ludovic of

Hungary! Come ye this time in love or war?” The light flickered down

moving swords.

Ludovic made a step forward, then reeled back. “Make her prisoner,” he

said. “I am sick from the sun.”

CHAPTER THIRTY.

THE CHAMBER OF THE SCARLET TAPESTRY

/The/ sun that had beaten down all day on the desolate streets of

Naples was now fading in violet and rose-hued clouds above the vast

glittering bay.

For twenty-four hours there had been a truce between Italy and

Hungary, but the spirit of the splendid capital was broken. The Queen

was a prisoner, Luigi of Taranto, holding the Castel del Durazzo with

a mere handful of men; Carlo di Duras, always the favorite of the

crowd, slain; and a foreign army, flushed with success, quartered in

their midst. During the great darkness the fire had destroyed a large

portion of the city, other dwellings had been sacked by the

Hungarians, and the streets were full of dead and homeless. Appeals

were made to the Legate, who had allied himself with the Queen’s

husband, but he was helpless before an enemy that did not tremble at

the name of Avignon. So all was chaos, misery, and confusion. The

splendid town, with the unburied dead in its beautiful villas, and the

ruined wandering helplessly in its fair gardens, seemed to be

accursed, even as the astrologers had foretold from the great

darkness.

And all men looked to Ludovic of Hungary.

He had taken up his residence in the Palazzo del Obo, the town

dwelling of the noble family of Perlucchi, who had abandoned it to

flee to their fortress without the walls, and all day had heard

deputations from the Legate, from the people, from the Prince of

Taranto; all admitting this--that he was master of the Kingdom of

Naples.

Now, in the cool of the day, he sat alone and stared through the great

windows at the wretched city.

His mood was not one of exaltation or triumph. He had no pride in his

position; rather did he feel unsatisfied and conscious of a certain

ghastliness in the grandeur about him, a certain horror in the means

by which he had obtained his victory.

Too often for his ease did he picture Carlo’s gold armor sinking

beneath the slime of the moat and Giovanna’s mad face as they brought

her to the Castel del Obo.

He was the conqueror. He held Naples and would hold it. Christendom

had no longer cause to laugh at him, and even his mother could not ask

for more blood than this to avenge Andreas, yet his soul was troubled

and bitter.

And he had yet to deal with the Queen.

The room in which he sat was a magnificent chamber of white and black

marble, lofty, spacious, and hung with red and gold tapestries. From

the ceiling hung a gilt and crystal lamp. Rich Eastern embroideries,

looped back from the tall windows, admitted the evening air. In the

center of the room was a table of colored mosaic heaped with

documents, armor, and weapons. To Ludovic the place was strangely

familiar and strangely distasteful, though it was utterly unknown to

him and utterly splendid.

The Persian carpets on the tessellated floor, the painted ceiling, the

carved and gorgeous furniture, seemed to him, in an unaccountable

manner, like the setting for some ghastly and awful dream.

The tapestries were worked with unicorns and monsters supporting the

arms of the Perlucchi family, and as the silk flapped in the breeze,

the gold threads sparkled as if they took life. Ludovic went to the

table, struggling with that feeling of oppression, apprehension, and

seated himself in the somber splendors of a vast cushioned chair. It

was feverishly hot and very silent. The sense that the usual life of

the city had stopped utterly, increased the King’s sense of dread. He

watched the sky flaring into the mercilessly brazen purple of the

stifling Italian night, and he thought of the dead lying in the

streets and the living sleeping among them, of the dismantled castle

and the ruined gardens.

The horror of destruction, the bitterness of roofless homes, of

weed-grown hearths and broken stairways, of dusty bedchambers, of

statues flung down and bramble-grown moats, made him shudder. What

horror is like the horror of desolation? Life is in itself so

beautiful that no sin is black enough, no misery deep enough, utterly

to destroy the joy of it. The end of life is the one hideous thing,

the falling into decay of the fair things it made for itself the one

thing unbearable. So Ludovic thought, sitting alone in his stolen

palace overlooking the slain city.

What did it matter that the Queen was a murderess and the court a set

of knaves, so long as the people would sing and dance, work and be

merry? He would have had it now as it was when he first came to

Naples… Judgment!--who was he or any of them to sit in judgment? Let

them live and, if they would, laugh--it was all God asked of them.

Through the sultry dusk a little song rose, chanted to the strumming

notes of a theorbo. Very distinctly Ludovic could hear the words:

We brought her to his father’s door--

Ilaria!

He rode behind and I before,

He loved her well, I loved her more.

Oh, Beppo’s bride, Ilaria!

The King went to the window and looked out, leaning from the marble

sill. Down in the white of the garden walks and the deep green of the

foliage he could see the dwarf with a shining striped theorbo in his

hands, and at his feet a girl wrapped in a crimson shawl.

The wedding feast was richly spread,

Ilaria!

I wove the chaplet for her head,

Of snowy roses mixed with red,

Oh, Beppo’s bride, Ilaria!

Thrum, thrum went the theorbo, and such light as was left in the

heavens gathered itself into great stars. Ludovic put his hands over

his eyes. On a faster note came the next verse:

He who would fly must aspire,

Ilaria!

I saw my goblet filled with fire,

And drunk it to my heart’s desire,

Beppo’s bride, Ilaria!

Thrum, thrum, and a circle of fireflies rose about the laurels.

Ludovic moved from the window and began walking up and down the room;

still he could not escape the song:

She leant from out her carved chair,

Ilaria!

I saw it glitter in her hair,

A dagger in a silken snare--

Oh, Beppo’s bride, Ilaria!

In her room we kissed farewell,

Ilaria!

What she said I cannot tell,

I heard the convent’s bitter bell,

Oh, Beppo’s bride, Ilaria!

The sound of the theorbo stopped. A little laughter and a pause, while

the singer bent over a snapped string; then the girl’s voice taking up

the tune:

What I said I do not know,

Ilaria!

Against her cheek my cheek did glow,

He softly came and found us so,

Beppo’s bride, Ilaria!

The softer sob of the viol rose, and the sound of the clanking armor

of soldiers gathered round to hear the sweet Italian melody. Ludovic,

pacing to and fro in the magnificent black and white chamber, could

not choose but listen also.

“Since ye two love”--he raised his head,

Ilaria!

“God wot that I might strike you dead,

But I have other ways,” he said,

Beppo’s bride, Ilaria!

I fought as well as well might be,

Ilaria!

But his men were forty-three;

Against the wall they pinioned me,

Oh, Beppo’s bride, Ilaria!

Ludovic sat down by the table and rang a gold hand bell, and watched

while the crystal lamp was lit.

Her sweet hands, white and small,

Ilaria!

They held with mine against the wall;

Without I heard the revelers call,

“Beppo’s bride, Ilaria!”

Zither, theorbo, and viol rose together:

He took his dagger from his thigh,

Ilaria!

I heard her give a little sigh,

And prayed to God to let her die--

Beppo’s bride, Ilaria!

Ludovic looked at the golden monsters on the scarlet tapestry,

flapping on the black and white walls, and hated the place, shuddering

in himself.

He thrust our two hands through,

Ilaria!

So hang ye in the public view

That all may know this thing is true,

Beppo’s bride, Ilaria!

A little savage, exulting laugh broke the song, then the wail of the

viol.

So pinned my hand to her soft palm,

Ilaria!

I felt the blood run down my arm,

But her face was still and calm,

Oh, Beppo’s bride, Ilaria!

The King turned heavily to the squire. “Bring my barons to me here,

and--the Queen.”

He set her gently on my knee,

Ilaria!

Now do you look most lovingly

And I will call the town to see,

Beppo’s bride, Ilaria!

Now will I shame your wanton face,

Ilaria!

And bring your kinsfolk to this place:

That they may see their own disgrace,

Beppo’s bride, Ilaria!

The squire had left the room. Ludovic paced up and down, up and down

under the shining lamp, while over the miserable city rose the dwarf’s

song with its strumming melody:

And then he left us to our woe,

Ilaria!

I cursed him as I saw him go,

Pray that death be swift and he be slow,

Beppo’s bride, Ilaria!

Now the girl’s voice rose, intense and delicate:

Round my neck her free arm slid,

Ilaria!

“A dagger in my hair is hid,

A weapon in my curls amid--”

Beppo’s bride, Ilaria!

Ere this devil comes again,

Ilaria!

You be free and I be slain,

Fear not for my sudden pain--

Oh, Beppo’s bride, Ilaria!

Up and down paced Ludovic of Hungary, up and down with troubled

thoughts.

So, her mouth unto my ear,

Ilaria!

“What is it that I fear?

Save that they should find me here?”

Oh, Beppo’s bride, Ilaria!

I cut my fingers from the wall,

Ilaria!

And for fear the blood should fall,

Swathed them in her silken shawl,

Beppo’s bride, Ilaria!

In lower notes the girl and the viol sang:

Leave no blood drops on the floor,

Ilaria!

Creep without my chamber door

So he can taunt no more,

Beppo’s bride, Ilaria!

When he comes I shall have died,

Ilaria!

My brethren will say he lied,

Swift as the wind to Milan ride,

Oh, Beppo’s bride, Ilaria!

The dwarf and the theorbo took it up:

Yet alone I cannot go,

Ilaria!

By God, I will not leave thee so,

To make his rabble lords a show,

Beppo’s bride, Ilaria!

The viol again rose sobbing:

Alas, my love, ye cannot free

Ilaria!

For he hath thrust most skilfully,

And by the palm fastened me,

Beppo’s bride, Ilaria!

Straightway in the gloom we kissed

Ilaria!

My dagger rose and smote her wrist,

I saw her body writhe and twist,

Oh, Beppo’s bride, Ilaria!

“Oh, love,” she said, “the anguish sore,”

Ilaria!…

I lifted her from off the floor,

She never spoke or kissed me more,

Beppo’s bride, Ilaria.

The King sank down in his old place by the table. He heard approaching

footsteps.

Then for her sake I went away,

Ilaria!

And rode all night and rode all day,

Too dead at heart to curse or pray,

Oh, Beppo’s bride, Ilaria!

I raised my standard through the land,

Ilaria!

I swore by her dear severed hand

His cursed castle should not stand,

Oh, Beppo’s wife, Ilaria!

The magnificent doors opened and the King’s splendid nobles entered.

The stir they made in the chamber drowned the song, and the King

roused himself to speak to them. Close behind them was the clatter of

the guard.

“She comes!” said Konrad of Gottif.

“Who?” demanded Ludovic with a strange start.

“This woman who was queen, this Giovanna.”

Black and white, gold and scarlet, swirled for a moment before the

King’s eyes, then his vision cleared to see her standing in the

doorway with her guard either side.

Her ermine côtehardie was buttoned close to the throat, her hair

neatly dressed, her hands tied together in front of her with a fine

silk cord. Thinking of her in her palace, in the hunt, in the masque

and the council, always regal, splendid, an extraordinary feeling

caught his heart to see her a bound prisoner.

“Did I bid ye manacle her?” he demanded, and pushed the heavy black

hair off his eyes.

“Good, my liege, she is dangerous with her hands,” answered Konrad of

Gottif.

“Her little hands!” muttered Ludovic. He frowned at her guards, yet

neither offered her a seat nor rose himself.

She was looking past him in an abstracted way at the square of sky

shown in the high window, and the fine tendrils of her hair trembled

on her hollow cheeks and cast shadows faintly on her long throat.

The King leaned from his chair. The lamplight cast depths of purple

over his violet robe. His face showed clear cut, heavily outlined by

the shadows.

“Giovanna!” he said.

She turned her face to him calmly.

“Ah, you,” she said, in that way she had of late, as if she recognized

people with an effort and was perplexed at seeing them.

“Yes, I,” he answered. “What do you think I will do with you,

Giovanna?”

“Why,” she said, “I suppose I am to die.” She smiled suddenly. “Do you

see the bruise on my cheek, Ludovic, where you cast me down?” She

turned her head round, showing a stain on the smooth flesh where the

sharp line of her chin swept into her throat. “Where you kissed me

when I was queen.”

He sprang up, his haggard face flushed painfully.

“Her mind is gone,” said one softly. “She speaks, not knowing what she

says.”

The King spoke, standing by his chair and facing her.

“Madonna, I have heard from your husband.”

“My husband is in Santa Chiara,” she answered quickly.

“Not he, Madonna, but Luigi of Taranto, at the Palazzo di Durazzo.”

“My cousin Luigi,” murmured Giovanna, and her brows gathered in a

bewildered manner.

“Yea,” answered Ludovic thickly, “and he still finds you worth

somewhat. He will leave Naples and retire to Provence if I will give

you back to him.”

In the pause that followed, he set his lips together, while he stared

at her intently, and his barons glanced from one to another in

silence.

Giovanna of Naples looked nowhere. Her great eyes were blank, her lips

lightly parted. The insistent strum of the theorbo sounded without,

and her little foot beat time to it.

“Giovanna!” he said at last. “I am going to send you to your husband.”

There was a movement among the men behind him. Ludovic, feeling it,

half swung round upon them.

“Here I stand no interference!” he cried. “Good lords, this is a

matter of mine.”

But Konrad of Gottif could not repress a bitter sneer. “So ye

vowed--the sword shall decide. Is this how, Ludovic of Hungary?”

“Yea,” said the King gravely, “this is how.” He drew the slender

weapon that he wore and came a little toward her. He remembered how

she had kissed his sword once while he held it, two carnations of hers

at his breast, and he trembled as he approached her.

“Hold out your hands,” he commanded. She obeyed with a little look of

wonder, of patience. He severed the cords with the sword edge, and, as

she shook her hands free, stepped back to his place. “Now you are

free--get you to your second husband, my cousin,” he said heavily.

“You,” he spoke to the captain of the guard, “see her there, and see

this Prince on board the galley for Provence.”

A noble beside the King spoke: “Ye give him a vast advantage in her.

Think ye he will be quiet in Provence?”

“God knows,” answered Ludovic wearily. “Let him reign or live--or

die--in Provence. I care not.” He watched her as she turned slowly to

the door, rubbing her wrists and looking at them with vacant eyes.

It seemed as if she would leave as she had come, with neither word nor

action to express either fear or courage, remorse or effrontery. But

quite suddenly she stopped, dropped her hands by her side, raised her

head and looked at the King, not blankly now, but with eyes of intense

meaning.

“Ludovic!” she said. “Ludovic!”

At the sound of her voice they all started as if another woman had

entered and spoken while they were unawares.

Giovanna still gazed at the King, her whole face and body intent with

some effort of her poor brain at recollection, expression.

“I--want--to say something I did not think of.” She whispered, she put

her hand to her forehead. The concentration in her eyes was painful.

A sense of horror seemed to have curled her mouth and contracted her

brows into the likeness of a tragic mask.

Then gradually this expression faded. Her hand fell heavily against

her gown. She shook her head. “I have forgotten,” she murmured

vaguely, and moved slowly away.

So she passed from them, the soldiers behind her, and not until the

last echo of their footsteps had long died away, did any stir or

speak. Then the nobles began to move.

“A hot night,” said one.

“Mass yes. Where shall we sup?”

Ludovic looked up at the speaker. “I? Here to-night. My head is

wonderfully heavy.”

“Curse this Italian weather. It kills more men than a month’s warfare.

And they say the next thing will be drought and famine!”

The King rose.

“Marko,” he said to the last speaker, “have you yet heard of the lady

I asked you of, the Queen’s tirewoman?”

“Good liege, no. Somehow she escaped the palace when we sacked it. At

least, I have questioned many, and none knows of her. ’Tis likely she

would flee to Madonna Maria.”

Ludovic turned away.

“I shall call a council in the morning,” he announced abruptly. “It

will be needful to win the legate--anon we will speak of it. Sirs,

good-night.”

“My lord, good-night.”

They left the chamber, their mail clattering on the marble. As Konrad

of Gottif passed him, the King spoke:

“Will you sup with me to-night?”

“I am too rough company, my lord--and too out of humor.”

Ludovic flushed and kept silence. When the last had gone, the very

essence of silence prevailed in the vast room. The King sat very

still, tracing with absorbed eyes the forms of the monstrous beasts on

the scarlet tapestry.

Did they scorn him, his lords, for weak clemency? He told himself he

was above their censure. Yet their silence, and Konrad of Gottif’s

words, rankled in his heart. It was hot, ah, so hot. He loathed Italy

and this chamber--what had ever happened in the Perlucchi Palace that

he should hate it so? What was going to happen?

He longed intensely for the day, though the clypsidera fastened

against the wall told him it was not yet eight in the evening.

Presently squires and pages entered with his supper, served with that

rich elegance that had always been one of the charms to hold him to

Italy. But to-night the splendor of the gilded silver and painted

glass seemed foreign things.

He sent them all away, locked the door on them, and sat down by the

table. The food he could not touch. He drank one glass of the fine red

wine. Then some fancied sound caused him to start, and his violet

sleeve caught the bottle and cast it on the marble. He sprang up,

unaccountably agitated, and stared at the deep stains running over the

black and white floor.

“What is the matter with me?” he asked himself, walking about. He

wished now he had kept some company to pass the intolerable hours.

Pausing, he stared at the door, picturing Giovanna passing out in the

patience of forgetfulness; then he thought of Maria, waiting for

Carlo--waiting, while the bloody slime of the moat tarnished the gold

armor.

With an effort at composure, he crossed to the bedchamber adjoining

the apartment. It opened by wide windows onto the street, and was

filled with the shine of the moon and stars. Ludovic could discern the

vast outlines of the bed, hung with armorial bearings, silver tassels

glittering on the satin baldaquin.

With an imprecation on the heat, the King flung off his violet

houppeland, and, with a sigh of relief, stretched himself in his

undergarment of close mauve velvet, that was laced with black over his

white shirt. The moonlight cast intense shadows about the room.

Ludovic went to the window and looked out into the street. He could

see the spears of his guards gleam as they walked to and fro outside

the palace doors. For the rest, it was very quiet; so still that not

even the trees quivered beneath the burning purple sky, throbbing with

stars.

After awhile he left the window and crossed to the outer chamber to

search for a light.

“What is the matter with me?” he said again, seeing how his hand was

shaking.

Then he turned round, suddenly and quietly, as if some one had called

him. Yet there was silence in the chamber.

In the doorway of the bedroom stood Sancia di Renato in a

citron-colored gown.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE.

THE SWORD DECIDES!

/He/ thought that she had died somewhere in the miserable city, and

this pale appearance had come to tell him so.

She crossed the floor in a quick silence. A hazy veil of the hue of a

turkis was bound in her faint hair and floated about her as she

walked.

She came to where he stood, dumbly, and put her hands on his

shoulders. As she touched him, he knew she lived, and an extraordinary

joy made his eyes sparkle.

Sancia sighed. A spell of wonder was over them--absorbed in the marvel

of each other. They could not speak. Then he took her hands from his

shoulders and clasped them in his own.

“We meet strangely,” he said, in a shaking voice, and she:

“Did you think of this?”

“I did not dare! I thought--ah, no matter.”

“I had to come. I have been walking the streets all day--thinking of

it. I had to come.”

“Sancia! Sweet--my sweet!” he cried.

“You understand--I was in the Palazzo di Durazzo last night. I saw

them bring Carlo home--and then--what was I saying? When you look at

me I cannot think… Nothing mattered… save that I should come to you.”

“I have searched for you, Sancia. How strange it is! When I saw you I

thought you were dead----”

So their low, broken thought trembled in the stillness it scarcely

disturbed, and the forgotten taper he had lit flared among the

untouched supper things on the table. At last he let go of her, and

she sank in the chair.

“My feeling for you,” she said, “hurts my heart--exceedingly.”

She clasped her hands over the citron gown.

“Tell me you have thought of me.”

“Yes--yes.”

Leaning on the back of her chair, he stared down at her loveliness. It

seemed as if her coming were a blaze of crystal light on many

things--on everything. All the strange thoughts that had distracted

him before she came had fled like a dance of shadows--he could not

even recall them.

“I have been sick and weary,” she whispered, “but now I am healed.

Look at me--never cease to look at me. Am I changed? My soul is

different. I have been walking among the dead.”

“Sancia… I thought you hated me now… I did not dream of--this!”

Her blue eyes glowed with an intense animation. “Do you remember--in

the library? I lied--you must have known it. Beyond all words

I--you--it was always you. Listen!” She put up her hands and clung to

his sleeve. “I was a fool--I tried to forget--to serve the queen and

be virtuous like Maria. But I have come to you--I will stay with you

until you are weary of me--then I will go away and die.”

“Sancia, you will do that? You could leave your people for me?” In a

wondering way, he looked into her trembling face. A long breath shook

her.

“Give me leave to be near you,” she cried, with her heart panting on

her lips. “Let me follow you, and I will clothe me as your foot-boy,

take such food as your varlets eat, such shelter as your horses

have----”

He was silent, shamed by a passion that so far outshone his own

feelings. Yet he loved her; he told himself that certainly he loved

her. But a curious giddiness was beating in his head, a shiver like

fever was in his blood, making his manner strange. He wondered vaguely

if he were sick, or if her presence had excited him into bewilderment.

“The fairest face in Italy!” he said. “Will you come with me to

Hungary if I go?”

“To the world’s end,” she answered.

“Will you stay with me in Naples if I stay?”

“Yea, and dance upon graves and sing above the dying, so you will

smile--Ludovic! Ludovic! Ludovic----”

He seated himself opposite her at the table, and gazed across with a

fiery brightness in his hazel eyes.

“The dying! We will revel it in this city, my Sancia!” he said gayly.

“You and I--and you love me! By God’s truth, it is a fine thing to be

loved. My soul, but you are beautiful. Will you sup with me to-night?”

She laughed suddenly, in a weak way.

“I have not eaten since morning.” Then her mood flashed swiftly into

mirth. “I might be seated on a star, I feel so high above the earth.”

She leaned on the table, resting her two fair hands among the glass

and silver. In an impassioned gayety, she related how she had found

where he was, how she had taken the robe from a dead monk and, hidden

under it, had crept into the Perlucchi Palace, found her way to his

bedchamber, and lain concealed there until he was alone.

Her sudden joyous spirits infected the King. He found himself laughing

in sheer elation of heart, as if this were a well-planned frolic her

wit had achieved. The wild delight of stolen pleasure touched him. He

crossed to her and kissed her on the forehead, where the pale hair

rippled, on her ardent mouth. He thought her brow was hot, her lips

feverish. Was not his own head reeling, his limbs on fire.

He swore by all he knew he loved her. Swore in a wild, half-defiant

way--drew his chair beside hers.

Was it fancy that he staggered as he seated himself? She, at least,

did not notice it. “This is the end of it!” he cried. “I will build

another Naples--a sunny city on the sea--and of these old miseries,

Sancia, we will make tales to spice our pleasures!”

He blew out the taper. She laughed, as if her mood flung words aside

as useless things. She did not appear to know or care where she was,

only that she stared at him over a glitter of glass and gold.

But to Ludovic the details of his surroundings were the real things.

Her coming, her passionate statements of her motives, her very

presence, were unreal, clouded. He could not bring his mind to

comprehend them, for he was living only in the moment, and in some

tattered recollections the monstrous beasts on the scarlet tapestry,

the straight lines of the windows, and the vast stars beyond them, the

dark square of the door opening into the bedchamber, the band of

seed-pearls that edged Sancia’s gown where it lay round her throat;

her foot, in its dusty little shoe, resting on the black and white

marble--these held his attention. He set food on her plate, and she

eat a little. He looked down at the spilt wine, and opened another

bottle. A great desire to laugh and talk was upon him. Speech was a

means to drug thought he could not pause to understand. The wine

shivered from side to side of the crystal as he held up the glass.

“To my new Naples!” he cried.

They both drank. Then he was kissing her hands, and they laughed

together.

“Listen!” he said. “I let the Queen go--I wanted no more blood.”

“I am glad,” answered Sancia.

“Yea, you understand!” His eyes were ardent. “We shall be happy--what

does anything matter if one may have peace to laugh and sing in? Yet I

have killed men in my time.” His black brows frowned. “What did Maria

say when they brought Carlo home?” He stared into his wine glass as if

he saw his cousin’s death mirrored there.

“They brought him to the chapel,” answered Sancia, “where the Duchess

waited--the green weed was over his breast and the water dripped from

him onto the floor. She closed his visor. ‘I am grieved there is none

save I to sorrow for him,’ she said, ‘for he died like a knight.’ The

hard-faced Prince of Taranto was beside her, and he answered: ‘No one

can be mourned unworthily who has your tender thoughts, Madonna!’”

“Would I had slain him instead!” cried Ludovic. “I never loved him!

Many a festival has his heavy face marred. But no more of this--I have

golden thoughts of the future--ah, love of mine, golden thoughts

indeed!”

He filled his glass again, and hers. There was heaped-up fruit in a

mother o’ pearl and silver dish, lustrous grapes, bloomy peaches and

golden apples. He turned them into her lap, smiling.

She picked up a bunch of grapes and gazed at it. He was watching her

with enthralled eyes.

“Of late,” she said, “I have had visions of curious and beautiful

things: women with roses pressed into their hair, ivory lutes and

wonderful crimson birds, marble walks set with tangles of lilies, the

bay at sunset, when the sails of the boats are all stained gold;

gilded crowns and lordly armor, wrought at Milan--even as I wandered

through the deserted city, I had visions of these things.”

The grapes fell from her fingers onto the floor, fell on the dried

wine stain. She put her hand to her eyes.

“My head feels strange to-day.”

The King’s great eyes glowed with a kind of horror.

“You are weary, my heart,” he said wildly. “I, also----”

A silence fell on both. They sat up and touched hands across the

table. As their fingers intertwined, each shuddered at the other’s

burning flesh. Sancia looked slowly and fearfully round the chamber.

The scarlet arras shuddered a little on the marble walls. Her clasp of

the King’s fingers grew tighter.

“Ludovic,” she said in a toneless voice, “what is the matter with this

place?”

Ludovic shivered.

“Why, I might have spared Carlo,” he muttered. “It is hideous to die

so young, and unshriven--unshriven!”

Their eyes met. “What did you speak of?” she asked.

“I? Nothing--and you?”

Hollowly she answered, “Nothing.”

For all the heat, a little breeze had risen. It stirred the fair hair

back from Sancia’s cheek and fluttered the edges of the long lace

cloth.

Ludovic roused himself with a great laugh. “By God’s death, we are

very somber! One was playing without--thrum, thrum--on a theorbo.”

He unlocked his fingers from hers and rose. The mauve hue of his tight

velvet habit showed the flush on his swarthy face in a notable manner.

Sancia, fallen back in her chair, watched him. The wick of the lamp

was fluttering in the breeze, and cast a dancing shadow about him as

he moved to the corner and took a theorbo of ebony and ivory from the

wall. The water clock said midnight. After all, the hours had fled

quickly.

Laughing, Ludovic of Hungary set one foot on his chair, and commenced

playing:

Death, in vair and velvet

(Hush, for the dancers have fallen asleep),

Sang in the halls of mirth,

And the tall and noble ladies

Were still in the halls of mirth.

(There was no time for kisses and no time to weep.)

“Why do you sing that?” cried Sancia passionately. “Ludovic, sing to

me of love!”

Had not his gay singing and his skill with music won her first? But

not this song----

But the King fixed his eyes on her and continued in his wonderful,

soft voice:

Death, masked in satin

(Hush, for the dancers have fallen asleep),

Played the reveler’s tune,

And the young and slender courtiers

Heard not the reveler’s tune.

(There was no time for kisses and no time to weep.)

Death, all gold and splendid

(Hush, for the dancers have fallen asleep),

Sang in the King’s ear,

And the gay and mighty monarch

Heard not the song in his ear.

(There was no time for laughter and no time to weep.)

“Come to me,” whispered Sancia. Her voice shuddered through the pause

on the ceasing of the song. The King dropped the theorbo onto the

chair and came to her.

They clung together a minute. Then she spoke: “What is the matter with

the place?”

“Santa Maria, Santa Maria!” muttered the King.

Silence again enwrapped them. She loosened herself from his arms.

“Hush!”

“What did you hear?” he asked.

“Horses--in the distance.”

“Who should be abroad to-night?”

“Who? Who? I fancied it. This time is ours--yours and mine. Look at

me! Speak to me! Hold me!”

This time it was the King who said, “Hush!”

He spoke thickly, as if his tongue were swollen, and his eyes stared

over her shoulder.

“There is--something in the bedroom!”

She shrank against him.

“You are ill! Jesu! Your brow is hot!” She shuddered. “You fancied

it.”

“Look!” he said.

She turned her head and stared into the shadows of the bedchamber. His

swarthy fingers gripped her white wrist, but she did not feel it.

“What do you see?” His voice was so roughened she could hardly hear.

“A man!” she muttered. “I see a man moving about. He moves very

softly. I--I do not hear his footfalls.”

“Do you see what he wears?” whispered Ludovic, “now--as he passes the

moonlight!”

“Rose and white hose,” she answered. “But I cannot see his face…”

Ludovic cried out in a great burst of agony: “He has no face. Did they

not mutilate him? Andreas!”

“Why, you are mad!” shrieked Sancia. “It was not there--the thing is

gone. There is nothing--nothing but the moonlight and the shadow from

the bed----”

Quivering from head to foot, he set her from him and sank into a

chair.

“This a cursed place,” he muttered. “I--but you, also, saw it!”

“No,” she said staunchly. “No--I fancied it. Why should he come to

you?”

“I have not avenged him!”

She was down on her knees beside him, in a glory of passion, of beauty

transfigured, of strength and courage. “You shall not think of these

things to-night--but of me! Not of the dead, but of me--not of the

past, but of me! Am I not fair enough to beguile you from these

miseries?”

She fired him.

“Yes--yes!” He leaned from the chair and caught her up to him. With a

sound of triumph, of joy, she laid her face against his.

Then--even in the midst of their kiss, she thrust him off and stood

erect, with an awful change in her face.

“What is the matter with me to-night?” she said. She tried to laugh.

The citron gown was heaving painfully over her breast. She snatched up

the untasted glass of wine Ludovic had left.

“To drink!” she said thickly. “To our happiness!” She endeavored to

put it to her lips, but spilled it over her bosom.

“Sancia!” shrieked Ludovic.

Her face was awful. Even as he stared at her she half turned round in

a grotesque fashion, as if she were commencing to dance, then fell

backwards.

Her head, with its cloud of hair unloosened, struck the chair and

theorbo. There was a jangle of the strings, and she lay at his feet…

He looked down at her face staring up at him. For some seconds he

could not believe she was there. He thought it some vision of a

distracted brain--that she should have risen from his embrace to drop

as if an arrow had touched her heart.

He went on his knees beside her. He lifted her up, and the soft blond

hair entangled in his fingers. The lines of the little song he had

sung:

And the tall and noble ladies

Were still in the halls of mirth.

(There was no time for kisses and no time to weep),

ran in his head foolishly.

She was quite dead.

Love, life and passion had been extinguished in her eyes as a little

candle before a vast wind. He thought of their devilish Italian

poisons. Could anything else have slain her so swiftly? Then he swore

aloud that she was not dead and must not die!

With eager fingers he tore her bodice open to feel her heart. Silk and

linen ripped under his hand.

He rose--sobered by the shock of sudden knowledge. The fantasies

cleared from his brain. He backed from Sancia to the farthest wall,

and, with pale lips, shaped a ghastly whisper:

“The Plague!”

On her white bosom were the black marks. It had been in her veins all

the evening. The Black Death was abroad in the city! The robe from the

dead monk! His brain worked quickly; he saw it clearly. Her

excitement, her hot lips, her aching head--the Plague was abroad in

Naples--the Black Death--the Mortality!

And now a wild horror of the infection seized him. It was the most

terrible thing men knew--the Black Death. And he was shut up with it!

For awhile he beat on the door. Then a new thought held him icy still.

It was also the secret of his reeling head, his distorted vision. He,

also, was infected. His death was a matter of moments.

So it was for this tragedy the scene had been set. This was the horror

that had lurked in the splendid chamber--the black and white, the

scarlet and gold.

To die young and unshriven! Yet not as Carlo, in the press of battle,

but in the lonely night, with this dead woman for company.

He pressed his face against the cold marble wall, and thought on such

stories of the Plague as he had heard: how some died suddenly, some

slowly. How some felt it so little that they fell silent in the midst

of laughter. How to others it was a long agony--and always a thing

beyond man’s understanding or cure.

This was what the great darkness had predicted--the Plague! the

Plague!

His thoughts began to lose coherence. He paced up and down in a very

torment of fear, incapable of speech or action; knowing only that he

would sooner have died in the streets than amid this awful grandeur.

The water clock was at one. He stopped by the body of Sancia. How long

since she had come breathing love, but hand in hand with Death? How

long since she had kissed him with Death’s kiss on her lips?

Oh, future glorious indeed! Who would revel now over the dead and

dying? Who would laugh over ruined Naples? Not these two, at

least--since from the conquered city this horror had arisen to

vanquish the victor! Ludovic the Triumphant, they had named him. It

was a mockery now. Who was triumphant to-night? Neither Hungary nor

Italy.

Outside the stars shone over the pointed dark poplars. He found

himself wondering what this dawn would be like--this dawn he should

never see? He felt himself weakening, and sank into the chair by the

table, his fingers in his hair. All his youth, his beauty, his wealth,

his rank, now--for life--yea, for life such as his footboy

enjoyed--for life such as a beggar had who wailed in the streets of

Buda!

The strum of zither and theorbo rose suddenly. Some wordless song

struck the stillness. The stars were dancing in the heavens, and the

great beasts on the arras began to move. Ludovic sat still, with

starting eyes, while around him the stillness broke into a devil’s

pageant of noise and color. Keeping time to the music was the sound of

galloping horses and meeting spears, and banners tearing against the

wind.

The monsters were out of the tapestry, and gold and glittering, they

crept over the tessellated floor.

Thrum, thrum, and nameless things were dancing to the shrill melody.

The harsh, metallic clang of cymbals strove against the steady march

of eager drums. Voices rose, shrieking, shouting--some near, some far

away.

Sancia sprang up from the floor and commenced dancing; her hair, in a

spreading cloud, filled the chamber. She wore red shoes, and they

shone in and out of her citron gown.

An uncontrollable excitement seized Ludovic. He sprang up and shrieked

to the circle spinning round in a swirl of screaming color. The upward

lift of the battle cries became intenser. Then someone shrieked:

“The Plague! the Plague! The King and the King’s love are stricken!”

Ludovic drew his sword. The door was flung open. Mailed men rushed in

and out again. Thrum, thrum, went the theorbo. “Sancia!” cried

Ludovic, and tried to catch her as she passed. Then the wild melody

ceased, the dancers disappeared like smoke. A man came from the

bedchamber door toward the King. He wore rose and white hose, and a

mask was on his face. The sounds of battle and of dancing rose,

unbearable and harsh, with a steady beat. The man took off his mask,

and where his face should have been, should have been the face of

Andreas.

The King sprang from the table. He strove to cut his way through the

yelling rabble, but they closed on him. Sancia’s arms twisted round

his neck. Andreas turned his faceless face as she dragged him down.

“Giovanna!” shrieked Ludovic. He leaped to the door, pulled it open.

The darkness of the stairway smote him like a blow. The delirium

cleared from his brain. He looked back over his shoulder and saw

Sancia, a dead woman, on the wine-stained pavement, some unfelt breeze

from some unseen window fluttering the citron silk on her still limbs,

the fallen fruit lying near her soft, blond, scattered hair.

“Konrad!” he cried. He put his hand to his sword, and leaned over the

marble banister. His terror-stricken voice echoed through the lofty

palace, and distant shouting answered.

Unhelmed, unarmed, Ludovic of Hungary ran down the stairs; then, where

they turned, he halted. A man was running up them.

The newcomer carried a great torch, that flamed across the King’s

vision, and caused him to cry out with the bright pain of it, and to

shrink back against the wall.

“Who are you?” shouted the other, not seeing him for the trailing fire

and smoke of the torch.

“The King!” answered Ludovic. Then he added the one word that was the

key to the wild horror of it all: “The Plague!”

Konrad of Gottif swung the flambeau above his head and stared into the

King’s face.

“And Luigi of Taranto!” he cried. “The Neapolitans have risen.”

“The Queen?”

“Yea, by God Almighty, that witch is with them, Ludovic of Hungary.”

“And up above there is the Plague!” The King put his hand on Konrad’s

breastplate, where the hungry flame was reflected, and thrust him

back. “Let me pass. By all the saints, sooner Luigi of Taranto than

the Plague. Let me pass!”

“Who is up above?” cried Konrad of Gottif, flinging up the torch. The

streaming light showed a reddened sweep of marble walls. The King,

leaning against them in his velvet undress, showed the one who carried

it hard faced in ruddied armor.

“The Plague!” shrieked Ludovic. “The Plague is in Naples! Get me a

horse--a shield!” He broke past Konrad, and dashed down the stairs,

the other after him, clattering in his heavy mail.

In the splendid entrance hall cross lights shook and gleamed,

interchanging with lurking shadows in the folds of the sumptuous

tapestry, and round the figures of the assembled warriors. The great

doors were open, and beyond them the burning night swooned with a

regal dawn above the gorgeous, languorous garden. Through the dark

masses of the poplars and cypresses the last stars blazed.

Ludovic came into the midst of them, staggering like a sick man.

“God’s curse upon this Italy!” he said. “Hungarians, we ride home

to-night!”

Amidst the clamor and the hurrying to and fro they armed him, and as

they buckled the straps and fastened the rivets, he shouted to them to

make haste--make haste! They did not need his words. The Plague,

invisible and strong as death, was behind all of them, urging,

threatening.

Before the last stars had died, they were a-horse and gathered before

the Perlucchi Palace. It stood empty to the dawn, save for the woman

in the citron-colored gown, who lay on the floor of the scarlet

tapestried chamber.

Like a dark cloud sweeping over the desolate city, the Hungarian army

clashed through the streets, that were bare of everything save the

dead and the dying, and no man among them gave a thought to this most

beautiful city in the world, save to the leaving of it, for they had

ravaged its loveliness in the lust of conquest, spoiled it of its

wealth and ease, and now they fled before the Specter arisen from its

ruins to avenge on Hungary the wounds of Naples.

In some of the streets there was fighting. Luigi of Taranto’s men and

the Hungarian guards strove together in between the houses, and the

meeting of the spears echoed through deserted homes and palaces, their

gorgeous gates flung open to the foe.

But Ludovic of Hungary paused for none of it. He and his men hurtled

through the dawning day, toward the doors of the city, toward Aversa,

Benevento.

As they swept into the Palazzo San Eligio, they saw a great press of

knights facing them, and against the pale purple of the Eastern sky

hung the lilied banner if the Angevin kings.

There was a quick movement among either army, the putting of spears in

rest, the tossing of plumes and bridles. But the two captains of the

Neapolitans rode forward (one very slender, in golden mail, carried a

bright, bare sword across the saddle. The other showed through the

opening of his casque the masterful face of Luigi of Taranto).

Ludovic of Hungary spurred his horse to meet him.

“I leave your cursed city, Prince,” he said. “Am I to cut my way

through your men?”

Luigi of Taranto backed his charger.

“No, Hungary--the way lies free through Italy.”

“Desolation is in Naples, and the Plague lurks in the Perlucchi

Palace,” answered the King. “Joy to ye in your kingdom, Prince.”

The slender knight in golden mail removed the glittering helm, and red

curls fell out like wine from a burnished mager either side of the

frail face of Giovanna d’Anjou.

“Good-morrow, cousin,” she said, looking full at the King of Hungary.

She raised her bare weapon. “Is it the sword that decides--after all?”

“The day is before us,” he answered madly. “We face the dawn, and

Andreas is not ill-avenged!” With that he raised his hand, and the

cavalry of Hungary thundered after him to the great gates that opened

on the homeward road.

The Queen looked at Luigi of Taranto, and her eyes were not the eyes

of a sane woman.

“Was that Andreas rode past?” she asked, and the sword shuddered in

her hand. “Yet I am Queen,” she said, and laughed a little, staring at

the stricken city.