THE SWORD DECIDES (continued 3)

“Even that,” he said somberly. “Is not a man in earnest who will slay a King to win you? Maria, I am a mighty man. What I have set myself to do I have done——”

He broke off and scowled. She knew, without his utterance of it, that he had murdered Andreas, since she must escape him while the King reigned; that from the first he had espoused Giovanna’s cause for her sake; but she said, under her breath:

“For your own life, too, messer, you slew him. You would have had small chance of it had he remained.”

“He was in my way,” frowned Raymond. “And he went.”

“And you walk abroad unscathed,” said Maria curiously.

“Who should dare to touch me?” he asked.

She drew her dripping hand from the fountain and laid it on her blue gown.

“You are not afraid?” she questioned, “of vengeance?”

“Of whose vengeance?”

“He has a brother who is a king.”

“I do not think he will loose his armies on to Italy for that boy’s sake.”

“No,” said Maria d’Anjou. She pulled at the citron leaves and scattered them over the ground. “No. I do not think he will—and as for me——”

“Princess,” he put in, quickly. “As for you—I will bring you to the throne if you will——”

“And Giovanna?” She gave a little start.

“She is in my power—I shall prevent her remarriage—you stand next.” He spoke brokenly, unsteadied by the thought that at length he had moved her.

“Well,” said Maria softly. “That is as fortune wills. You see, I am very gentle, Conte Raymond, nor fierce with you as I was wont to be—since we have come together by such ways—since you can do so much for me.”

The blood rose to his swarthy face. He clutched the edge of the fountain, leaning toward her.

“You will endure me?” he said unsteadily.

Her blue eyes flashed through her mask.

“Oh, I am reconciled to fortune, messer—why not you as well as any other my sister should select for me—why not you as well as Ludovic of Hungary?”

At that name his eyes shone jealously. “He would not do for you what I have done—he is light, unstable——”

“So once before you told me,” answered Maria. “But I do not think of him.”

“By God, I do hope you think of none but me,” said Conte Raymond haughtily. “Would the day had come, Princess, when I could take you to Giordano—I do not love to see you here.”

He paused, then added earnestly: “As you look to pleasure me, be not too much with the Queen.”

She looked at him quickly.

“And why?”

The dark face clouded; he frowned at her.

“Tell me,” breathed Maria, twisting her veil in her fingers. “Giovanna—how much did she know about the King?”

“That is no matter,” he answered fiercely. “Do not speak to me of that again—we soon shall have done with her.”

Maria rose, slim and straight, casting her shadow over him. “You will take me away from here when we are wed, Raymond?”

He sprang up, the embroidery on his clothes glittering.

“Maria! Maria!”

An elusive shape of white and blue, she avoided him as he put out his hand to take hers and fled through the citron bushes, with her dress gathered up from her silver shoes. She came upon a scattered group on a sloping lawn above a little lake. Under a dull white statue Guilia di Terliggi lay asleep, with her mask slipping from her face, and her bare shoulders gleaming on the grass, near by her sister, Filippa da Morcane, sat, gazing at herself in a gilt mirror, her cloudy black hair falling over her amber gown, a page and a dog lay beside them, and Carlo di Durazzo, caressing a monkey in a mauve coat, lounged near the edge of the lake and sang to the beautiful Cleopatra di Montalto.

The Contessa da Morcane looked up as Maria passed and laughed, which roused her sister to sit up and stare. They were Raymond’s sisters, and the wives of two of the King’s murderers. Maria would not look at them; she ran along the borders of the lake among the tall irises, and her shadow was clear in the moonshine. She came into the darkness of some cypress trees. The ground was soft, damp and fragrant; through the black boughs and flat foliage great silver stars twinkled. Maria, pausing, heard a sound of passionate sobbing.

“Who is it?” she asked, and came nearer the vast trunk.

A woman’s figure showed in the gloom. Maria unfastened her mask and flung it on the ground and set her foot on it.

“Here we unmask!” she said, wildly. “Here we may weep, I think—for there are none to see that our paint be spoiled——”

“Ah, ’tis the Princess,” came a voice from the shadows. “I am Sancia di Renato,” she struggled with her sobs.

“Sweetheart,” said Maria, “what is the matter?”

A wooden seat was round the tree. There crouched Sancia, a vague shape, touched here and there with the moonlight that fell through the cypress branches. Maria came up to her.

“I am going away,” whispered Sancia. “I will go back to Padua. To-day the Queen struck me.”

Maria seated herself beside her.

“Giovanna struck you?”

Sancia sobbed afresh.

“Hush!” said Maria. “Tell me of it—” She laid her cool hand on the other’s shoulder.

Sancia di Renato strove with herself awhile, then faltered out to the darkness:

“Sweet Madonna—it is not that she struck me—I will go into a convent—it is remorse, about—the King.”

Maria’s hand fell to her side. “What do you know about that?”

Fresh, miserable weeping checked Sancia’s words.

“I—think so much of it, and I dare not speak.” Cold and still Maria listened. Sancia gathered courage from the silence.

“I will go home—this is a sinful place—a Renato is too proud to bear these insults.”

Maria roused herself from terrible recollections and began drawing from the weeping girl the trouble. By degrees the story came out.

It seemed that at the Queen’s command she had carried a lying message to Andreas in Aversa, knowing it was false; the message that had said five men alone remained in the convent, and Raymond de Cabane had returned to his estates. Giovanna had said it was a ruse to save her friends from arrest, but after the events of that horrible night Sancia put another meaning to it, and remorse and horror at her share in the crime had been preying on her soul.

Maria elicited this from broken ejaculations, prayers to the saints and wild tears. It was obvious that the girl’s mind had almost given way under a constant dread and horror of her mistress. She confided to Maria that she thought Giovanna was a daughter of the devil, a soulless evil spirit. She told her, with shudders, the story of the sheets, and how, the morning after the King’s murder, she had risen cold with terror, after lying and listening to those shrieks, and crept down the corridor to the Queen’s room——

“It had two doors,” said Sancia feverishly, “and the passage to my room opened from that near the bed—it was locked—but I looked through the keyhole—” She clung to Maria, trembling. The black cypress and the stars encompassed them in silence; Maria shuddered.

“I saw her on her hands and knees on the floor between the bed and the window, and she was rubbing the boards very busily with a piece of linen—then—O God!—she looked up, and her lip was curled back from her teeth and her eyes were turned in—so that they were white and blind——”

She moaned, hiding her face on Maria’s shoulder. “I am afraid of her,” she sobbed. “She has lost her soul, and for the sake of mine I dare not stay—I have to sleep with her, and I cannot—I cannot.”

“O Heavens!” murmured Maria. “What does she do?”

Sancia clutched her tightly, and the words came fearfully and brokenly:

“She will sit up in bed and feel about her throat—then along the bed post, as if she sought for a cord—sometimes she will get out of bed and go to the window; sometimes she will take off the sheets and roll them up.”

“She is crazed,” shuddered Maria. “Yet is she sane enough before company.”

“She is a devil,” panted Sancia. “The other day I came upon her suddenly—she was in her room talking—and there was another voice, but when I entered she was alone!”

Maria crossed herself with a shaking hand.

“Have you spoken of this to any?”

“To the Contessa di Terliggi—but she thinks naught of it——”

“You should not dishonor our house before Raymond de Cabane’s sister!”

“What am I to do?” cried Sancia wildly. “You, also, seemed in league with them—you are to marry the Conte—meekly, it seemed, and you must know——”

“Listen,” interrupted Maria firmly. “Whatever you see, whatever you hear—I shall never be the wife of Raymond de Cabane.”

“Madonna! how will you prevent it?” asked Sancia weakly.

“I have found means to write to the Pope and to Ludovic of Hungary,” said Maria under her breath. “Count Konrad escaped—that night——”

“Ah!—you have had no answer?”

“No answer! no answer!” replied Maria, mournfully. “But I wait—to the very last—oh, Sancia! what it means to endure these men—to speak to them—these cowards who slew the bright young King! But I, also, can play a part to serve my turn—” She broke off hastily. “Why did she strike you to-day?”

In awestruck accents Sancia related how the Queen still kept the dress she had worn at Aversa, and constantly looked at it and turned it over, and that to-day, being hastily summoned from her room to see the Lombard money-lenders, she had left her coffer open and this gown on her bed.

“And I could not avoid,” shivered Sancia, “looking at the dress and wondering where that great piece could have gone and why she kept the gown she had worn that night—and she returned in her quiet way, and seeing me looking at it, struck me very passionately and snatched the dress away—and I will go home to Padua.”

“Wait a little while,” answered Maria. “Wait until my wedding day—wait until the Queen is crowned—maybe Ludovic of Hungary will come—maybe——”

They clung together in the shade of the cypress and wept in a tired fashion; and in the beautiful gardens under the moon, facing to the dawn, lay the silk-clad revelers and sang and slept; in the lamplit hall they still danced carelessly among the dying flowers.

Queen Giovanna leaned back on her throne, with her rouged lips smiling and her violet eyes proudly surveying the magnificence of her court.

And eastward, along the banks of the Volturno, toward Benevento, a vast army, dark under the stars, was spreading, advancing steadily toward the riotous and languid capital.

Nearer, as the Queen laughed; nearer, as the musicians played, and the perfumes of the feast rose with the songs, as the blue bay brightened in the dawn, and Maria d’Anjou prayed amid her tears under the cypress tree, that silent army swept through Foligno, on toward Naples.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN. THE THUNDERBOLT

Giovanna of Naples called to her the Conte Raymond on her coronation morning and spoke to him alone in the little somber anteroom to her bed-chamber.

The early sun cast the lilies of Anjou in golden doubles on the floor. So had they lain when Andreas of Hungary first met his wife’s sister in this same room, while the old King died within.

The Queen stood by a chair, on which glittered her royal mantle; she wore a white and yellow gown and a pearl-sown vest that reached to her throat and encased her body stiffly; brilliant buttons shone on her long, tight sleeves, and her auburn hair was twisted with rubies. Raymond de Cabane, immovable, quiet, lifted his black eyes once to her splendor, then kept them on the ground.

“To-day I shall be crowned,” said Giovanna. “To-day I make you Duke of Calabria and give you my sister—we are both satisfied, are we not, Conte?”

“Madonna,” he answered, “I have given you your desire and you pay my price—I am content.”

The Queen’s violet eyes unclosed.

“Do you take it in so poor a spirit—is it not a swelling triumph—a high victory for us?” she cried; then suddenly her tone was changed. “You could not be so much a devil,” she said unsteadily, “as to take lightly what we have paid so high to accomplish.” She sat down on her regal mantle and pulled a handkerchief from her bosom and pressed it to her lips. “Well, well,” she said feverishly, tapping her foot. “Do you want anything of me? I have been paying, paying all of you till you have fairly wrung the last ducat from me——”

“I want nothing more, Madonna,” said Conte Raymond, with a flicker of a smile. By giving him her sister, her vast estates and the title of heir to the throne Giovanna virtually acknowledged him her successor.

She caught his expression, and her eyes grew cunning.

“You and my second husband, my good lord, will have some policy to settle.” She crumpled her handkerchief, red with the paint from her lips, in restless hands.

“Your second husband, Madonna!” he said coldly. “I think a longer widowhood were wiser—whom do you think of?”

“I know not,” answered Giovanna impatiently. “But do you think I will rule Naples in lonely style? You have decreed to take your wife to Giordano——”

“You have other willing counselors,” said Raymond de Cabane.

She gave him a fierce look and stamped her foot. “You know what this Kingdom is—it is won, but it will prove hard to keep.” Her eager, trembling fingers clutched the chair rails. “Does not the Bishop of Cavaillon, my chancellor, tremble lest the Pope should interfere? The archbishops who crown me to-day, Pisi, Bari, Capua, and Brindisi, wait but a word from Avignon to—excommunicate me.”

“I know,” he answered.

The Queen’s chin sank upon her breast; her high, fair brows were contracted in a frown.

“And the people,” she said to herself. “The guilds are rioting—the master armorers and the bakers rose yesterday—I have the Veronese mercenaries, the French troops—there are more sailing from Marseilles—but the money—my God—I shall go mad for money.” She looked round wildly at Raymond. “The Lombard terms are too high—we cannot borrow there.”

“Better get the money from the Lombards than try to tax Naples,” said the Conte Raymond grimly. “They will not give, and half the country nobles are rebellious.”

“I must pay the Veronese,” muttered the Queen, “for their services in clearing out the Hungarians—Bertrand d’Artois might advance the money.”

Conte Raymond was silent. He saw that the Queen, with empty coffers, self-seeking counselors and a disaffected kingdom, was on the verge of a ruin a powerful, wealthy marriage alone could avert, and as all his power would be exerted to prevent this, he looked to rise to the throne she must fall from. The Queen, watching his coarse, swarthy face, seemed to guess something of his thoughts.

“You,” she said, in a low, tense voice, “you have been well paid.” She rose, shaking. “Get you gone with your reward—one by one you have come to me demanding your price and I have paid it—but enough, by God, enough—you will not make me a footstool to the throne, Conte Raymond—I will hold it despite you all—do you think I shall go unwed, that you may be my heir?”

He looked at her calmly. “What talk is this, Madonna—are you not crowned to-day—the summit of your ambition?”

She caught eagerly at his words.

“Yes, yes,” she answered. She slipped into her chair again with a desperate attempt at control. “I have all I have ever striven for—surely I am content. Raymond,” she looked at him furtively, “you have known me ever since I was a child—have I ever longed for anything, or cared for anything save ambition?”

“No,” he answered.

She made a restless movement in her chair. “Well, well, I must bring men from Provence—Venice, perhaps, might help me—there are many faithful to me.” Her violet eyes shifted from side to side; she rose. “That is all I have to say, Raymond.”

She stood stiffly, stooping a little, and her fingers worked in uncontrolled fashion in her heavy gown. The Conte, only waiting her permission to leave, turned to the door.

A little, quick sound from the Queen caused him to look back.

She had drawn herself erect, rigid, and her hands were at her throat, tearing open the collar of her dress. She struggled with it fiercely, until she had rent it apart over her bare neck and bosom.

“Raymond!” she said, in a stifling voice, as if invisible cords pressed the breath out of her. “Why did you let him come to me?”

It was the first time she had spoken of it. Raymond de Cabane fell back before her staring, inhuman eyes. “Why did you not lock your door?” he answered hoarsely.

She dropped her hands from her throat. “How was I to know”—she whispered quickly—“that it would take so long? You were fifteen to one.”

“He fought like ten,” frowned Raymond.

The Queen came toward him, swaying as she walked. “What did you do with him afterward?” she said, her eyes very bright and restless. “Every time I have seen him since he has had no head—how could you strangle him if he had no head?”

Raymond’s eyes shone fiercely.

“What have I to do with your fool’s talk——”

She began walking up and down with little, quick steps, like the padding of an animal, looking at Raymond sideways. “I did not forget anything—I rolled up the sheets and coverlets—I found a piece of linen and rubbed the floor——”

“This is the way to madness,” cried Raymond roughly, yet with some awe of her. “These are not things to talk of——”

She pulled herself up, looked at him a moment, then laughed quite sanely.

“It is going to be over hot for my pageant,” she said, with a glance at the blazing sun without. “We shall meet presently, Raymond.”

With some muttered words, he left her.

He thought, with a strange repulsion, of her slender girlish figure, her strange containment, her little, secretive movements; the white face, the violet eyes, the sudden, wild words, spoken so quietly, the desperate clutching at her throat—well, if she were crazed, the easier for him. Naples would owe small allegiance to a madwoman.

But when she appeared upon the castle steps, with her nobles about her, to take the head of her procession, there seemed no touch of wildness or insanity in her regal demeanor; she was elate, joyous and beautiful. The gold and scarlet, blue and crimson of her dress and mantle were vivid against her white palfrey. A canopy of noir and samite was upheld over her by four nobles in purple, and ten ladies went before her, scattering flowers. It was said afterward that never had a city been so magnificent as was this city on the coronation of a penniless Queen. From end to end the houses were hung with embroideries and garlands, many prepared for the crowning of the King, but used as readily by a careless, gay people in honor of Giovanna. The streets were lined with troops, that silenced with the spear-head such as muttered the name of Andreas. The trumpet and the drum drowned the grumble of discontent that now and then arose at the reckless profusion of the pageantry that flashed through sunlit Naples. Between palaces set amid palms and roses, under heavy standards that dared the vivid sky, past glimpses of the bay and distant blue-green islands, to the accompaniment of triumphant music, very gorgeously they came to the Church of San Gonnaro, whose gilt, bronze doors were flung wide to receive them.

Maria d’Anjou, pale and fair in red and purple, the princes of the blood in flaring brilliancy, the nobles and officers of the Kingdom, followed the last monarch of the Angevin Kings into the dark and holy church.

With an unfaltering step and steady eyes, Giovanna d’Anjou walked down the aisle amid the dim splendors of religion, toward the porphyry altar, where the priests, in splendid vestments, awaited her.

Her flaming royal garments burned in the somber silence. Amid the quiet arches was the tomb of Charles Martel, and she looked at it as she passed. Near it was a newer grave, with the mortar that fastened the stones on what lay beneath scarcely dry. Andreas of Hungary lay there; bright blue eyes, bright yellow hair, and gay, laughing youth, mangled clay now in the vaults beneath.

Giovanna came to the altar.

Did she think of him as she mounted the marble steps to receive her crown, did she feel that clutch at her dress? Did she hear that cry: “Giovanna—don’t let them in?” Did she picture him as he lay in the vaults beneath in his bloody shroud, almost as close to her as he would have been had he stood beside her as the King? Did there arise before her the thought of that long, gray dawn when she had wiped his blood from her chamber floor and rolled up, with guilty fingers, the horrid evidence of her bed coverlets?

The crowd that filled the church saw her head upheld on her slender neck proudly; saw her step up to the glittering glories of the altar, and sink on her knees on the embroidered cushion placed for her.

Her demeanor was calm. Only once she looked round, as if she saw someone kneeling beside her, there in the empty place where the King should have been. High, victorious singing rose from the gilded choir; the gorgeous courtiers fell away to right and left; the Queen was alone on the altar steps, her trailing mantles falling heavily on the marble, her hands clasped, her auburn hair coiled on her white neck.

Ugolino, Bishop of Castella, his robes blazing in the candlelight, stood beside the altar; beside him knelt the Lord of Brindisi, bearing the crown of the Angevin Kings on a tasseled cushion; round-faced acolytes in white swung censers, from which the cloudy perfume arose. Motionless, the Queen waited; she raised her eyes, and altar, lights and rich garments, the twisted porphyry pillars, the scarlet angel in the colored window, seemed to dance and reel together through the slow smoke of the incense.

She pressed her hands tightly on her breast. Her throat quivered, and her lips were drawn painfully. She repeated, in an expressionless voice, the oath to the Pope, and swore fealty to the legate.

They put the great crown on her head.

“How heavy it is!” she said.

The Bishop of Castella blessed her; the singing swelled and grew in triumph. Giovanna rose and gave her hand to Philip de Cavaillon, her chancellor, who presented her to the assembled nobles.

She descended into the church, the crown shining above the soft waves of her hair; they bent their heads in homage to her. She paused a moment, as her ladies lifted her train and surveyed the throng.

Maria stood, with bent head, beside Raymond de Cabane, who, with folded arms, watched the Queen. Behind him was Bertrand d’Artois, glancing with furtive eyes toward the tomb of Andreas. The dark beauty of Guilia di Terliggi shone beside the magnificence of her husband, and her sister, Filippa da Morcane, stood next to Carlo di Durazzo, the Queen’s cousin. Luigi of Taranto was close to the Queen, and behind him the nobles glittered away into the shadows of the lofty arches.

The Queen’s violet eyes flashed over them, then, with erect head and steady step, she passed down the aisle of the church, the joy bells pealing in her ears. She came out upon the cathedral steps, and the burning blue air was shaken with the triumphal bells of three hundred churches and the shouts of the soldiery and the populace.

The scent of the orange groves of Sorrento and Amalfi was wafted on the breeze that greeted her as she stood in her splendor, framed by the dark background of the noble bronze gates, looking on the people. The standard of Anjou floated its lilies to the air from every building, from every company of soldiers. The whole pageantry of pomp was unfolded in mighty Naples. Giovanna d’Anjou, crowned and beautiful, looked upon it, and the color flushed into her face.

She saw Maria, passive and vanquished; she saw the people acclaiming her almost against their will; she had risen over the clamor of factions. This was her perfect triumph: Queen of all Naples, Provence and Jerusalem.

The sun had almost reached the height of the Heavens, and Giovanna was moving down the cathedral steps to her palfrey, when a little, dusty man, who limped as he ran, forced through the crowd, and cursing all who would have questioned him, staggered, almost before any were aware of his incongruous presence, on to the sunlit steps before the Queen.

He said, through dry lips, that he had ridden until his horse dropped, from Foligno—he had a message from the lord commanding the garrison there.

He held out a parchment to the Queen; then, with a sound like choking, fell fainting at her feet.

“From Foligno!” murmured Giovanna. The nobles crowded about. She broke the seal and read:

Ludovic of Hungary is at Foligno and marching on Naples with thirty thousand men; Jerno has joined him and Aquila—he crosses the Volturno to-morrow at Benevento to fall upon the capital.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN. THE EXECUTIONS IN THE PALAZZO SAN ELIGIO

They were playing ball in the gardens of the Castel del Nuovo; Giovanna would have it so. She walked up and down the paved path watching them. There were not many left at the court of Naples. Raymond de Cabane and Luigi of Taranto, with such Neapolitans as remained faithful, had departed for Capua to dispute the passage of the Volturno with the Hungarians, and all implicated in the murder of Andreas lay in prison, by virtue of a bull from the Pope, sent to Bertrand des Beaux, Chief Judge of the Kingdom of Naples.

Therefore there were not many playing, and these few had pale faces and shaking hands; yet, because of Giovanna, they tossed the silk ball to and fro and strove to laugh.

With her head hanging, and her hands clasped high on her bosom, the Queen passed through the light and shade. She thought of the unpaid mercenaries deserting by the hundreds, pillaging the Kingdom on their way to the Hungarian camp: the magistrates, the guilds, the common people clamoring for Ludovic of Hungary; her sister praying for the success of her enemies. She thought of her accomplices, whom she had delivered to Pope and people, and she crushed tighter a parchment under her hands.

It was the petition of the fifteen and their wives, their appeal to her to save them. She paused to watch the yellow ball fly across the blue and green and fall on the sward at Cleopatra di Perlucchi’s feet. The Conte Raymond’s sisters were among those to die to-day, to perish on the Palazzo San Eligio for the murder of Andreas of Hungary.

Save them? It was too late! To keep her Kingdom she had sacrificed her confederates. She, also, had demanded vengeance on her husband’s murderers to save her credit with the world. She had done everything. All her plate and personal property was pledged to the Lombards; she had sent messages to Sicily and Provence; she had written to the Pope and to Ludovic of Hungary—she recounted these things to herself feverishly—had she not done everything?

The light ball was tossed to and fro; the courtiers ran hither and thither; the Queen paced up and down.

Suddenly she stopped.

The bell of Santa Chiara had begun to toll.

Slowly she went back to the palace, and when she had gone they ceased throwing the ball, and the beautiful Cleopatra began to sob for those being now led forth to death.

In the hall the Queen found Bertrand des Beaux, Conte di Monte Scaglioso, with a somber retinue of mailed men.

“I am on my way to attend these executions,” he said. “Madonna, may I speak to ye?”

The tolling vibrated throughout the long hall. Giovanna crumpled the parchment in her hands.

“Speak,” she said.

They stepped apart from the others. He pointed to a chair, but she could not sit.

“I have little time,” he said. “I must soon be at the Palazzo San Eligio, but I could not get to the Palace before. Madonna, I stand for the Pope.”

She lifted her head dumbly. Her hand was keeping time to the tolling, by beating against the wall.

“Madonna,” said Bertrand des Beaux, “they might speak—have ye thought of that? Remember, they have been trusting in you to save them.”

“I cannot,” she answered wildly. “Ye of all men know I cannot.”

“It were wiser not to essay it, Madonna.” He lowered his voice. “Nicolo de Melaggo, the notary, has confessed everything—yet mentioned the name of no royal prince.”

“Ah!” He saw her throat quiver.

“It is not the desire of the Pope that any of the House of Anjou be implicated,” said des Beaux, “yet it is thought that some one of higher rank than any of these——”

“Stop!” The Queen spoke steadily. “Do ye suspect my cousins?”

He looked at her keenly.

“I have thought it well to silence the prisoners.”

A pause, filled with the somber tolling, then Giovanna whispered: “How?”

“By a slit tongue, Madonna, that they may not speak to-day. I have thrust a fish-hook——”

The color swept over the Queen’s face and neck.

“Keep these horrors from me!” she cried passionately.

He bent his head.

“I thought ye would care to know that none of them will ever speak again.”

She put out her hand to dismiss him, and with the other caught the arras on the wall; then, as he was turning away, she called him back.

Her wild and distraught demeanor, her half-stifled voice caused him to stare curiously.

“My lord, my lord, my good lord,” she said, “cannot ye save the women? God wot they are innocent——”

“The confession involved them, Madonna,” he half smiled.

“Guilia di Terliggi is only nineteen,” she answered desperately.

“Ye cannot save her.”

“Am I the Queen and have so little power?” exclaimed Giovanna. “Have ye forgot these ladies are the sisters of the Conte Raymond, my sister’s betrothed, my captain, fighting for me now at Capuna?”

“Madonna, the Conte, on his return to Naples, will have the matter of his own guilt to discuss.” He turned away, and the train of men went from the hall.

The Queen stood still a moment, listening to the tolling. So, they would never speak again. She was safe. There was only Raymond left—if she could have saved the women——

There were very few in the Palace. She crept up to her dreary bedroom and tried to find Sancia, but the tirewoman was not there. All the maids and ladies were scattered. Wearily she went to the window and set it open.

A great roar met her ears. The shout of many voices, such as had sounded when Raymond de Cabane had taken her hand and proclaimed her Queen from this very window—the yell now of the crowd greeting its prey as the prison doors swung back and the victims came forth to their death. Her brow grew damp with anguish; her fingers clutched the window frame. The roar of the crowd swelled in volume; her too quick brain pictured the ghastly procession, the yelling people, the immovable soldiers, the prisoners—she did not dare to think of the prisoners.

A long while she stood immovable, the sunshine and the breeze filling the chamber and caressing her haggard face. Then she threw herself along the floor and put her hands up to her throat and moaned bitterly. Sancia, creeping into the chamber, with her fingers over her ears to shut out the sound of the bells, crouched back in horror to see the rich red robe, the auburn hair, low on the ground.

The Queen looked up.

“I heard Guilia di Terliggi shriek,” she muttered. “I heard her shriek.”

Sancia began to flutter with sobs of terror. “God have mercy on us!” she wailed. “It is too far—ye could not hear——”

Giovanna gave a sudden wild smile.

“And her tongue is pierced,” she said hollowly. “So they cannot speak—so I fancied it.” She clasped her hands round her knees and sat so, huddled up, and her lips moved as if she counted the tolling of the bells of Santa Chiara.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN. THE QUEEN’S LAST STAKE

Giovanna stared at her answer from Ludovic of Hungary.

She broke the seal, bearing his arms, and unfolded the parchment.

A strange sensation came over her. The brother of Andreas, what manner of man was he, her conqueror?

There were only a few lines, all in the same hand:

The exclusive power you arrogated to yourself in the Kingdom, the insolence with which you treated the King, the favor which you have shown to his murderers, even to the extent of promising your sister, our betrothed bride, to the most guilty, and your excuse itself, are sufficient proofs of your having been an accomplice in your husband’s death. Convince us of your innocence and we will cease to harass your Kingdom; if you cannot do that, prepare to receive the full extent of our vengeance.

The letter fluttered from the Queen’s hand to the ground. She fell back in her chair, and her head sank on her bosom; her spirit fainted within her. She made a movement with her hands as if she laid down the sword and crown in sheer weariness. She could fight no more, she had done everything, ruined herself to her very rings, given up her friends, sided with the people, conceded to the magistrates, delivered herself into the hands of the Lombard money lenders, humbled herself to Provence, appealed to her enemy, and he, this man at her gates with an ever growing army, he, with the support of Italy and her own people, was going to brand her as a murderess.

There was nothing to be done. She had made a splendid stand against sudden disaster, but in vain, there was nothing to be done.

With the resolution that was natural to her, she decided to fly at once to Provence and to save her life if she could not her crown. She had not any hope in Raymond de Cabane being able to arrest the progress of the Hungarians, nor any faith in her people’s protection.

She sat quiet, revolving the scheme in abject weariness of soul. Maria d’Anjou entered the room, and Giovanna, like a bruised snake whose sting is dead, eyed her dully and made no movement.

There was an extraordinary air of elation and triumph about Maria. She stepped lightly and the color was ever flushing up into her face. With blue eyes alight with hope, she glanced at her sister.

“Why do you look so gay?” questioned the Queen in a passionless voice.

“Gay?—do I look gay?” answered Maria. “My heart is eased because my lord of Hungary comes.”

She stood, leaning against the carved mantel shelf, her gorgeous head upheld. The sunlight lay softly upon the folds of her pale yellow dress.

“You are very glad of my downfall,” said Giovanna.

Maria lifted the chestnut curls from her brow and looked at the Queen.

“What have you ever been to me that I should weep? Yes, I am glad.” Her face was wildly triumphant, her calm eyes scornful under her level brows. “I always turned from you, Giovanna,” she said.

The Queen raised her head and sank her chin in her hand.

“As for your ally, Raymond,” said Maria sternly, “I would not give one thought to him nor turn my head to save him, but you are of royal blood and I would have you fly the vengeance that marches on Naples.”

“Ah—you would have me fly?” answered Giovanna with narrowed eyes. Her own resolution sounded a different matter on another’s lips. She did not say that she had decided to hurry to Provence.

“All the bloody executions that made the city hideous yesterday will not save you,” said Maria. “This lord comes for vengeance.”

Giovanna raised her eyes.

“And you?”

“I am his promised wife,” answered her sister proudly. “I shall stay to welcome him.”

The Queen made a little movement in her chair. “Ah, you sent for him,” she said quietly. “You wrote to the Pope.”

“Yes,” said Maria.

Giovanna’s eyes shifted from side to side with a cunning light in them.

“Let us be at a plain understanding—you advise me to flee from this brother of Andreas?”

“The conqueror of your Kingdom,” amended Maria.

The Queen sat upright.

“Do you believe I am guilty of my husband’s death?” she asked quickly.

Her sister did not answer.

“Do you believe so?” repeated the Queen.

“I know it,” said Maria hoarsely.

A deeper pallor overspread Giovanna’s drawn features.

“You do not know it and you cannot prove it,” she said under her breath. “And it is false.”

“You must persuade the King of Hungary of that,” flashed Maria. “And you cannot—therefore as your wretched life is dear to you, leave Naples before the day be out—go to Sicily—to Provence—but do not stay here to await the coming of Ludovic of Hungary——”

“You come to tell me this?”

“For the sake of our kinship I come to tell you this.”

“Very well,” said the Queen with compressed lips. “You may go.”

Maria turned from the chamber in silence. As the door shut Giovanna’s hands clutched the chair arms and her eyes unclosed.

All the spirit that had been dead in her at Maria’s entrance was roused now, in arms.

Should she vacate her throne that her sister might step into it—should all her strivings end in this—that Maria, as Ludovic’s wife, should succeed to her crown—was she a thing so easily overawed that they could frighten her from her Kingdom? Maria’s triumph, Maria’s joy at deliverance, Maria’s pride in her victorious lord had been as so many lashes to drive her from her resolution of quitting Naples.

Even if the army and the people had forsaken her, even if she had neither money nor men, she had herself; her own kingly courage, her own strong ambition, her own crafty policy, her own beauty and youth.

She picked up Ludovic’s letter from the floor:

“If you can prove your innocence.”

If! Her blood surged hotly to her heart. If she could make the man believe in her, even now her enemy might be turned into her champion; she might preserve not her life alone, but her fame and her Kingdom. And who was Ludovic of Hungary that he should not believe in her. He was a man and young, she was a woman and beautiful, she had all the Southern guile. He would show himself a boor and a simpleton as all his countrymen.

Ah, she would not abandon everything until she had staked all once more. She had nothing to lose but her life, and she would rather risk that like a prodigal in an attempt to gain her old glories, than hoard it like a miser in misery.

She called Sancia and sent her in search of Carlo, almost the only person of rank remaining in the Palace. While she waited for him a message came to her from Bertrand des Beaux, who informed her that Luigi of Taranto had been defeated by the Hungarians at Capua, and that the victorious army was marching on Aversa and Capua; he added that the magistrates and guilds had decided to open the gates of Naples to Ludovic, and repeated Maria’s counsel of flight from the Kingdom.

Giovanna was hardly moved. It was what she had expected; it only confirmed her in her resolution. She waited with impatience for Carlo di Durazzo. He came at last. He had seen Guilia di Terliggi hanged yesterday, and in consequence was gloomy. He had wavered for days past between the Queen and Ludovic, as she well knew, but she needed him now.

“Carlo,” she said kindly. “Carlo—why have you not been to see me?”

He seated himself listlessly against the wall and began playing with the tassels on his boot. “I went to see the executions yesterday,” he answered. “And it made me sick.”

The Queen’s face darkened.

“Do not talk to me of that, cousin.”

He raised a fretful, pale face. “What do you wish to talk of, Madonna?”

Her slender fingers folded up the two letters on the knees of her gray gown. With intent eyes she studied the Duke’s face.

“Carlo—I am going to have one more throw with fortune, and I shall need your help.”

He gave a bitter little laugh.

“I am a ruined man——”

She interrupted. “I am not asking for gold or men—that is hopeless——”

He shrugged his shoulders.

“What else will be of any use?”

“My wits, perchance,” her violet eyes flashed one quick glance at him. “Cousin, I am going to Ludovic of Hungary’s camp to see him—I desire that you come with me.”

“Sweet saints!” The Duke lifted his eyebrows languidly.

“Carlo,” she pursued eagerly. “Do not argue with me or say I have lost my wits—it is the sole thing for me—let me but convince that man,” she broke off sharply, “it shall not involve you, cousin—the King is near Aversa,” she spoke the word without a shudder—“I will travel to-morrow morning and be back ere nightfall.”

“If he allow you to return at all,” answered Durazzo dryly.

“I am chancing that,” she breathed. “It is all or nothing. If he should refuse to believe me, to end that way would be better than exile in some Provence chateau with a blasted name.”

Her fingers moved nervously and her eyes flashed recklessly. Carlo di Durazzo, weak and careless, but no fool, saw well enough her motive in this desperate move. It was clear to him that in putting herself at Ludovic’s mercy, she disarmed him to a great extent; that if anything could convince him of her innocence, she herself, coming alone to him with violet eyes, soft voice, and red mouth for her advocates, would do it. And as the Duke believed in his heart she was guiltless, he could conceive that she might persuade Ludovic. Then, too, it was an adventure with a hint of knight errantry in it and danger that made a fine distraction to his thoughts of Guilia di Terliggi; it was flattering also that she trusted him.

As he considered these things the Queen watched him with burning eyes; her lips trembled and her hands were locked tightly together.

“Well,” he said at last, “it is a desperate strait and a desperate expedient—but I will go with you, Madonna.”

She rose and laid her hand on his arm. Her glance was eloquent of gratitude. Then she turned in silence to the window. All the tangled glories of her race, standards of victory, wreaths of a conqueror, the trumpets of renown, the heralds of splendor and high greatness, seemed gathered into her slight figure and her royal eyes, the disasters, the triumphs, the magnificence of a line of kings were embodied in her still resolve.

“Desperate,” she said softly, as if she had been thinking over her cousin’s last words. “Well, I think courage shows best in desperate straits—’tis better bravery to go to this King even on a poor chance than to wait here trembling before the inevitable.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN. LUDOVIC THE TRIUMPHANT

The bare, white road wound through dusty vineyards where the grapes hung heavy in their leaves, then sloped suddenly into the chestnut woods leading to Capua.

Queen Giovanna, in a dull red dress, a dark purple scarf about her head, rode a little white mule. Carlo di Durazzo, in the plain habit of a traveler, was singing and caressing the neck of his brown horse.

They had escaped from Naples without even Maria suspecting. The Queen was supposed to be sick and in her chamber, the Duke with the Army.

Carlo, breaking off his song to speak of this, remarked that if it were discovered that Giovanna had fled the city, the Government would fall finally into the hands of the people.

“If that happen,” said the Queen, “I look to the man who has dethroned me to rethrone me. Let me persuade Ludovic and I am safe.”

“And if not?” asked the Duke idly.

“There is death,” answered Giovanna. “Cousin, mark how confident I am—I say that word calmly—yet I am very afraid of death.” Her voice fell, she gave him a strange look. “He is always running behind me—just a step behind—one day he will quicken his pace and overtake me—or else I stand still and wait for him.”

“ ’Tis so with all,” said Durazzo, and fell into gloom thinking of Guilia di Terliggi.

They rode out on to bare turf, then again into groves of beech and pine. The fresh air had given Giovanna a fairer color than paint had ever done. Her hair hanging loose and soft like a peasant girl’s added to her youth; the purple and red of her gown combined the color of the chestnuts and of the rich earth; her violet eyes, regal, wonderful, gave her both beauty and majesty. Carlo di Durazzo thought her lovely, and felt great confidence in her success as he glanced aside at her. Then when she turned to him and he caught a full view of her face, he thought her not lovely—strange rather, a little repellant. He told himself that her mouth was too red and hard, her brows overarched, and in the lines of the fine nostrils he saw cruelty; the turn of her chin and throat was perfect, yet graceful as was her carriage, she was over slender and stooped a little as she rode.

Standing and considering her, Carlo di Durazzo thought with a curious pang of Maria, and realized suddenly how infinitely more beautiful she was, how noble and gracious in line and color; but Maria was a saint, and such were not for the wooing of the Duke di Duras.

They came to an inn where some peasants drank wine out of tall glasses under an arbor covered with dusty creepers.

Giovanna insisted on halting. She dismounted and, with the eyes of the peasants on her, went up to the door of the low white house and called the landlord, who came and opened the gate of the little garden.

They entered among old rose bushes, bearing small pink flowers and carnations in their gray foliage. It was all shaded with a trellis covered with a vine, and under the oleander bushes tables and benches were set.

The sun to-day, faint behind vapors, fell in light beams through the leaves. One or two laborers from the vineyards and the harvest sat about drinking the red wine.

They all stared at Giovanna’s white arms as she rested them on the stained table, at the embroidered shoe beneath her quiet gown, at her vivid eyes and bright, rippling hair; then their curiosity turned on Carlo, whose peach-bloom complexion, careful amber curls and soft features, were at variance with his rough dress.

The Queen challenged their glances by her pose and absolute ignoring of them, the Duke by flushing and lowering his brown eyes disdainfully.

“Why did we come here?” he asked under his breath, “what if any should know you?”

“No one will know me,” said Giovanna, “and it is very pleasant.”

Wine in deep, graceful glasses, coarse bread, and fruit were brought. Giovanna questioned the girl who served them concerning the Hungarian army that lay near Aversa. For days past, they were told, men had stopped here, in twos and threes, on their way from Naples to the army of the invader.

“Ah, yes,” said the Queen, sipping her wine. “We do the same—have you seen anything of the Hungarians?”

They had, was the answer, taken provisions from every village and farm near about, but they had paid, and there had been no murdering, no pillaging.

Giovanna’s fine brows went up ever so slightly, her restless fingers crumbled the bread on the rough table.

“Have you seen the King?” she asked quietly. Carlo made a restless movement, fearing she was growing indiscreet.

“Oh, yes,” said the girl. She had gone with her brothers to take fruit to the camp. She had seen the King.

“What was he doing?” said Giovanna.

“He was laughing. There was a monkey in the camp, and the King had tied a red ribbon to its tail, and as it ran round after it, the King laughed loudly.” He was a very handsome man, she added, and on that left them, being called to one of the other tables.

The Queen looked at Durazzo.

“Laughing!” she said. It shattered all her conceptions of Ludovic that he should laugh when on such an errand, or amuse himself in fooleries when engaged in warfare.

“It will make him no easier to move,” said Carlo.

Giovanna turned narrowed eyes on him. “Cousin, do you yourself suspect me that you have so little faith?”

“I would not be with you if I did,” he answered.

They rose. Giovanna, walking slowly down the garden, picked a scarlet and a pink carnation and fastened them in her dress—laughing!—and handsome. Had she known sooner she might have arrayed herself in a gayer dress. Perhaps he had not wept much for Andreas, perhaps ambition, not vengeance, had inspired this descent on Italy. She did not remember ever hearing Andreas laugh.

Carlo paid and overpaid, at which there was much staring and comment, while he, red and angry, helped Giovanna to remount.

She was too absorbed in her own thoughts to heed, but Carlo was ruffled.

“How was I to know what they charged for their vile wine?” he said. “I do not care for these foolish masquerades.”

He pulled his hat over his eyes and lapsed into silence. The long, white road was dipping toward the towers of Aversa when they were overtaken by a Veronese soldier riding to the camp.

He was loquacious and discoursed at length on the battle at Benevento, where the Queen’s cousin, Luigi of Taranto, had been wounded, he said, and all the flower of the Neapolitan army slain. He told them how the Pope’s legate, who was at Foligno, had essayed to stop the Hungarians in their march, but Ludovic had said: “When I am master of Naples, I will obey the Pope; until then I will answer for my actions to God alone.”

The Veronese was one, he said, of a body of three hundred presented to Ludovic by Verona in token of their sympathy. Every town in Italy the Hungarians had passed through had opened their gates to them.

“Why is he so beloved?” sneered Carlo.

The Veronese laughed. It was not the King who was beloved, but the Queen who was hated.

Here Giovanna, who had listened in silence, spoke:

“Messer, we ride to the Hungarian camp also—will you tell me how I may speak with the King?”

Carlo frowned at so much imprudence, but the soldier did not appear astonished.

“The King, Madonna, is at a little farmhouse outside Aversa—Mars!—I do not know if he will see anyone.”

“I come from Naples,” said the Queen earnestly, “and I have matters relating to the surrender of the city to talk of to him.”

They had turned through a belt of chestnuts, and the gay tents of the Hungarians showed, scattered before the distant walls of Aversa. The Queen’s eyes lifted covertly to where, on her right, the convent of Santo-Pietro-a-Majello rose against the horizon. Through these woods had he hunted that day when his evil star sent him alone to that convent. Through these woods had she ridden back to Naples to the brief triumph of her short reign. Through these woods had he been brought home again—she checked herself, it was not good to think of these things.

They rode forward unmolested until they came to the outposts. Here, though the woman’s presence was questioned, upon their representation that they were of the Neapolitan nobility and desirous of joining the King, they were allowed to pass.

Their friendly Veronese saw them through the army to the farmhouse where Ludovic lodged, and fetched one of the Hungarian captains, who, after half an hour’s wearisome talk in bad Italian, consented to ask the King if he would see the lady from Naples. Giovanna and Carlo had dismounted. They were suffered to rest while waiting upon a bench in the orchard. The Queen looked at the humble white house, the royal standard blowing above it, and the dark cypresses casting a heavy shade over it. She looked at the Hungarian sentries moving in and out of the trees and the distant tents of the great army.

From a dove-cote near a soft cooing came on the breeze with the scent of the citron and lemon. A heavy fig tree grew close and Giovanna noted curiously the shape and color of the fruit against the veiled blue sky.

An extraordinary sensation befell her. She felt that this was an interval of reason in some madness, that she had been insane and would be insane again. She remembered quite clearly terrible efforts to control herself that no one might know she was mad; she remembered horrible phantoms of the night that she had struggled with and subdued, the question and terror in Sancia’s eyes; she remembered how many times she had gone on her knees in the early dawn and rubbed her chamber floor, how many times she had rolled her sheets together. She looked furtively at Carlo—did he know she had been mad?

No, he was lazily pulling at the figs, his round features were indifferent, the wind ruffled the little yellow curls in the nape of his brown neck. He did not know—no one knew—she would be very careful they never did. Mad—surely only madness could have inspired her now—surely only madness could convince Andreas’s avenger. But she was sane. She told herself that, she was controlled and calm, sane.

Carlo, eating figs, looked at her, and was surprised at the expression of her eyes.

“Ah, you are frightened?” he said.

Her face changed.

“No,” she answered. “I try to forget what this means.” She smiled and remarked how surprised Ludovic would be to see her, his cousin, after all.

“I will wait for you here,” said Carlo. “It is quite pleasant and the figs are very good.” He surveyed her critically. “Why did you put on red? I do not care for you in red.”

Her eyes grew vacant. She made no reply. The flames in the Palazzo San Eligio were of that color—the fourteen and their women, burning—in Hell now, while she…

The Hungarian captain returned; the King would see the lady.

She rose swiftly, flung back the curls from her forehead, and straightened the carnations at her bosom. Smiling back at Carlo she followed the captain. At the open door of the farmhouse he left her and she stepped in. A soldier on guard moved aside for her, a squire conducted her down the dark passage and flung open a door.

She found herself in a low-beamed room, opening by a large window on to the orchard.

Bunches of herbs and strings of onions hung against the walls; bright-colored articles of pottery stood in the corners and on shelves; a curved bench was under the window and a large dark chest stood opposite, covered with bottles and glasses. A lean gray cat was cleaning itself in the center of the bare floor.

Giovanna noticed these things with that curious shock unusual surroundings give. All her fears, her dreads, her resolutions confined thus to the common room of a farmhouse!

She stood within the door, a sick mist before her eyes. It was a second before she saw a tall young man standing by the window observing her.

She was as speechless as if a giant’s hand gripped her words in her throat. Kingdoms, life and death, her wild ambitions, her regal courage, the tossing to and fro of crowns had come to this: that she stood now within the door of a mean room, trembling and silent before a stranger. Her eyes were very busy with him. He was so utterly different to Andreas that it was difficult to believe he was his brother. He carried himself very proudly and looked at her slightly smiling, with no attempt to speak.

She put her hand on the latch of the door to steady herself and forced words:

“Are you Ludovic of Hungary?”

His smile slightly deepened. “Yes.”

It was the softest voice she had ever heard. It confused her. Almost unconsciously she had imagined that he would speak in loud ringing tones like his brother.

“I have ridden from Naples to-day,” said Giovanna faintly, speaking to gain time. “It was imperative I should see you—and at once.”

What manner of man was he? All she had ever heard of him rushed upon her. While she spoke she was considering him eagerly.

He wore chain armor, over it a little surtout in striped crimson and gold. He was bareheaded, his bright black hair waved in close curls, his brows were very straight, rather heavy, of a saintly sweep, his eyes of that hazel that interchanged blue and green. Eastern eyes, bright and languorous. His face browned and flushed in the cheeks; his chin magnificent, imperious, and underset; his mouth, though controlled to gravity, rebellious and inclined to assume an expression anything but saintly.

In an instant Giovanna saw that she had no abstract qualities to deal with, now he was obviously controlling himself to an unusual quiet.

“You are surprised,” she said, under her breath, “you wonder what I have come for—you do not guess who I am—what I am?”

“Why, I know that you are a lady of Naples,” he answered in that voice that was soft as a caress and a contrast to his daring eyes. “What you are here for, how can I guess?”

A great shudder shook her. She came into the center of the room. The sunlight from the window on her red and violet dress, on the two vivid carnations, and her auburn hair rippling either side of her white face. She went on her knees on the bare floor, and her purple eyes lifted to his.

“I am the Queen of Naples,” she said wildly.

She saw the hot color flood his face.

“I thought so,” he said.

She was wretchedly silent; her head fell forward. Were he to strike her as she knelt into instant death, she would have made neither complaint nor resistance.

“I saw you through the window,” continued Ludovic. “I knew you then—” She heard the soft chink of his armor as he stepped toward her. “This is a strange thing for you to have done.”

“It was your letter,” answered Giovanna faintly. “I took this resolution to see you face to face——”

“Wherefore?” demanded Ludovic curiously. “What can you have to say to me?”

She rose from her knees and faced him. “Do you think that I have no answer to what you wrote?”

“By Heaven! I wonder!” he answered. His eyes flashed over her; he folded his arms on the back of the high chair in a careless attitude, and a little smile took the corner of his mouth.

Giovanna felt resolution and wrath envelop her like a flame rising from the soles of her feet to her brain. “Ah, you wonder,” she said, speaking quickly. “You, who have judged without seeing, condemned without hearing.” She put the hair back from her face. “Come, look at me,” she said passionately. “Am I as you imagined me? Do you think I murdered your brother?”

Ludovic gazed at her intently.

“I think you must prove your innocence of it,” he answered strongly. “I have not taken this upon me lightly—I shall not lightly put it down. I have come for vengeance on that murdered blood of mine. I am not a man easily moved.”

The fierce color flushed into Giovanna’s cheeks; her breast heaved painfully.

“Do not think I come to win my life from you. I am in your power, and you may kill me if you will—oh, I am well used to injustice in the judgment seat—my life has not been set in pleasant places—” She broke off. “What do you know of me? What have you heard of me that you dare to flout my name through Christendom coupled with murderess?”

“Ask your heart,” he answered softly, never taking his eyes from her strange face. “Question of your soul what happened in the convent of Santo-Pietro-a-Majello.”

She did not wince or falter; she put her hand on her bosom. “I can prove nothing,” she said in an exalted voice. “But before that high Heaven that is my witness I am innocent.”

There was a little silence, during which they looked at each other; then he said:

“If that is false, you lie very splendidly—and yet I think it is a lie.”

“It is the truth,” she answered proudly. “May God strike me where I stand if I knew anything of my husband’s death—if I knew even that he had been slain until he had been hours dead.”

“God does not deal in such swift judgments,” said Ludovic of Hungary, “leaving them to men. You do not reckon now with God, but with me, who stand for Him, in this matter.”

“I have nothing but my word to give,” she said, “and I can swear no deeper——”

“A little proof were worth many oaths,” he answered.

“I have none.”

“And yet you have come here to convince me?” He smiled cruelly, but she did not lower her wild eyes.

“That,” she said, “is as may be—I have come to tell you that your cause is not justice, but tyranny. You have come like a thunderbolt upon me; you have laid my kingdom prone beneath your arms and set your heel upon my inheritance—you have ruined me. I stand here stripped and bare. I think I have no ally, but what justice there may be in your heart. You are my conqueror and my judge, and I appeal to you to hear me, to believe me—I am innocent.”

As she spoke, his handsome face paled, and he lowered his eyes.

“You think I have come, not for vengeance for my Andreas, but for lust of ambition?” he said steadily. “That is not so. Prove your innocence of any hint of complicity in his death, and I will reinstate you.”

“I have no proof,” she repeated. “Prove you my guilt.”

His eyes lifted quickly.

“By Heaven! would it be so difficult? What of the terms you were on with Andreas?”

Steadily she answered, her white face unmoved: “They forced us together. I never loved him. I was the puppet of one faction—he of another—that is all.”

“What of his avowed murderers rewarded, unpunished?”

A spasm of horror crossed her face. “They were executed two days ago,” she said hollowly.

“It was a late justice,” answered Ludovic sternly.

“It was as soon as I dared administer it,” she whispered. “You forget I am a woman. I was the puppet of these men. I shivered for my own life——”

The King interrupted her broken words.

“The most guilty still goes free—Raymond de Cabane.”

“I loathe him,” she cried quickly, “but he has been my master—what could I do?”

His hazel eyes darkened.

“You made him Duke of Calabria—the title of the heir to the throne. You insulted me by betrothing to him the bride I waited for—my God! of what service was that the reward? Why should you unite your blood with that of a slave?”

“Because I was forced—because they obeyed him, not me—oh!” Sudden agony inspired her words. “Would men like that have taken a woman into their confidence? Poor wretch! what was I to them but a figure that could wear a crown? I went to sleep that night, suspecting nothing, and when I awoke it was over—and he——”

“Do not speak of it,” said Ludovic sharply. “I—oh—I cannot talk of it.”

He moved away across the room, and Giovanna, feeling her limbs cold and heavy, crept to the wide window seat and sat there. She looked out at the sloping orchard, at the indifferent Carlo, still on the bench under the fig trees, fighting a wasp that buzzed round the fruit; at the black cypresses and the white doves flying across the blue. Then she turned her gaze on Ludovic, walking slowly up and down the bare flags.

He was regal, superb; a King indeed. She looked at him sideways out of narrowed eyes, and her sharp, white teeth bit her full under lip. She noted his shapely brown hands, his black hair sweeping up out of his graceful neck; his beautiful, curved mouth, his low brow, on which the curls fell heavily.

He came at last to the window and looked down upon her, frowning.

“Well, what else?” he said. “What else?”

She had fallen from her vehemence into quiet.

“I am innocent,” she answered. “That is all.”

“Cousin,” he said strangely. She quivered to hear him use the word. He turned his head away, then moved into the room. “Cousin,” he repeated.

She sat quite still.

He came back. “Believe me that I would think so,” he said, “that you are innocent—” He was silent a second.

“I am in your hands,” whispered Giovanna.

Suddenly he caught her by the shoulders and lifted her to her feet.

“Could a woman do such a murder?” he asked hoarsely. “Could a woman take such perjuries upon her?”

She shrank together, yet looked up at him. “No, no!” she said.

He took his hands from her. She fell back against the woodwork of the window.

“What made you think I was guilty?” she gasped, but curiously. “Did Maria——”

“No,” he answered quickly, “Maria wrote to me—she never mentioned you—she asked me to come and take vengeance.”

“But not on me!” cried Giovanna. She held out her fine little hand. “Was that ever stained with his blood? I am very young. I did not do this thing. Before Heaven, I wept for him!”

Her great eyes were full of tears now, but she suddenly laughed.

“Yet you may kill me as you have killed my fame, and none will blame you.”

His dark face flushed.

“Why, do you not know that if I thought you had any hand in his death, I would have you hanged as he was hanged—over the balcony at Aversa?”

Giovanna drew a trembling breath. “I think you would. I think you came for that, or to drag me on trial before the Pope at Avignon—but I also think that you will do neither of these things.”

“Why?” asked Ludovic.

“Why? Why have I come here defenceless? Why have I appealed to your knighthood to do me justice? Because I am innocent.”

He was looking at her steadily, with a passionate expression on his face, that was half pain, half doubt.

“Will you give to me Raymond de Cabane?” he said slowly. “If you loathe his crime—if you were not his accomplice—will you give him up to my justice?”

Again that feeling that she looked back into a long insanity came over Giovanna. Raymond she had always disliked, but he had served her well: for his own ends, perhaps, but he had served her well. It was he who had seized her husband’s yellow hair in blood-stained fingers that night. Her thoughts flew wide, but her eyes were blank as colored glass.

“I will!” she said.

“Surely”—Ludovic drew a quick breath—“surely if you had set him on you could not betray him now—that were too vile.”

“I will send him to you if I have the power,” said Giovanna steadily.

“There are no others?” asked the King.

“No,” she answered, and that fear leaped to her eyes that always came there when she thought of the executions in the Palazzo San Eligio.

“Will you give me your sister?”

“Yes.” She spoke without hesitating, with steady voice and clear eyes.

“I will come to Naples,” said Ludovic. “I will come in peace and treat with you, for I believe what you have said, my cousin.”

She showed neither triumph nor wonder. She turned to him her strange, grave face and unfathomable eyes.

“Thank you, cousin,” she said. She held out her hands. He took them and clasped them lightly. She trembled, and a faint rose-color sprang to her cheeks.

“You will come to Naples?” she whispered.

“Yes,” he smiled. “You see, I do not come for lust of ambition, for I will call a peace in the midst of victory.”

“You shall have your vengeance,” said Giovanna. “I will send you Raymond de Cabane.”

His fingers tightened over hers.

“No—let des Beaux arrest him—let him await my coming.” He frowned. “It is not your vengeance.”

She drew a little closer. “I must go back,” she said, looking up at him. “They must not miss me.” She pulled her hands away. “You will come to Naples?” she repeated.

The breeze from the window fluttered her auburn ringlets on to his mailed arm and stirred the heavy hair on his forehead.

“You think you have persuaded me very easily,” he said. “Do you not, little cousin?”

“Persuaded you?” she repeated. “Did you ever—in your soul—think I had a hand in your brother’s death?”

His superb eyes flashed to hers. “No,” he said abruptly, “no.”

She took the two carnations from her bosom and gave them to him.

“My cousin Carlo is without—do not leave the house with me—no one knows me here.” Her voice suddenly failed her. “In Naples—in Naples,” and she hurried to the door.

Ludovic looked at her carnations in his hand, vivid pink, vivid scarlet.

“In Naples, in three days’ time,” he said softly.

She lifted the homely latch and went out.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN. THE CONTE RAYMOND PAYS

“So she persuaded him?” said des Beaux.

“In half an hour,” answered Carlo di Durazzo. “It is well for Naples—better Hungary as a friend than as a conqueror.”

They stood on the balcony of the Castel del Nuovo looking toward Sorrento.

“He actually comes, then, in friendly fashion?” questioned des Beaux.

“He will enter into an alliance with the Queen—he will marry Maria,” Carlo sighed.

“He might have come, God wot, as a conqueror,” returned the other. “The guilds would have opened to him—and, after all, he is the true heir. It was a daring move,” he added.

“On the Queen’s part—yes. She has a wonderful courage.”

“And Raymond de Cabane?”

“He is to be sent a prisoner to this King.”

“The wiser thing—it will mollify Hungary.”

“And prove the innocence of the Queen,” said Carlo.

“How?”

“Why, Mars! he must know. And if she deliver him up, what reason has he to keep silent. It is a proof she is not afraid of him——”

They heard a footstep in the room behind them, and entered it from the balcony.

A splendid, red-haired knight in black armor, burnished with gold, and wrapped in a scarlet cloak, was crossing the chamber.

“The Prince of Taranto!” cried des Beaux. Carlo greeted him gayly. Yesterday’s success had put him in a good humor with the world.

But Luigi of Taranto looked sick and gloomy. “I return a defeated man,” he said heavily. “Ye have heard how all was lost at Benevento?”

Before they could answer, the door that led to the Queen’s apartments opened, and Giovanna showed herself. She smiled on all of them; there was a color in her cheeks, a light in her eyes; her hair slipped in a great coil into her white neck; she wore a rose-pink gown, laced over the bosom with gold.

Luigi of Taranto turned pale with rage and shame at the tale he carried. “I should not be here alive, Madonna——”

“Ah, the affair at Benevento,” she said, still smiling. “Has not Carlo told you?” She went up to the warrior and laid her hand on his arm. “Ludovic of Hungary enters Naples in two days’ time as my cousin and my friend.”

“Now, who has done this miracle?” cried the Prince of Taranto.

Prudence and containment gave way to triumph. Giovanna unclosed her shining eyes and laughed under her breath.

“In half an hour I persuaded him. He comes to treat with me as a King with a reigning Princess.”

“Persuaded him?” asked the Prince, “of what?”

Quietly she answered him, her fingers playing with the tassels of her bodice:

“You know my cousin—he suspected me—as the world has suspected me—of complicity in the King’s death.”

She flashed one quick glance at Luigi of Taranto’s eager face, then her heavy white lids drooped again. “I convinced him of my innocence,” she said. “And I think there is no one will dare raise a voice against me since he is satisfied.”

The Prince of Taranto’s eyes flashed with a strange expression.

Giovanna laughed, and gave him her hand.

“You were always my very good champion, yet your sword”—her eyes were cruel—“has failed, while my wit has saved Naples.” She drew her hand away, and he flushed. “Where is Conte Raymond?” she asked.

“He follows me, Madonna.”

She looked round upon the three men and her teeth pressed her lip. “If you were in my place, gentlemen,” she asked quietly, “what would be your manner of dealing with Raymond de Cabane?”

Bertrand des Beaux considered her with grave eyes.

“You know, Madonna, what has kept me from dealing with him as with his accomplices—his position—your favor. If he forfeit these—well!”

The Queen lifted her hand in protest.

“My favor!” she said in a thick voice. “A thing forced from me. Prince, what do you say?”

Luigi of Taranto answered earnestly:

“We only stain ourselves by sheltering a murderer. It would have been better for our honor had he suffered with the others.”

Giovanna looked at Carlo.

The smooth, golden, rose-tinted face flushed. He answered with a fierceness rare in his indifferent demeanor:

“I think enough blood has been shed for that boy’s death—straightly, cousin, are you meaning to deliver Raymond de Cabane to the King as a peace offering?”

Giovanna’s eyes showed him hate for the turn of his speech; her teeth were again set in her lip; the thin skin broke, the blood staining them. “I am asking your advice,” she said, in a low, restrained voice. “The King of Hungary has demanded this man. His guilt is a thing obvious and blazoned——”

A deep pause fell, then Carlo’s light laugh rose. “What I said, Giovanna! Buy your own safety with what you can—why not?”

“The safety of Naples,” said the Queen, shaking. “Remember, the King is to marry my sister—had I not to promise it? Raymond will not renounce her quietly.”

Bertrand des Beaux spoke.

“He must go—it is bare justice.”

“An’ the way of it be not treacherous,” said Luigi of Taranto. “I will put in no word to save Raymond de Cabane from punishment.”

Giovanna dabbed her mouth with a handkerchief and moistened her lips. Carlo shrugged his shoulders. It was in his mind that the Queen had been served and trusted by this man she was scheming to deliver to his death. That he had fought for her loyally, whatever his sins, it was not for her to judge and punish.

But Bertrand des Beaux admired her for a stroke of policy equal to her cunning in placing herself at the head of the popular fury that demanded the warrant for the death of the fifteen. His crafty Italian face expressed a sardonic approbation and understanding of her motive. In his heart he believed her guilty of at least pre-knowledge of her husband’s death.

“The Conte Raymond—in common prudence—must be sacrificed,” he said suavely.

Luigi of Taranto was not moved to speak for de Cabane, yet shamefacedness touched him a little as he considered the action they proposed.

“He is still powerful,” he said slowly. “Are we strong enough to arrest him?”

Giovanna had been thinking all night over this question, fresh to them. She was nervously wrought up to face it, armed with replies to all difficulties.

“It must be done secretly,” she answered quickly.

Des Beaux studied his lean hands; he understood. Carlo, at the window, kept his eyes on the three of them.

“Ye would not send him alive to the King of Hungary?” asked des Beaux.

“No,” said Giovanna.

Luigi of Taranto glanced at her.

“Why not, Madonna?”

Des Beaux, for her, answered easily: “It would be a foolish thing, since—he might speak—” and the Conte also glanced at the Queen.

“He might lie,” amended Giovanna, with a steady expression on her white face. “He might defame us all.”

Carlo came toward them, his hands thrust through his girdle, his usual lazy indolence in face and manner.

“I see Raymond de Cabane below—riding into the courtyard,” he said carelessly.

Luigi of Taranto sprang up.

“Have we any we can trust?” cried the Queen, and sat down by the table and rose up again, with fierce eyes, all in a breath.

“To do the deed, mean you?” asked Bertrand des Beaux.

“I cannot be the executioner of a man who has fought beside me,” cried the Prince.

Carlo di Durazzo laughed.

“Are you afraid of him? Fling him into the dungeons as you flung the others—burn him in the public square.”

Des Beaux moistened his lips.

“We have neither the force now nor the authority.”

“So it must be murder?” said Carlo lightly.

Giovanna glanced at him in a baited fashion. “Are you all meaning to forsake me?” she whispered. “This man must die—for the sake of Naples.” She sat down again and curled her fingers together on the table; her violet eyes shifted from one to another. “He will be coming up,” she said.

Luigi of Taranto spoke, goaded by her appeal.

“The Provence soldiery I brought back with me—they are trustworthy. They would——”

She caught at it.

“Bring them up,” she commanded eagerly. “Wait a little.” She put her hand to her head. “I will see him—send him to me.” She broke off again—“wait without upon the stairs. If I call for you——”

Des Beaux answered her broken words suavely.

“I shall be there—with the soldiers, Madonna.”

“I also,” said the Prince of Taranto grimly.

“And you, Carlo?” questioned the Queen.

“Oh, I must see my falcons fed,” he answered, with an indifferent glance. “Ye do not require my services.”

She motioned them all away.

“Send him to me,” she muttered.

After they had left her she sat with her elbows on the table and her head in her hands, facing what was before her. Ever since she had promised Raymond de Cabane to Ludovic of Hungary, she had been scheming how to accomplish it, for her triumphant success of yesterday would be marred if this man lived.

For he knew.

She might put what front she would on it, he knew. She might outlie him; her word might even persuade Ludovic against Raymond’s, but it was a risk. She was safe save for him—but he was there and he knew everything. He would speak, too. There was only the one means to keep him silent—death.

Her temples were throbbing feverishly; her lips and throat dry. It had cost her a tremendous effort to come to this resolution, to hold it, carry it through without flinching. She wanted no more blood; horror and distaste were dragging her back, fear urging her forward.

Raymond de Cabane must not speak with Ludovic of Hungary. His death would ensure her safety and pacify the King. It must be done.

She trembled and moaned into her hands. She recalled Ludovic’s words: “Let des Beaux arrest him. It is not your vengeance.” Did he mean it was a task unfitting a woman?

Yet he had asked her for the man. He had believed her, and demanded Raymond as a pledge of her sincerity—it was wonderful that he had believed her.

She forgot Raymond in thinking upon that. What she had said yesterday in that farmhouse kitchen she could not recall. By what desperate arts of madness she had convinced him she did not know. But she remembered his face, his bearing—the manner in which he had said: “I believe you, cousin.”

And he should believe in her; whatever it meant to keep intact his faith in her, that she would do. Was such an one as Raymond de Cabane to blast her hopes and condemn her? When Ludovic of Hungary believed?

The door swung open and fell to. At a heavy footfall she looked up with dazed, sick eyes.

Raymond de Cabane had entered. His coarse face was a ghastly hue with rage and fatigue, dark and pallid; his eyes bloodshot and strained.

Giovanna, rising stiffly, saw that he was looking at her without even the scant respect that usually covered his brutality.

“So, you have been treating with the King?” he demanded roughly.

She had hoped that he might not have heard.

“Well?” she said, biting her ragged lips. “Well?”

Raymond de Cabane strode to the other side of the table. “What part did I play in your conditions?” he asked. “While I was fighting for you at Benevento, how were you bargaining for me at Aversa?”

The Queen answered unsteadily. Behind the pink velvet bodice her bosom rose painfully, as if her heart beat desperately for freedom under the tight gold cords. “Who has been speaking to you of these things?”

“It is common talk that you went to the Hungarians yesterday and turned their King to your purpose.”

She shrank before his heavy presence, his lowering face.

“You have come to a pact with the King of Hungary,” he continued fiercely. “Well—what of me?”

She did not answer.

“What of me?” he repeated. “And what of that matter I know?”

She lifted her shoulders, as if in self-protection, and drew closer together against the chair from which she had risen.

“Do you threaten?” she asked unpleasantly.

His face was black and heavy with wrath.

“I see no occasion for threats,” he said somberly. “You were clever enough to free yourself from the others—a fish hook through the tongue to silence them—but I live, and I know.” He came suddenly round the table, trembling with passion. “You white-faced witch! you would betray me for your convenience—to buy mercy from your Hungarian dupe——”

“It is not true,” flashed Giovanna. “I——”

“You lie,” interrupted Raymond hotly. “As you lied to him. As you lied to Ludovic that you were innocent of the King’s death. What manner of man is he to believe you? Innocent!” He drove the word home pitilessly. “When you were considering how you might decoy him to the convent, even as chance sent him—innocent, when it was at your feet——”

“Stop!” cried Giovanna hoarsely. “Is this your loyalty?” She faced him with desperate eyes and distended nostrils, her hands clasped across the bosom of her dress.

“I owe you no loyalty,” he retorted with passion. “I made you Queen. My hand kept you on the throne. Loyalty! I would have ridden over to Ludovic to make my peace by surrendering Naples. I should never have returned but for Maria!”

“You are very constant,” said Giovanna in a thick voice.

His bloodshot eyes turned a fierce glance on her. “I served you for your sister. I demand her. Everything is lost, but you owe me my reward—give me Maria d’Anjou.”

The Queen had no word for a long moment, then she answered in a voice barely audible:

“Would you be silent if I did?”

“Yes.”

But she dare not. Maria was promised to Ludovic. And then, could she trust him? No.

“You talk wildly,” she said. “Maria would not go with you—and the Hungarians will be in Naples in two days.”

His defaced armor rattled with his passionate breaths.

“Give me the key of her chamber—show me where it is. I shall not ask her if she will go. I have some men faithful. I will secure her and ride to Giordano.” He meant what he said. Desperate as it seemed, he meant it. She could doubt neither the intensity of his tone nor the fire in his eyes. She was silent, considering.

“Nay, bring her here,” continued Raymond eagerly. “Send for her now. Let me see her—speak to her. I could take her now—at once.”

Giovanna looked at him strangely.

“Well, I will not be ungrateful—you shall see her.” She moved in a heavy, weary manner to the door. When she reached it, she looked back over her shoulder. Raymond had seated himself at the table and was pouring out wine in the manner of a man worn out.

The Queen opened the door. In the blackness of the stairs the forms of men and the dull gleam of armor, the red locks of Luigi of Taranto and the crafty face of des Beaux showed obscurely.

“He is coming,” said the Queen in a steady whisper. “You know what to do.” And she shut the door. Slowly she returned to the table, where Raymond was drinking greedily.

“Maria is in the great hall alone,” she said. “So a page tells me—go to her there.”

He rose at once with flaming eyes. Ruined, desperate, the thought of seeing Maria d’Anjou was inspiration, strength.

“I shall take her to Giordano,” he said briskly. “I have enough men—she should be glad to leave Naples.” He strode past the Queen with contempt, but his wrath mollified. Let her not cheat him of Maria d’Anjou, and he cared not how many she duped or betrayed.

“May ye be more fortunate in your second King from Hungary,” he sneered. “As for me, I think I have finished with ye—farewell.”

“And I with ye,” she replied. “We have both played for our own ends, have we not?”

She preceded him to the door and opened it.

“Take care of the steps, Conte—it is dark.” She dragged her breath out painfully and trembled so that she had to lean against the wall. He, not thinking of her nor looking at her, stepped out. Instantly the Queen closed the door, bolted it, and flung herself against it with her hands over her ears. There was the sound of a hoarse cry, a struggle, the scuffling of feet, the clink of armor—it was very quickly over.

Giovanna remained, white, rigid, as if the life had been drained out of her, leaning against the heavy door, with her cold fingers in her ears and her vivid hair framing her face, with glazed eyes and strained, parted lips.

Sancia, coming from the inner chamber, saw her so, motionless, against the door, and all her old terrors reviving, she shrieked, falling back.

The Queen dropped her hands. “What is the matter?” she asked, and closed her eyes. “Where is Maria?”

Sancia, a shrinking figure in white, murmured an answer: “In her chamber, Madonna.”

“Ah, well—go,” said Giovanna.

The waiting woman disappeared and the room fell to silence.

The Queen began laughing in a ghastly fashion. “She does not know,” she muttered, as she crept along the wall, “that I am mad sometimes—that things come and talk to me—who was that?”

Her laughter began to be strangled with sobs.

“What am I doing? Oh, my head—my head!”

She dropped to her knees, crouching against the arras, and laughed again vacantly. Cautiously she looked round, and laid her finger on her lip with a cunning smile.

Then, with eager fingers, she tore the linen off her bosom, finding it under the pink velvet of her dress, and commenced rubbing the floor.

“How dark blood is!” she said, moistening her lips. “From the bed to the balcony.” Busily and noiselessly, on her hands and knees, she rubbed the unstained boards.

“If it dries, it never comes out,” she muttered. “Never—comes—out——”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN. THE KING’S AVENGER

Ludovic of Hungary paused in his march to Naples to visit the little gray convent of Santo-Pietro-a-Majello.

Toward sunset, a few men following him, he rode to the scene of his brother’s murder; up the fragrant garden where Andreas had passed only a few months ago, under the doorway Andreas had entered, laughing, the evening of September the thirteenth.

Ludovic spoke no word of his brother, but his usual arrogant demeanor was subdued to an utter quiet as the cowled monk conducted him to the chamber where Andreas had been murdered. The low, quiet chamber, hung with arras, picturing the virtues struggling with the vices.

The dying sun reddened walls and floor; touched the contorted figures in the tapestry and the placid gilt madonna on her bracket; the table below, and the brass bowl Queen Giovanna’s fingers had once filled with lilies. Through the open arches of the window showed the balcony, the little red roses with their long, thorny stems and crinkled leaves, and the wide landscape spreading toward Naples.

Ludovic pulled off his cap and stood inside the door looking about him. His tall figure, the splendor of his dress, the dark, wild beauty of his face showed in sharp contrast to the sunny, silent chamber, that appeared fitted better for the quiet presence of monks moving softly to and fro.

Presently he went to the window. The shifting of his chain armor, the clink of his huge spurs, broke the stillness sharply. In the last blaze of the sun his surtout, striped in scarlet and gold, and bearing the double-headed eagle, glistened fiercely as he stepped onto the balcony. The broken roses had grown again, the bloodstains been wiped away. On the balustrade where they had tied the rope a dove preened itself. A little warm wind stirred the scent from the vivid red blossoms. Ludovic leaned over the balustrade and looked down on the syringa bushes. Then he stepped back into the room.

Konrad of Gottif stood inside the door. The two men looked at each other.

“Where did he sleep?” asked the King.

Konrad pointed out the room. Ludovic crossed to the chamber, opened the door and glanced in.

Nothing there but an empty bed, an empty table and a bar of sunlight falling from a high window across the dusty floor.

The King closed the door. His dark face was markedly pale, his heavy brows frowning.

“And the Queen?” he asked, his tone lowered.

“The Queen slept in the chamber opposite.” Konrad of Gottif glanced at him curiously.

The King saw the look and paused in his walk across the room.

“Well?” he said. “An’ if she did, good my lord?”

“ ’Tis but a few paces from that room to the balcony,” was the answer. “God keep us from judgment, but——”

He paused, eying the King steadily.

“What more?” demanded Ludovic.

“Good my liege, she must have heard.”

“Must!” repeated Ludovic haughtily. “You would damn a woman on so small a surmise, Konrad of Gottif?”

He entered the Queen’s chamber without pausing for a reply.

There also was nothing out of the usual. It was a larger room than the other. In the center a carved bedstead hung with red, on one wall a crucifix, a dark chest, a chair completed the furniture.

Konrad of Gottif followed the King, his keen eyes fell on the bed.

“Mark the bed curtains, fair liege,” he said under his breath.

“Wherefore?” Ludovic glanced at them, half angrily. One was tied back with a thick silk cord, the other hung loose.

“You cannot hang a man without a rope,” said Konrad of Gottif dryly. “Where is the other cord?”

Ludovic looked at him in silence.

“What did they hang him with?” repeated the other. “Is it not a strange thing her bed should be so despoiled?”

“A hundred different matters might account for that, good Knight,” answered the King frowning. “Nay, we do not know that the chamber be as she left it.”

“The monks declare the rooms have been locked until they handed you the keys to-day——”

Ludovic interrupted him hotly:

“Would you tell me she was fiend enough to take the trappings from her bed to hang her husband—that his murderers entered her very chamber?”

Konrad of Gottif turned on his heel. “I have no more to say since you have sworn to believe this woman innocent.”

They descended into the outer room, and there the King, with a flushed face, laid his brown hand on Konrad’s sleeve.

“Tell me what you mean?” he said.

Konrad laughed. “What matter? I was your brother’s friend, my liege.”

Ludovic interrupted. “You think I am cold in his vengeance?” he demanded fiercely.

“I think,” was the steady answer, “that the woman won you too easily, by God, too easily!”

The dusky color flamed deeper in the King’s face; his brows lowered so that his eyes were hidden; he said nothing.

“When I rode to Hungary,” continued Konrad with flashing eyes, “it was to bring you to demand blood as the price of blood—blood spilled at the hands of a slave’s son—you came, armed with retribution, you defied the Church, you set Naples under your heel, very splendidly. Then this woman comes to you with soft words and you give her back her throne, and cry peace! when you should cry vengeance!”

“ ’Fore God, Konrad,” said the King thickly, “she is innocent!”

“You did not think so when the Princess Maria appealed to you—when you heard how Andreas had died, foully beneath her roof—what did you say then—‘between her and me the sword decides.’ ”

“I had not seen her then,” answered Ludovic in a hard voice. “I did not know——”

“That she had a baby face and golden hair,” flashed Konrad. “And a soft voice, and red lips to plead with——”

“Good my lord, you come near insolence,” Ludovic spoke evenly, but his square jaw was set hard as iron and the angry color glowed in his brown cheek.

But Konrad of Gottif, standing where his lord had been slain, speaking to the man whom he had brought to execute vengeance, was roused beyond any such consideration or fear of growing anger. “To be turned by a woman!” he said hotly. “You, a king and the avenger of a king—in one poor half hour to be swayed by a woman! How did she persuade you her husband’s death lay not at her door?”

Ludovic stood immovable. On his mouth a look of hard pride that came near obstinacy, in his hazel eyes an intolerant disdain of unpalatable speech. Sweet airs stole in through the windows, stirred the stiff surtout on his comely figure, and ruffled the heavy hair on his forehead.

“What proof, what evidence did she bring?” persisted Konrad of Gottif, breathing quickly.

From the height of his arrogance the King deigned to answer.

“None—it is sufficient that I believe her.”

Great wrath paled Count Konrad’s face.

“God wot, she is a witch, strong in the lures of the devil.”