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