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

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 sad, “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

tonight.

 

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