The Historical Nights' Entertainment, Rafael Sabatini [freenovel24 .txt] 📗
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- Author: Rafael Sabatini
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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
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