Charles, Duke of Durazzo, was one of your super chess-players, handling
kings and queens, knights and prelates of flesh and blood in the game
that he played with Destiny upon the dark board of Neapolitan politics.
And he had no illusions on the score of the forfeit that would be
claimed by his grim opponent in the event of his own defeat. He knew
that his head was the stake he set upon the board, and he knew, too,
that defeat must inevitably follow upon a single false move. Yet he
played boldly and craftily, as you shall judge.
He made his first move in March of 1343, some three months after the
death of Robert of Anjou, King of Jerusalem and Sicily, as ran the title
of the ruler of Naples. He found his opportunity amid the appalling
anarchy into which the kingdom was then plunged as a result of a wrong
and an ill judged attempt to right it.
Good King Robert the Wise had wrested the crown of Naples from his elder
brother, the King of Hungary, and had ruled as a usurper. Perhaps to
quiet his conscience, perhaps to ensure against future strife between
his own and his brother's descendants, he had attempted to right the
wrong by a marriage between his brother's grandson Andreas and his
own granddaughter Giovanna, a marriage which had taken place ten years
before, when Andreas was but seven years of age and Giovanna five.
The aim had been thus to weld into one the two branches of the House of
Anjou. Instead, the rivalry was to be rendered more acute than ever, and
King Robert's fear of some such result contributed to it not a little.
On his deathbed he summoned the Princes of the Blood--the members of
the Houses of Durazzo and Taranto--and the chief nobles of the kingdom,
demanding of them an oath of allegiance to Giovanna, and himself
appointing a Council of Regency to govern the kingdom during her
minority.
The consequence was that, against all that had been intended when the
marriage was contracted, Giovanna was now proclaimed queen in her
own right, and the government taken over in her name by the appointed
Council. Instantly the Court of Naples was divided into two camps, the
party of the Queen, including the Neapolitan nobility, and the party of
Andreas of Hungary, consisting of the Hungarian nobles forming his
train and a few malcontent Neapolitan barons, and guided by the sinister
figure of Andreas's preceptor, Friar Robert.
This arrogant friar, of whom Petrarch has left us a vivid portrait, a
red-faced, red-bearded man, with a fringe of red hair about his tonsure,
short and squat of figure, dirty in his dress and habits, yet imbued
with the pride of Lucifer despite his rags, thrust himself violently
into the Council of Regency, demanding a voice in the name of his
pupil Andreas. And the Council feared him, not only on the score of
his over-bearing personality, but also because he was supported by the
populace, which had accepted his general filthiness as the outward sign
of holiness. His irruption occasioned so much trouble and confusion that
in the end the Pope intervened, in his quality as Lord Paramount--Naples
being a fief of Holy Church--and appointed a legate to rule the kingdom
during Giovanna's minority.
The Hungarians, with Andreas's brother, King Ludwig of Hungary, at their
head, now appealed to the Papal Court of Avignon for a Bull commanding
the joint coronation of Andreas and Giovanna, which would be tantamount
to placing the government in the hands of Andreas. The Neapolitans,
headed by the Princes of the Blood--who, standing next in succession,
had also their own interests to consider clamoured that Giovanna alone
should be crowned.
In this pass were the affairs of the kingdom when Charles of Durazzo,
who had stood watchful and aloof, carefully weighing the chances,
resolved at last to play that dangerous game of his. He began by the
secret abduction of Maria of Anjou, his own cousin and Giovanna's
sister, a child of fourteen. He kept her concealed for a month in his
palace, what time he obtained from the Pope, through the good offices
of his uncle the Cardinal of Perigord, a dispensation to overcome the
barrier of consanguinity. That dispensation obtained, Charles married
the girl publicly under the eyes of all Naples, and by the marriage--to
which the bride seemed nowise unwilling--became, by virtue of his wife,
next heir to the crown of Naples.
That was his opening move. His next was to write to his obliging
uncle the Cardinal of Perigord, whose influence at Avignon was very
considerable, urging him to prevail upon Pope Clement VI not to sign the
Bull in favour of Andreas and the joint coronation.
Now, the high-handed action of Charles in marrying Maria of Anjou had
very naturally disposed Giovanna against him; further, it had disposed
against him those Princes of the Blood who were next in the succession,
and upon whom he had stolen a march by this strengthening of his own
claims. It is inevitable to assume that he had counted precisely
upon this to afford him the pretext that he sought--he, a Neapolitan
prince--to ally himself with the Hungarian intruder.
Under any other circumstances his advances must have been viewed with
suspicion by Andreas, and still more by the crafty Friar Robert. But,
under the circumstances which his guile had created, he was received
with open arms by the Hungarian party, and his defection from the Court
of Giovanna was counted a victory by the supporters of Andreas. He
protested his good-will towards Andreas, and proclaimed his hatred of
Giovanna's partisans, who poisoned her mind against her husband. He
hunted and drank with Andreas--whose life seems to have been largely
made up of hunting and drinking--and pandered generally to the rather
gross tastes of this foreigner, whom in his heart he despised for a
barbarian.
From being a boon companion, Charles very soon became a counsellor to
the young Prince, and the poisonous advice that he gave seemed shrewd
and good, even to Friar Robert.
“Meet hostility with hostility, ride ruthlessly upon your own way,
showing yourself confident of the decision in your favour that the Pope
must ultimately give. For bear ever in your mind that you are King of
Naples, not by virtue of your marriage with Giovanna, but in your own
right, Giovanna being but the offspring of the usurping branch.”
The pale bovine eyes of Andreas would kindle into something like
intelligence, and a flush would warm his stolid countenance. He was
a fair-haired young giant, white-skinned and well-featured, but dull,
looking, with cold, hard eyes suggesting the barbarian that he was
considered by the cultured Neapolitans, and that he certainly looked
by contrast with them. Friar Robert supporting the Duke of Durazzo's
advice, Andreas did not hesitate to act upon it; of his own authority
he delivered prisoners from gaol, showered honours upon his Hungarian
followers and upon such Neapolitan barons as Count Altamura, who was
ill-viewed at Court, and generally set the Queen at defiance. The
inevitable result, upon which again the subtle Charles had counted, was
to exasperate a group of her most prominent nobles into plotting the
ruin of Andreas.
It was a good beginning, and unfortunately Giovanna's own behaviour
afforded Charles the means of further speeding up his game.
The young Queen was under the governance of Filippa the Catanese, an
evil woman, greedy of power. This Filippa, once a washerwoman, had in
her youth been chosen for her splendid health to be the foster-mother
of Giovanna's father. Beloved of her foster-child, she had become
perpetually installed at Court, married to a wealthy Moor named Cabane,
who was raised to the dignity of Grand Seneschal of the kingdom, whereby
the sometime washerwoman found herself elevated to the rank of one of
the first ladies of Naples. She must have known how to adapt herself to
her new circumstances, otherwise she would hardly have been appointed,
as she was upon the death of her foster-son, governess to his infant
daughters. Later, to ensure her hold upon the young Queen, and being
utterly unscrupulous in her greed of power, she had herself contrived
that her son, Robert of Cabane, became Giovanna's lover.
One of Giovanna's first acts upon her grandfather's death had been to
create this Robert Count of Evoli, and this notwithstanding that in
the mean time he had been succeeded in her favour by the handsome
young Bertrand d'Artois. This was the group--the Catanese, her son,
and Bertrand--that, with the Princes of the Blood, governed the Queen's
party.
With what eyes Andreas may have looked upon all this we have no means
of determining. Possibly, engrossed as he was with his hawks and his
hounds, he may have been stupidly blind to his own dishonour, at least
as far as Bertrand was concerned. Another than Charles might have
chosen the crude course of opening his eyes to it. But Charles was too
far-seeing. Precipitancy was not one of his faults. His next move must
be dictated by the decision of Avignon regarding the coronation.
This decision came in July of 1345, and it fell like a thunderbolt upon
the Court. The Pope had pronounced in favour of Andreas by granting the
Bull for the joint coronation of Andreas and Giovanna.
This was check to Charles. His uncle the Cardinal of Perigord had done
his utmost to oppose the measure, but he had been overborne in the
end by Ludwig of Hungary, who had settled the matter by the powerful
argument that he was himself the rightful heir to the crown of Naples,
and that he relinquished his claim in favour of his younger brother. He
had backed the argument by the payment to the Pope of the enormous sum,
for those days, of one hundred thousand gold crowns, and the issue,
obscure hitherto, had immediately become clear to the Papal Court.
It was check to Charles, as I have said. But Charles braced himself, and
considered the counter-move that should give him the advantage. He went
to congratulate Andreas, and found him swollen with pride and arrogance
in his triumph.
“Be welcome, Charles,” he hailed Durazzo. “I am not the man to forget
those who have stood my friends whilst my power was undecided.”
“For your own sake,” said the smooth Charles, as he stepped back from
that brotherly embrace, “I trust you'll not forget those who have been
your enemies, and who, being desperate now, may take desperate means to
avert your coronation.”
The pale eyes of the Hungarian glittered.
“Of whom do you speak?”
Charles smoothed his black beard thoughtfully, his dark eyes narrowed
and pensive. There must be a victim, to strike fear into Giovanna's
friends and stir them to Charles's purposes.
“Why, first and foremost, I should place Giovanna's counsellor Isernia,
that man of law whose evil counsels have hurt your rights as king. Next
come--”
But here Charles craftily paused and looked away, a man at fault.
“Next?” cried Andreas. “Who next? Speak out!” The Duke shrugged.
“By the Passion, there is no lack of others. You have enemies to spare
among the Queen's friends.”
Andreas paled under his faint tan. He flung back his crimson robe as
if he felt the heat, and stood forth, lithe as a wrestler, in his
close-fitting cote-hardie and hose of violet silk.
“No need, indeed, to name them,” he said fiercely.
“None,” Charles agreed. “But the most dangerous is Isernia. Whilst
he lives you walk amid swords. His death may spread a panic that will
paralyze the others.”
He would say no more, knowing that he had said enough to send Andreas,
scowling and sinister, to sow terror in hearts that guilt must render
uneasy now, amongst which hearts be sure that he counted Giovanna's own.
Andreas took counsel with Friar Robert. Touching Isernia, there was
evidence and to spare that he was dangerous, and so Isernia fell on the
morrow to an assassin's sword as he was in the very act of leaving the
Castel Nuovo, and it was Charles himself who bore word of it to the
Court, and so plunged it into consternation.
They walked in the cool of evening in the pleasant garden of the Castel
Nuovo, when Charles came upon them and touched the stalwart shoulder of
Bertrand d'Artois. Bertrand the favourite eyed him askance, mistrusting
and disliking him for his association with Andreas.
“The Hungarian boar,” said Charles, “is sharpening his tusks now that
his authority is assured by the Holy Father.”
“Who cares?” sneered Bertrand.
“Should you care if I added that already he has blooded them?”
Bertrand changed countenance. The Duke explained himself.
“He has made a beginning upon Giacomo d' Isernia. Ten minutes ago he
was stabbed to death within a stone's throw of the castle.” So Charles
unburdened himself of his news. “A beginning, no more.”
“My God!” said Bertrand. “D' Isernia! Heaven rest him.” And devoutly he
crossed himself.
“Heaven will rest some more of you if you suffer Andreas of Hungary to
be its instrument,” said Charles, his lips grimly twisted.
“Do you threaten?”
“Nay, man; be not so hot and foolish. I warn. I know his mood. I know
what he intends.”
“You ever had his confidence,” said Bertrand, sneering.
“Until this hour I had. But there's an end to that. I am a Prince of
Naples, and I'll not bend the knee to a barbarian. He was well enough
to hunt with and drink with, so long as he was Duke of Calabria with no
prospect of being more. But that he should become my King, and that
our lady Giovanna should be no more than a queen consort--” He made a
gesture of ineffable disgust.
Bertrand's eyes kindled. He gripped the other's arm, and drew him along
under a trellis of vines that formed a green cloister about the walls.
“Why, here is great news for our Queen,” he cried. “It will rejoice her,
my lord, to know you are loyal to her.”
“That is no matter,” he replied. “What matters is that you should be
warned--you, yourself in particular, and Evoli. No doubt there will be
others, too. But the Hungarian's confidences went no further.”
Bertrand had come to a standstill. He stared at Charles, and slowly the
colour left his face.
“Me?” he said, a finger on his heart.
“Aye, you. You will be the next. But not until the crown is firmly on
his brow. Then he will settle his score with the nobles of Naples who
have withstood him. Listen,” and Charles's voice sank as if under the
awful burden of his news; “a black banner of vengeance is to precede him
to his coronation. And your name stands at the head of the list of the
proscribed. Does it surprise you? After all, he is a husband, and he has
some knowledge of what lies between the Queen and you--”
“Stop!”
“Pish!” Charles shrugged. “What need for silence upon what all Naples
knows? When have you and the Queen ever used discretion? In your place
I should not need a warning. I should know what to expect from a husband
become king.”
“The Queen must be told.”
“Indeed, I think so, too. It will come best from you. Go tell her, so
that measures may be taken. But go secretly and warily. You are safe
until he wears the crown. And above all--whatever you may decide--do
nothing here in Naples.”
And on that he turned to depart, whilst Bertrand sped to Giovanna. On
the threshold of the garden Charles paused and looked back. His eyes
sought and found the Queen, a tall, lissome girl of seventeen, in a
close-fitting, revealing gown of purple silk, the high, white gorget
outlining an oval face of a surpassing loveliness, crowned by a wealth
of copper-coloured hair. She was standing in a stricken attitude,
looking up into the face of her lover, who was delivering himself of his
news.
Charles departed satisfied.
Three days later a man of the Queen's household, one Melazzo, who was
in Duke Charles's pay, brought him word that the seed he had cast had
fallen upon fertile soil. A conspiracy to destroy the King had been laid
by Bertrand d'Artois, Robert of Cabane, Count of Evoli, and the
latter's brothers-in-law, Terlizzi and Morcone. Melazzo himself, for his
notorious affection for the Queen, had been included in this band, and
also a man named Pace, who was body servant to Andreas, and who, like
Melazzo, was in Charles's pay.
Charles of Durazzo smiled gently to himself. The game went excellently
well.
“The Court,” he said, “goes to Aversa for a month before the coronation.
That would be a favourable season to their plan. Advise it so.”
The date appointed for the coronation was September 20th. A month
before--on August 20th--the Court removed itself from the heat and
reek of Naples to the cooler air of Aversa, there to spend the time of
waiting. They were housed in the monastery of Saint Peter, which
had been converted as far as possible into a royal residence for the
occasion.
On the night of their arrival there the refectory of the monastery was
transfigured to accommodate the numerous noble and very jovial company
assembled there to sup. The long, stone-flagged room, lofty and with
windows set very high, normally so bare and austere, was hung now with
tapestries, and the floor strewn with rushes that were mingled with
lemon verbena and other aromatic herbs. Along the lateral walls and
across the end of the room that faced the double doors were set the
stone tables of the Spartan monks, on a shallow dais that raised them
above the level of the floor. These tables were gay now with the gleam
of crystal and the glitter of gold and silver plate. Along one side of
them, their backs to the walls, sat the ladies and nobles of the
Court. The vaulted ceiling was rudely frescoed to represent the
open heavens--the work of a brother whose brush was more devout than
cunning--and there was the inevitable cenacolo above the Abbot's table
at the upper end of the room.
At this table sat the royal party, the broad-shouldered Andreas of
Hungary, slightly asprawl, his golden mane somewhat tumbled now, for
he was drinking deeply in accordance with his barbarian habit; ever and
anon he would fling down a bone or a piece of meat to the liver-coloured
hounds that crouched expectant on the rushes of the floor.
They had hunted that day in the neighbourhood of Capua, and Andreas had
acquitted himself well, and was in high good-humour, giving now little
thought to the sinister things that Charles of Durazzo had lately
whispered, laughing and jesting with the traitor Morcone at his side.
Behind him in close attendance stood his servant Pace, once a creature
of Durazzo's. The Queen sat on his right, making but poor pretence to
eat; her lovely young face was of a ghostly pallor, her dark eyes were
wide and staring. Among the guests were the black-browed Evoli and his
brother-in-law, Terlizzi; Bertrand of Artois and his father; Melazzo,
that other creature of Charles's, and Filippa the Catanese, handsome and
arrogant, but oddly silent to-night.
But Charles of Durazzo was not of the company. It is not for the player,
himself, to become a piece upon the board.
He had caught a whisper that the thing he had so slyly prompted to
Bertrand d'Artois was to be done here at Aversa, and so Charles had
remained at Naples. He had discovered very opportunely that his wife was
ailing, and he developed such concern for her that he could not bring
himself to leave her side. He had excused himself to Andreas with a
thousand regrets, since what he most desired was to enjoy with him the
cool, clean air of Aversa and the pleasures of the chase; and he had
presented the young King at parting with the best of all his falcons in
earnest of affection and disappointment.
The night wore on, and at last, at a sign from the Queen, the ladies
rose and departed to their beds. The men settled down again. The
cellarers redoubled their activities, the flagons circulated more
briskly, and the noise they made must have disturbed the monks
entrenched in their cells against these earthly vanities. The laughter
of Andreas grew louder and more vacuous, and when at last he heaved
himself up at midnight and departed to bed, that he might take some rest
against the morrow's hunt, he staggered a little in his walk.
But there were other hunters there whose impatience could not keep until
the morrow, whose game was to be run to death that very night. They
waited--Bertrand d'Artois, Robert of Cabane, the Counts of Terlizzi and
Morcone, Melazzo and Andreas's body servant Pace--until all those who
lay at Aversa were deep in slumber. Then at two o'clock in the morning
they made their stealthy way to the loggia on the third floor, a long
colonnaded gallery above the Abbot's garden. They paused a moment before
the Queen's door which opened upon this gallery, then crept on to that
of the King's room at the other end. It was Pace who rapped sharply
on the panels thrice before he was answered by a sleepy growl from the
other side.
“It is I--Pace--my lord,” he announced. “A courier has arrived from
Naples, from Friar Robert, with instant messages.”
From within there was a noisy yawn, a rustle, the sound of an
overturning stool, and, lastly, the rasp of a bolt being withdrawn. The
door opened, and in the faint light of the dawning day Andreas appeared,
drawing a furlined robe about his body, which was naked of all but a
shirt.
He saw no one but Pace. The others had drawn aside into the shadows.
Unsuspecting, he stepped forth.
“Where is this messenger?”
The door through which he had come slammed suddenly behind him, and he
turned to see Melazzo in the act of bolting it with a dagger to prevent
any one from following that way--for the room had another door opening
upon the inner corridor.
Instead, Melazzo might have employed his dagger to stab Andreas behind,
and so have made an instant end. But it happened to be known that
Andreas wore an amulet--a ring that his mother had given him--which
rendered him invulnerable to steel or poison. And such was the credulity
of his age, such the blind faith of those men in the miraculous power
of that charm, that none of them so much as attempted to test it with a
dagger. It was for the same reason that no recourse was had to the still
easier method of disposing of him by poison. Accepting the amulet at
its legendary value, the conspirators had resolved that he must be
strangled.
As he turned now they leapt upon him, and, taking him unawares, bore
him to the ground before he could realize what was happening. Here they
grappled with him, and he with them. He was endowed with the strength of
a young bull, and he made full use of it. He rose, beating them off, to
be borne down again, bellowing the while for help. He smote out blindly,
and stretched Morcone half senseless with a blow of his great fist.
Seeing how difficult he proved to strangle, they must have cursed that
amulet of his. He struggled to his knees again, then to his feet, and,
at last, with bleeding face, leaving tufts of his fair hair in their
murderous hands, he broke through and went bounding down the loggia,
screaming as he ran, until he came to his wife's door. Against that he
hurled himself, calling her.
“Giovanna! Giovanna! For the love of God crucified! Open! Open! I am
being murdered!”
From within came no answer--utter silence.
“Giovanna! Giovanna!” He beat frenziedly upon the door.
Still no answer, which yet was answer enough.
The stranglers, momentarily discomfited, scared, too, lest his cries
should rouse the convent, had stood hesitating after he broke from them.
But now Bertrand d'Artois, realizing that too much had been done already
to admit of the business being left unfinished, sprang upon him suddenly
again. Locked in each other's arms, those wrestlers swayed and panted in
the loggia for a moment, then with a crash went down, Bertrand on
top, Andreas striking his head against the stone floor as he fell. The
Queen's lover pinned him there, kneeling upon his breast.
“The rope!” he panted to the others who came up.
One of them threw him a coil of purple silk interwrought with gold
thread, in which a running noose had been tied. Bertrand slipped it
over Andreas's head, drew it taut, and held it so, despite the man's
desperate, convulsive struggles. The others came to his assistance.
Amongst them they lifted the writhing victim to the parapet of the
loggia, and flung him over; whilst Bertrand, Cabane, and Pace bore upon
the rope, arresting his fall, and keeping him suspended there until he
should be dead. Melazzo and Morcone came to assist them, and it was then
that Cabane observed that Terlizzi held aloof, as if filled with horror.
Peremptorily he called to him:
“Hither, and lend a hand! The rope is long enough to afford you a grip.
We want accomplices, not witnesses, Lord Count.”
Terlizzi obeyed, and then the ensuing silence was broken suddenly by
screams from the floor below the screams of a woman who slept in the
room immediately underneath, who had awakened to behold in the grey
light of the breaking day the figure of a man kicking and writhing at a
rope's end before her window.
Yet a moment the startled stranglers kept their grip of the rope until
the struggles at the end of it had ceased; then they loosed their hold
and let the body go plunging down into the Abbot's garden. Thereafter
they scattered and fled, for people were stirring now in the convent,
aroused by the screams of the woman.
Thrice, so the story runs, came the monks to the Queen's door to knock
and demand her orders for the disposal of the body of her husband
without receiving any answer to their question. It remained still
unanswered when later in the day she departed from Aversa in a closed
litter, and returned to Naples escorted by a company of lances, and
for lack of instructions the monks left the body in the Abbot's garden,
where it had fallen, until Charles of Durazzo came to remove it two days
later.
Ostentatiously he bore to Naples the murdered Prince--whose death he had
so subtly inspired--and in the cathedral before the Hungarians, whom he
had assembled, and in the presence of a vast concourse of the people, he
solemnly swore over the body vengeance upon the murderers.
Having made a cat's-paw of Giovanna--through the person of her lover,
Bertrand d'Artois, and his confederate assassins--and thus cleared away
one of those who stood between himself and the throne, he now sought
to make a cat's-paw of justice to clear away the other. Meanwhile, days
grew into weeks and weeks into months, and no attempt was made by the
Queen to hunt out the murderers of her husband, no inquiry instituted.
Bertrand d'Artois, it is true, had fled with his father to their
stronghold of Saint Agatha for safety. But the others--Cabane, Terlizzi,
and Morcone--continued unabashed about Giovanna's person at the Castel
Nuovo.
Charles wrote to Ludwig of Hungary, and to the Pope, demanding that
justice should be done, and pointing out the neglect of all attempt
to perform it in the kingdom itself, and inviting them to construe for
themselves that neglect. As a consequence, Clement VI issued, on June
2d of the following year, a Bull, whereby Bertrand des Baux, the
Grand Justiciary of Naples, was commanded to hunt down and punish the
assassins, against whom--at the same time--the Pope launched a second
Bull, of excommunication. But the Holy Father accompanied his commands
to Des Baux by a private note, wherein he straitly enjoined the Grand
Justiciary for reasons of State to permit nothing to transpire that
might reflect upon the Queen.
Des Baux set about his task at once, and inspired, no doubt, by Charles,
proceeded to the arrest of Melazzo and the servant Pace. It was not for
Charles to accuse the Queen or even any of her nobles, whereby he might
have aroused against himself the opposition of those who were her
loyal partisans. Sufficient for him to point out the two meanest of the
conspirators, and depend upon the torture to wring from them confessions
that must gradually pull down the rest, and in the end Giovanna herself.
Terlizzi, alive to his danger when he heard of the arrest of those two,
made a bold and desperate attempt to avert it. Riding forth with a band
of followers, he attacked the escort that was bearing Pace to prison.
The prisoner was seized, but not to be rescued. All that Terlizzi wanted
was his silence. By his orders the wretched man's tongue was torn out,
whereupon he was abandoned once more to his guards and his fate.
Had Terlizzi been able to carry out his intentions of performing
the like operation upon Melazzo, Charles might have been placed in a
difficult position. So much, however, did not happen, and the horrible
deed upon Pace was in vain. Put to the question, Melazzo denounced
Terlizzi, and together with him Cabane, Morcone, and the others.
Further, his confession incriminated Filippa, the Catanese, and her two
daughters, the wives of Terlizzi and Morcone. Of the Queen, however, he
said nothing, because, one of the lesser conspirators, little more
than a servant like Pace, he can have had no knowledge of the Queen's
complicity.
The arrest of the others followed instantly, and, sentenced to death,
they were publicly burned in the Square of Sant' Eligio, after suffering
all the brutal, unspeakable horrors of fourteenth-century torture, which
continued to the very scaffold, with the alleged intention of inducing
them to denounce any further accomplices. But though they writhed and
fainted under the pincers of the executioners, they confessed nothing.
Indeed, they preserved a silence which left the people amazed, for the
people lacked the explanation. The Grand Justiciary, Hugh des Baux,
had seen to it that the Pope's injunctions should be obeyed. Lest the
condemned should say too much, he had taken the precaution of having
their tongues fastened down with fish-hooks.
Thus Charles was momentarily baulked, and he was further baulked by the
fact that Giovanna had taken a second husband, in her cousin, Louis
of Taranto. Unless matters were to remain there and the game end in
a stalemate, bold measures were required, and those measures Charles
adopted. He wrote to the King of Hungary now openly accusing Giovanna
of the murder, and pointing out the circumstances that in themselves
afforded corroboration of his charge.
Those circumstances Ludwig embodied in a fulminating letter which
he wrote to Giovanna in answer to her defence against the charge of
inaction in the matter of her late husband's murderers: “Giovanna, thy
antecedent disorderly life, thy retention of the exclusive power in the
kingdom, thy neglect of vengeance upon the murderers of thy husband, thy
having taken another husband, and thy very excuses abundantly prove thy
complicity in thy husband's death.”
So far this was all as Charles of Durazzo could have desired it. But
there was more. Ludwig was advancing now in arms to take possession of
the kingdom, of which, under all the circumstances, he might consider
himself the lawful heir, and the Princes of Italy were affording
him unhindered passage through their States. This was not at all to
Charles's liking. Indeed, unless he bestirred himself, it might prove to
be checkmate from an altogether unexpected quarter, rendering vain all
the masterly play with which he had conducted the game so far.
It flustered him a little, and in his haste to counter it he blundered.
Giovanna, alarmed at the rapid advance of Ludwig, summoned her barons to
her aid, and in that summons she included Charles, realizing that at
all costs he must be brought over to her side. He went, listened, and
finally sold himself for a good price the title of Duke of Calabria,
which made him heir to the kingdom. He raised a powerful troop of
lances, and marched upon Aquila, which had already hoisted the Hungarian
banner.
There it was that he discovered, and soon, his move to have been a bad
one. News was brought to him that the Queen, taken with panic, had fled
to Provence, seeking sanctuary at Avignon.
Charles set about correcting his error without delay, and marched out
of Aquila to go and meet Ludwig that he might protest his loyalty, and
range himself under the invader's banner.
At Foligno, the King of Hungary was met by a papal legate, who in the
name of Pope Clement forbade him under pain of excommunication to invade
a fief of Holy Church.
“When I am master of Naples,” answered Ludwig firmly, “I shall count
myself a feudatory of the Holy See. Until then I render account to none
but God and my conscience.” And he pushed on, preceded by a black banner
of death, scattering in true Hungarian fashion murder, rape, pillage,
and arson through the smiling countryside, exacting upon the whole land
a terrible vengeance for the murder of his brother.
Thus he came to Aversa, and there quartered himself and his Hungarians
upon that convent of Saint Peter where Andreas had been strangled a year
ago. And it was here that he was joined by Charles, who came protesting
loyalty, and whom the King received with open arms and a glad welcome,
as was to be expected from a man who had been Andreas's one true friend
in that land of enemies. Of Charles's indiscreet escapade in the matter
of Aquila nothing was said. As Charles had fully expected, it was
condoned upon the score both of the past and the present.
That night there was high feasting in that same refectory where Andreas
had feasted on the night when the stranglers watched him, waiting, and
Charles was the guest of honour. In the morning Ludwig was to pursue his
march upon the city of Naples, and all were astir betimes.
On the point of setting out, Ludwig turned to Charles.
“Before I go,” he said, “I have a mind to visit the spot where my
brother died.”
To Charles, no doubt, this seemed a morbid notion to be discouraged. But
Ludwig was insistent.
“Take me there,” he bade the Duke.
“Indeed, I scarce know--I was not here, remember,” Charles answered
him, rendered faintly uneasy, perhaps by a certain grimness in the gaunt
King's face, perhaps by the mutterings of his own conscience.
“I know that you were not; but surely you must know the place. It will
be known to all the world in these parts. Besides, was it not yourself
recovered the body? Conduct me thither, then.”
Perforce, then, Charles must do his will. Arm-in-arm they mounted the
stairs to that sinister loggia, a half-dozen of Ludwig's escorting
officers following.
They stepped along the tessellated floor above the Abbot's garden,
flooded now with sunshine which drew the perfume from the roses blooming
there.
“Here the King slept,” said Charles, “and yonder the Queen. Somewhere
here between the thing was done, and thence they hanged him.”
Ludwig, tall and grim, stood considering, chin in hand. Suddenly he
wheeled upon the Duke who stood at his elbow. His face had undergone a
change, and his lip curled so that he displayed his strong teeth as a
dog displays them when he snarls.
“Traitor!” he rasped. “It is you--you who come smiling and fawning upon
me, and spurring me on to vengeance--who are to blame for what happened
here.”
“I?” Charles fell back, changing colour, his legs trembling under him.
“You!” the King answered him furiously. “His death would never have
come about but for your intrigues to keep him out of the royal power, to
hinder his coronation.”
“It is false!” cried Charles. “False! I swear it before God!”
“Perjured dog! Do you deny that you sought the aid of your precious
uncle the Cardinal of Perigord to restrain the Pope from granting the
Bull required?”
“I do deny it. The facts deny it. The Bull was forthcoming.”
“Then your denial but proves your guilt,” the King answered him, and
from the leather pouch hanging from his belt, he pulled out a parchment,
and held it under the Duke's staring eyes. It was the letter he had
written to the Cardinal of Perigord, enjoining him to prevent the Pope
from signing the Bull sanctioning Andreas's coronation.
The King smiled terribly into that white, twitching face.
“Deny it now,” he mocked him. “Deny, too, that, bribed by the title of
Duke of Calabria, you turned to the service of the Queen, to abandon
it again for ours when you perceived your danger. You think to use us,
traitor, as a stepping-stone to help you to mount the throne--as you
sought to use my brother even to the extent of encompassing his murder.”
“No, no! I had no hand in that. I was his friend--”
“Liar!” Ludwig struck him across the mouth.
On the instant the officers of Ludwig laid hands upon the Duke, fearing
that the indignity might spur him to retaliation.
“You are very opportune,” said Ludwig; and added coldly, “Dispatch him.”
Charles screamed a moment, even as Andreas had screamed on that same
spot, when he found himself staring into the fearful face of death. Then
the scream became a cough as a Hungarian sword went through him from
side to side.
They picked up his body from the tessellated floor of the loggia,
carried it to the parapet as Andreas's had been carried, and flung it
down into the Abbot's garden as Andreas's had been flung. It lay in a
rosebush, dyeing the Abbot's roses a deeper red.
Never was justice more poetic.