THE SWORD DECIDES (continued 5)

“Mars!” he said hotly. “Ye will have no choice—ye are my betrothed before Christendom.”

She stood silent, unmoved, with her hand to her forehead.

“What am I that ye should fly from me to a nunnery?” demanded Ludovic. He thrust his hand into his sword belt and looked at her with proud, narrowed eyes.

“Words breed dissension,” said Maria, “and naught else. This is no matter for subtle argument, but for silent decision.”

“Is it, by the Rood!” cried the King with the hot color flushed up under his eyes. “For my decision then, and that, God wot, is soon come to—’tis that ye mind your duty and speak no more of nunneries.”

“Take it as ye will,” said Maria. “Ye cannot move me.”

Ludovic clenched the hand on his baldrick. “Ye are crazed utterly,” he answered. His brows gathered into a dark frown. “This should have come sooner—we have been betrothed long enough, God wot——”

At this, touching memories of her baseless, sweet dreams, the pale color came into her face.

“You could never understand,” she said in a voice a little shaken.

Ludovic regarded her a moment in silence. Though more than once he had, with larger issues in view and some thought of Giovanna, considered breaking his contract with Maria, now he was firmly resolved that nothing should prevent this marriage; that she should refuse him would hurt both his pride and his policy.

“I came to Naples for you,” he said. “To perform our long betrothal and the old King’s wish.” He frowned heavily. “There was a little princess at my mother’s court,” he broke off.

Upright, unmoved, stood Maria, with the morning sun about her and her eyes on the ground.

“I would have wedded her but for ye,” finished the King imperiously. “My chosen wife ye are—my wife ye shall be.”

Her bosom stirred under the red gown. She raised her face a little toward him; the passion that had made her glowing last night sprang to life in her eyes now.

“Ludovic of Hungary—what is lost between us is outside speech.”

“What is lost?” he repeated.

She put her hands to her side and clasped them there. Her face, flushed with that growing passion into a splendor of color, was lifted as if she challenged him. “Ye speak of our long betrothal,” she said unevenly. “Ye take credit that ye forbore another woman, thinking of me—of me!” The word rang scornful. “Oh, believe that in my long thoughts of you no other mingled—that, though they pressed me, I was very constant to those thoughts I had of you.”

Her voice fell suddenly. Ludovic looked at her curiously, his teeth in his underlip.

“I have watched until my eyes were weary, Ludovic of Hungary, for the distant glitter of your spears. I have prayed until my lips were white for your swift coming—my ears have strained for the sound of your horses below my window—my heart has wearied for the sound of your voice—but now, upon no terms ye could devise, for no reward ye could offer, would I give myself to you.”

Pale, but with proud eyes still on her beauty, he answered her.

“What has wrought this change in ye?”

The hands over her heart tightened.

“Put that to yourself,” she said, and her blue eyes held accusation.

Inwardly he winced, though he let her see nothing in his steady face.

“You judge too soon,” he answered. He thought of Sancia. “And by a woman’s standard,” he added with a faint smile.

“I neither judge nor condemn,” said Maria. “As I knew—you do not understand.”

His smile deepened.

“Now you—perchance?” he came a step nearer, resolved on softer methods. “Ah, well, we make the matter too heavy. Ye have been too much apart. Give me the chance and I will prove to you a King may love his wife——”

“Good my liege,” she answered. “I will not come second with any man.”

He looked at her straightly.

“So it is jealousy, after all?” And he wondered what she knew and how she had come by her knowledge.

“No,” she said. “I think it is a great indifference.” Then her eyes blazed again. “Do you think that if I cared enough to be jealous, I should go into a nunnery?”

“You will not go into a nunnery,” he answered masterfully. “Whether you care or not—no convent in Naples shall dare to take ye——”

“Do you think of my dowry?” she said bitterly, “that ye are so anxious to detain me?”

Anger made his tone quiet.

“Not alone your lands, but all Naples is mine by the lifting of my hand.”

“Then ye may spare me,” she answered and moved away by the long, disordered table.

At that, seeing her turn quietly from him, Ludovic flared into open anger. Instantly he was beside her, his hand on her velvet sleeve.

“Come,” he said. “Your reasons—ye do not set me aside so easily.”

She shrank as if his touch brought contamination. “My reasons?” she echoed, her eyes dilated. He took his hand from her arm.

“I am very distasteful to you,” he exclaimed hotly.

Maria drew slowly away down the table. The sunlight lay like gold threads in her heavy chestnut hair, and cast a delicate shadow over her averted cheek, sparkled in the glass on the table behind her and the smooth stems of the branching candlesticks.

“Mars!” cried Ludovic, struggling with quick anger. “You will tell me more of this—what you mean——”

She looked at him over her shoulder with wild eyes. “Have I not said what I mean?—the silence of the convent.” Then she was gone through the arcaded window into the loggia.

Before his fierce impatience would express itself by following her, the door by the Queen’s dais opened quickly, and was quickly closed. Ludovic looked round.

Standing in the dark corner of the room where the sunlight did not reach was Sancia di Renato, her white dress and her fair hair making a brightness in the gloom.

Ludovic, seeing some purpose in her coming, connecting it in his mind with Maria’s behavior, faced her in silence, his eyes bright with anger at being trapped between the emotions and recriminations of two women. Sancia was also still with awe and some shame.

The King frowned in a wrathful silence. Was he to lose his wife because of a snatched kiss or two and words of homage to a lovely face? “By Heaven,” he broke out, “what is the matter?”

But Sancia stood mute. She had risen early to find Ludovic and put before him the stolen casket. To her the matter did not involve the sins and punishments of a royal house, nor the agonizing intertwining of bruised affections that it meant to Maria. She merely saw her lover won by a woman whom she feared and loathed, and did the direct thing in seeking to ruin the Queen and win back Ludovic.

But now, with shame and fear, she began to sob, clasping the casket to her breast, now she was really face to face with him. Slowly she moved toward the table, her white dress flickered with gold thread flowers from the bosom to the feet. In her pale hair hung a little knot of scarlet. Her eyes were misted with her late weeping, her mouth trembled, and she gave quick, tearless sobs.

The King looked at her, and the flush on his dark cheek grew deeper.

The silence became terrible to Sancia. She set the casket on the table and thrust it toward the King. “Take it away,” she said in a muffled voice.

His intense eyes fell to the little casket. “What is this ye contend over?” he asked.

Sancia gave one glance at the King’s face, and the full color surged into her own. She sat down heavily on one of the drawn back chairs and closed her eyes as if she was swooning.

“Why should I hesitate?” she said thickly.

A breathless pause fell. The immovable sunlight, the heavy silence, became oppressive. Ludovic took up the casket and she made neither sound nor movement. It was a wooden casket, covered with stamped leather. In heavy gold it bore the arms of Anjou, and encircling the shield of lilies was this inscription:

“Memorare * novissima * tua * et * in * eternam * non * pechalis.”

Ludovic handled it slowly. The motto glittered hardly: “Remember thy later end and thou shalt not sin forever.”

He turned back the lid. Sancia was looking at him. And another’s gaze was upon him. Maria, passing the loggia, had seen Sancia, seen it was too late, and stood now, staring, breathless with this turn of fate, silent with hopelessness.

He saw some little fair curls lying on a parchment that bore familiar writing, and a gold chain he had often seen on his brother’s neck. He put the casket down and stepped back from it.

“Why, what have you given me?” he said, and he was shaken as a man who comes unawares on the dead.

With pity and terror, Sancia sat speechless, but Maria was strung beyond tenderness. “I found those things in your brother’s room at the Convent of Santo-Pietro-a-Majello,” she answered hollowly. “The letter is to you—will you not read it?”

The King looked at her in a bewildered half-reproach, as if he marveled at her swift return, and accused her of, in some way, entrapping him. Then he took up the casket again, unfolded the letter and read.

“I think he was too weary to finish it that night,” said Maria dully. “And on the morrow he was dead.”

(She came slowly into the room, to the terror of Sancia.) Ludovic gave no heed to her. He laid the letter back, looked at the broken chain, then he said, very hoarsely:

“This hair?”

“Yea,” answered Maria. “As I found it… on the balcony…”

“And this?” he raised distracted eyes to her as he touched fearfully the fragment of brocade and the auburn curl.

“That,” said Maria, with an indrawing of her breath, “is—her—hair and her dress.”

She ceased sharply.

“Yes?” whispered Ludovic.

“I took it from his hand,” she answered him, “as he lay beneath the balcony—her hair—her dress—clutched in his dead fingers——”

Her words stumbled into silence. The King stared at her, holding the open casket in his hand. Sancia rose by the table with her finger tips on the shining table, and her great weary eyes fixed on Ludovic.

Suddenly Maria spoke again, like one wounded and grown fierce with pain.

“You have the truth now—my reasons and all you asked for—the truth!—what will you do with your knowledge?”

Ludovic closed the casket.

“You wish me to think,” he said. “You mean me to think—that Giovanna is guilty——”

“Think what ye will,” answered Maria. “For I say no word one way or the other.”

“I do not believe it,” said Ludovic. “Remembering her as she came to me—I—do not believe it——”

Maria would not speak, but Sancia, leaning against the table, cried:

“I know she is guilty.”

Ludovic turned slowly and looked at the speaker.

“Of what?”

Sancia’s white lips shaped an answer.

“Of murder—of murder planned, of murder performed—of the murder of her husband and your brother, Andreas of Hungary.”

Since Konrad of Gottif had left, he had not heard that name. Hearing it now in this manner held him silent, the color ebbed from his face. He looked at neither of the women, but at the casket on the table.

“Have I not lived near her?” continued Sancia thickly. “Do I not know that she is a devil?”

Ludovic looked sharply up at Maria.

“You!—why do you stand there silent?” he demanded. “What do you think this means?”

“I think it means she was there—when they slew him——”

“Means!” burst out Sancia. “It means they slew him in her chamber, by her bed—it means he clung round her knees and they cut away her hair and her dress to free her—did I not see her wipe her floor with her linen vest and fold away her stained coverlet?”

“Ye come late with these tales,” said Ludovic. His face was livid, his mouth worked uncontrollably. “Is there one alive,” he asked desperately, “of those who were there that night?”

Maria answered him in her weary way. “They perished in the fires of San Eligio.”

“Yea,” said the King quickly. “She punished them——”

“She took good heed to that,” flashed Sancia. “And with the Conte d’Eboli—did he live to speak with you? I do think that when ye looked into his face he was dumb.”

It was a keen truth that seemed to show Ludovic his own folly in a swift flash; yet still he struggled with his old conviction. “Why have ye kept this from me?” he asked. He turned to Maria. “Why have ye conspired also to fool me—if this indeed be truth?”

“God knows,” she said wearily. “I have tried—I have waited—this Paduan maid has solved the riddle—the dishonor of our house comes better from her than from me,” her face lit with a cold pride, “for I also am of Anjou.”

The King looked from her to Sancia. “So you, out of hate for the Queen, bring me those,” he repeated his words, “out of hate for the Queen.”

Sancia lifted appealing eyes. Her wrath had died, leaving only shame and wretchedness. “I spoke because I was not strong enough to remain silent,” she murmured brokenly. She slipped into the chair behind her and hid her face.

“Ye loathe the Queen,” said Ludovic. “As most do—God wot she has few champions. Belike ye lie because of this hate.”

At that Sancia looked up. “I do not lie,” she whispered, “though I am very sinful—I speak the truth now.”

“Still ye hate the Queen,” repeated Ludovic sternly. “And your word is but the word of a shallow woman.”

Maria came from the window and put her hand on Sancia’s hand as it rested on the table. “It is not for ye to speak so of her,” she said with a quick color in her face. “If what she has done be to her shame—then on your soul rests that shame——”

Ludovic glanced from one to the other angrily. “So she has confided in you, my cousin?” he frowned fiercely. “When women league together, a man may never come at the truth.”

Sancia rose, hiding her face in her sleeve. “Ye will never be troubled again with me,” she said in a muffled voice. She lifted her wet eyes suddenly. “Shallow I may be and a thing not fit to disturb your thoughts, but do ye blame me that I took a King’s lies for truth?” She turned down the room. The sunlight gleamed an instant in the flowers on the gown and the pale hair, then the shadow enveloped her. She walked steadily to the door. The King, watching her, saw her pale fingers part the arras, saw it fall together as her quiet step died away.

The Princess made a movement as if she would have followed.

“Stay,” said Ludovic. He put out his hand to detain her. “Nay; ye shall speak to me,” for he saw silence written in her face. “I will know if ye work on me for your own ends——”

She interrupted him. “Do you think me that manner of woman? My ends? I have told ye my ends—a convent cell, a convent grave.”

In sad contrast to her youth were her words and her tired voice. Ludovic, bewildered, baffled, looked at her with horror in his eyes. That the soul should ever weary of the flesh was beyond his conception.

“Maria,” he said, for the first time using her name, “ye are to be my Queen. Ye shall not talk of graves.”

Her face held wondering contempt. “Do you not understand—now?”

His gaze fell to the casket.

“Ye think of Giovanna,” he said heavily.

“I think of her,” answered Maria.

Ludovic looked up again, fiercely. “How shall I deal with her?” he cried, goaded.

“As ye list,” said Maria. “As ye judge, punish, as ye believe, act. For me, my life is over. Farewell.”

All life and color had faded from his face, but he answered steadily: “I am master in Naples, and before two days are out ye shall be my wife. If ye enter a convent, I will bring you hence—yea, even from the altar steps. And as for Giovanna——”

He caught up the casket.

“As for Giovanna,” he repeated.

Maria, standing in the shaft of sunlight with unmoved eyes, was silent.

“What shall I do?” asked Ludovic thickly, frowning at her. He wished to bring her to either an accusation or a defense; to draw something from her, to some way probe her calm.

But she answered evenly, “I have no more to say.”

“Curse your saintliness!” he cried hotly. “But, after all”—he smiled bitterly—“between me—and—Giovanna—the sword decides.”

With the chest held against his side he left the dining hall.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR. FLIGHT

Maria turned through the long, open window into the garden.

She looked at the trees, the roses on their trellis, the sky and the long shadows, but could not escape the sense of confinement, imprisonment, that had haunted her in the house.

Slowly she walked down the paved path. The yellow sunshine could not warm her numb flesh. She thought of Giovanna. Giovanna quiet, stooping, with her reserved eyes and expressionless mouth. She thought of Ludovic, with the casket held to his side. She thought also of his words about the convent, and his refusal to set her free.

The walk was set with lilies. Her red gown caught against them; one or two fell, broken, on the path behind her, but she did not notice.

Presently she came to the marble terrace overlooking the bay, and slowly she turned and stared at the palace.

With a cold force, she resolved that she could never enter it again. That she could not look on Giovanna’s face when her secret was dragged into the light… that she must escape.

Escape! It was all about her like walls. The peaceful trees, the quiet flowers encircled and held her. Aimlessly she wandered. The plash of a fountain and the crystal light of it, broke her distraction. She paused, holding back the thick citron.

Carlo di Durazzo sat on the marble rim of the fountain. His head was turned from her; he stared into the water where his blue habit was reflected, and the gilded fish clustered round his fingers.

Beside him sat the Dwarf, half asleep, on the long grass, with the shadow of his ungainly head thrown across his tawdry vest.

The citron bough slipped from Maria’s grasp. The confused terror and wretchedness of her thoughts found relief in words and action.

“Carlo!” she cried, and with a hot vehemence that startled herself.

At once he turned, scattering the fish like threads of gold through the shining water. At once he rose and came toward her, with a flush of expectation on his smooth face, as one who receives a long-expected summons.

Maria held out her hands.

“I cannot go back to the palace.”

Carlo took her cold fingers into his hot grasp. His indolent indifference fell from him like a discarded cloak. “Is it my chance—at last?” he said simply.

The Dwarf, awaking at the sound of voices, saw the King’s betrothed holding the arm of Carlo di Durazzo as the two slipped through the trees. Saw the red and blue garments shine between the thick leaves and disappear. He drew himself up, climbed on to the edge of the basin and laughed. He disliked the King of Hungary, who had told him that his voice was cracked and his wit stale. He saw the makings of a pretty scandal in those two hurrying through the garden, and a scandal that would touch Ludovic. Therefore he laughed and winked at the goldfish.

He amused himself by picturing their swift, cloaked flight from the half-slumbering palace through the sunlit streets to the Castel di Durazzo. The quick summoning of the Duke’s soldiers, perhaps of the discontented populace—sedition in a moment, scattered like flame, and as quick to seize hold and destroy.

The goldfish swam round and round in a busy idleness. The dwarf nodded to himself, half asleep again, and was again aroused by one stepping into the shade out of the heavy glare of the sunshine.

It was Luigi of Taranto, massive, gloomy; his red hair hanging over his red face, and his gray eyes narrowed.

“Good morrow, magnificence,” said the Dwarf pleasantly.

Luigi of Taranto leaned against the slim trunk of an acacia and folded his arms across his chest. He wore leather, much worn, with armor, and a great sword dragged in the grass beside him.

“Is the Queen abroad yet?” he questioned.

“I do not think so, magnificence.” The Dwarf stroked his chin. “Have you seen the Hungarian galley in the bay?”

The Prince nodded.

“I have seen the man who brought the letters to the King from it. Who do ye think he was, fool? Lasglo, who was here with Andreas! I spoke with him. He says Konrad of Gottif has returned, and with a woman.”

“We have enough women,” remarked the Dwarf.

Luigi of Taranto smiled sourly. “He has come to stir the King up against Naples. Hark to me, fool—if ye value your ugly skin, ye will leave Naples.”

The Dwarf caught one of the fish and held it slackly in his huge hand. “Ye would not vouch for the safety of this city of ours, magnificence?”

The other frowned.

“Even now the people fight the Hungarians in the streets. Riots and mutinies at every turn. Des Beaux his withdrawn to Baiae—we near the last struggle, fool.”

The Dwarf let go of the writhing carp and watched it swim away. So had Maria d’Anjou and her fortune slipped through the fingers of Hungary.

“Who is there to struggle?” he asked. “Ludovic is the master.”

“There is the Queen,” said Luigi of Taranto. “And the man who marries the Queen.”

The Dwarf looked at the water.

“Oh!” he said, under his breath, and he glanced at the Prince sideways. Aloud he remarked:

“And there is your splendid cousin Carlo.”

The Prince smiled.

“Fit companion for you and dancing minstrels is the splendid Carlo, and for naught else.”

Whereat the Dwarf also smiled, hugging his secret.

Luigi of Taranto moved from the tree.

“Here is a crown for some man’s winning,” he said breathlessly. “And a Kingdom to be striven for.” He checked himself, and looked down at the little deformity he towered over. “Hast been in the streets lately, fool?”

“Yea,” the Dwarf nodded.

“How seemed the people?”

“Discontented, magnificence. Hot against the Hungarians. One ran along preaching the end of the world—sedition is hot.”

“So seemed it to me,” said Luigi of Taranto thoughtfully, and he turned away with his eyes moodily on the ground.

The Dwarf took off his cap and fanned himself with it, chuckling.

“The Queen!” he mocked, “and the man who marries the Queen!” He made a grimace at the tall figure walking slowly, yet resolutely, toward the palace.

Then, meditating on the people about him, their situations, their actions, he arranged on the broad brim of the fountain little symbols of them, with a thoughtful air. For Giovanna, a dark citron leaf, regal, yet suggesting secrecy; for Maria, beside her, the petal of a lily, cold and fragrant; for Ludovic of Hungary, the gaudy striped blossom of a carnation, blood-red and gold; for Sancia, a humble daisy, pulled from the thick grass. There remained the Duke di Duras, Konrad of Gottif and Luigi of Taranto. The Dwarf felt in his pocket and brought out a little knot of blue ribbon for Carlo, and a little twist of leather cord for his cousin. To represent the fierce Hungarian, he picked up a piece of hard, dry stick and laid it by his master, the carnation. His arrangements complete, the Dwarf hunched up his knees and laughed. A steady little wind was blowing sweetly through the trees. He waited, watching to see which of his kings, queens and princes would blow away and which would linger.

For a moment, none of them stirred; but a japonica blossom, red and fresh as a drop of wet blood, fell into their midst.

“Now who is this?” questioned the Dwarf. Then he smiled hugely. “ ’Tis the woman who came from Hungary with Konrad of Gottif!”

Even as he spoke, the breeze, gathering in strength, swept away the daisy and caused the lily leaf to tremble.

“The scene is soon clear of Madonna Sancia,” commented the Dwarf.

But, with the next gust, knot of ribbon and the carnation had been swept into the fountain.

The others stood steadily. The Dwarf counted his survivors.

“Luigi, Maria, Konrad, the Queen—and the woman who came in the galley from Hungary!”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE. CAROLA OF BOHEMIA

In his bedchamber the King mused sullenly, at war with circumstance. He had refused himself to those who sought admission to his presence, and, when he chose to raise his head to listen, he could hear the busy, perturbed voices of his Hungarians talking without the door.

Doubtless they wondered. Doubtless they saw, as he did, now these letters from home and the shock of Sancia’s accusation had roused him from his gayeties, that in the next few days Naples was to be lost or won.

He had put himself in a position not easy to hold with dignity. He knew they cursed him and his soldiers in Naples. He knew they mocked at home at his absence. He had roused the disdain of his mother and his betrothed—merely to pleasure Giovanna, who, if what they said was true, he should have delivered over to death months ago.

Yet he did not believe it was true. Last night, with eyes ardent, but not lover-like, she had entreated him to a grave conference to-day. She had spoken with a man’s weight and clearness of the state of popular feeling; of the ill-paid mercenaries, the mutinying guilds, her own empty coffers. She had urged upon him (putting aside his lighter talk with an absorbed frown) the reasons for his swift marriage and return to Hungary. Thinking of her as she was then, thinking of her as she had come to him in the old farmhouse at Aversa, he could not believe this thing.

The midday sun was ruddy over the brown panelings of the room, with their gilded lines, over the heavy polished furniture, and the scarlet and gold of the great bed.

On the steps of it, spread with fine, rich carpets, sat Ludovic, his young face pale and lined. The sight of his brother’s unfinished letter and broken chain had been like sudden announcement of that brother’s death, as if until now he had never realized that Andreas lay silent forever in San Gonnaro, bitter memories of their common boyhood arose to wound him: the generous worship of Andreas toward his elder, their great hunts together—at home in Hungary.

Ludovic bowed his head. He thought of Konrad of Gottif’s hot arrival in Buda, of his account of Andreas’s death and fierce denunciation of Giovanna, his mother’s tearless face as she had said to him, “Go ye and slay this woman.”

But it was so easy to forget—the present was so strong. He had forgotten; forgotten those vows in Buda, forgotten his own dead, forgotten those waiting at home.

Yet even now, with awakened remorse and grief in his heart, he was convinced that his judgment had been mistaken in pronouncing Giovanna innocent—neither Sancia’s passion, Maria’s calm nor the lock of hair had convinced him of that.

He tortured himself with doubts into a misery of hesitation. He could form no resolutions out of his tangled emotions. His strongest feeling grew to be a great dread and horror of meeting the Queen.

As the hour in which he had promised to meet her drew nearer, that fear of her grew. He could not look into her face until he had decided—he could not speak to her until he knew.

He wished Maria had goaded him. He would be the instrument, not the judge. His blood was cold toward Giovanna. Let some one fire it, and he might act, but in this spirit of sick wonder he could do nothing.

He rose from the steps of his bed and paced to and fro. He pictured Giovanna waiting for him. He pictured Maria watching for him to act, until his thoughts grew past bearing.

Then Sancia occurred to him—whether she lied or not, she knew something. He thought he could manage Sancia, and came at last to this resolve—to find her and question her, to nerve himself with her invective against the Queen.

When he left his room, he found that it was later in the day than he had imagined. He reflected that several hours had passed since Sancia had spoken to him, and that he had dallied with the situation longer than he had intended.

The antechambers were full of his people, idly amusing themselves.

He reprimanded them curtly for their careless lounging, and left a hush behind him as he passed them. They knew he was not always the mere gay knight Naples had known—he could be terrible.

In the library of the old King Roberto, hardly used in the Queen’s reign, Ludovic had first met Sancia alone.

She was dreaming over a book in French, “La Cité des Dames,” and he had come to look for a volume on falconry Luigi of Taranto had told him of.

Since then they had often met there, and about this hour. She might be there to-day.

With this thought in his mind, Ludovic ascended to the first floor of the tower and entered the library.

It was a large, low room, with narrow windows of painted glass behind a trellis of ironwork. The ceiling was of cypress work, painted in silver with the arms of Anjou; the walls of carved oak, against which were arranged the books in long, gilded shelves. A great silver lamp hung from the ceiling, and thirty branching candlesticks, decorated with knobs of lapis-lazuli, were fixed to the wall. In the time of the old King, these had been alight day and night, but in the court of Giovanna there was no one to save the lamps of learning from extinction.

Ludovic closed the door behind him.

Sancia was there, seated under the window in the massive reader’s chair, carved with flowers and monsters, and cushioned in dull purple velvet. She looked up. Her white dress and her shining hair were tempered to dull gold by the light pouring through the thick, colored glass behind her. The book she held in her hand slid to the ground.

She did not speak, and Ludovic was also silent. The still atmosphere of the place, the silence redolent of peace and wisdom was over them.

Then Sancia said brokenly:

“I did not think you would come to-day, or I should not be here.”

Ludovic picked up her book. It was an “Horæ,” and the open pages glittered with saints. He put it back on the shelves, then turned and looked at her.

“Sancia,” he said gravely, in a very low voice, “you must tell me what you know—about the Queen.”

She set her small hands on the smooth heads of the snarling dragons of her chair and clenched them there, tightly.

“I have told enough,” she answered faintly. “God forgive me.”

The silence fell again, and with it that sense of perfume of peace, the accompaniment of beautiful books, that, even when dumb, breathe of calm and wisdom. Then she said, in a voice that hardly stirred the air:

“I am going home to Padua.”

Ludovic stood leaning against the shelves, dyed gold from head to foot by the sun shining through the regal quarterings on the window.

“Did ye, then, lie to me?” he asked breathlessly.

She leaned forward in her chair and stared at him. “Nay, I did not lie.”

With the lifting of her eyes to his, something of the restraint between them vanished.

“Sancia,” he said slowly, and came toward her. “Forgive me, sweet—my sweet.”

She rose, and put out her hand as a barrier between them.

“I am going home,” was all her answer.

He stood the length of her arm away from her.

“So easily?” he questioned. “And without answering me?”

Her hand dropped, and hung against the lilies on her dress.

“I will say no word against the Queen,” she said.

“Why did you speak this morning?” he asked.

She was silent a little while, and Ludovic watched the sand running through an hour-glass that stood on the window-sill.

“I think you know,” she said at last. “All my life I shall repent it—and”—sudden passion touched her cold speech like a flame springing from ashes—“that ever I looked tenderly on your face, my liege!”

He flushed to the eyes, but answered her proudly:

“Whether ye hate me or no—answer me about the Queen.”

She looked at him with intense expression in her eyes. It seemed to him pity, and it wounded him sorely—the color burned more hotly in his swarthy face.

“Nay,” he said, setting his teeth. “I shall think ye spoke slander this morning.”

“The Queen!” answered Sancia wildly. “Why do ye think of her, when Maria——”

“What of Maria?” he demanded.

“I had not meant to tell you,” breathed Sancia. “But she—is gone!”

“Gone?”

Sancia shrank away from his fierce glance.

“She could not face it—the Dwarf saw them go.”

When Ludovic spoke again his soft voice was rough. “Who went with her?”

“Carlo di Durazzo,” whispered Sancia.

“Has that fool put this slight on me?” cried Ludovic. “Truly you have made me your sport, you in Naples!”

A bitter silence reigned. Sancia looked at the King’s haggard face with wide, yearning eyes. The golden light, changing, lay over the Spanish leather on the floor, the rich covers of the book, and sparkled in the silver lamp.

“Could not face it?” said Ludovic suddenly. “What could she not face?”

“Your dealing with Giovanna,” answered Sancia.

So Maria had felt as he had felt, dreaded what he had dreaded…

“What do ye think I shall do with the Queen?” he demanded hoarsely.

Sancia shuddered.

“I—I—do not know—do not come to me for help.”

There was the sound of her gown as she moved toward the door, the accusing look of her lovely face in the beautiful gloom; then the latch had lifted and fallen again—he was alone.

She had evaded him as they all evaded him. He alone must decide——

Decide! He thought of the mockery Maria’s flight would throw on him, and his first resolve was to run Carlo through, then that fell to chaos, and his one thought was Giovanna—Giovanna…

He flung himself in the chair Sancia had sat in, putting off facing the shame and scandal of his betrothed’s flight—blown abroad by now, perhaps, over the whole palace—and then—the Queen, waiting for him…

He thrust these things away from him. His sick head fell forward in his hands. He saw, through a mist of pain, the titles of the books on the even shelves, the undisturbed dust lying over them; the lilies of Anjou stamped on wood and leather. The quiet was broken by the opening of the heavy door, and the flash of a page’s scarlet dress.

The King looked up, frowning.

The boy went on his knee.

“The Lord Konrad of Gottif is here, my liege,” he said, “and importunate to speak with you.”

The King stared. He had thought Konrad in Hungary. Then he remembered the galley from home.

“He arrived last night?”

“Yes, my liege.”

“Bring him here,” said Ludovic somberly.

The page slipped through the darkness of the open door. The King sat frowning, staring on the ground.

He heard Konrad enter and the latch slip back into place. He knew the other was waiting, and for a space he kept him so, and would not look up.

Then he raised his eyes, and said curtly:

“Had ye my commands to return here?”

Konrad of Gottif flung back the green brocaded mantle that hung over his armor, and the mail rung pleasantly.

“God wot, King Ludovic, I had no commands of ye,” he said easily. “Your people sent me, and for them I stand here now.”

He came farther into the room. He was completely armed, save for his head, and that he had but just removed his helmet was seen by his heavy hair pressed into the line of the basnet.

“Ye ride well armed,” said the King curtly, aware of the difference in his own attire—the silk houppeland to the ground, fastened round the waist with gold, the velvet shoes, and the fine chains about his neck.

“I find the streets of Naples dangerous,” answered Konrad. His black eyes dwelt on the King steadily. “There are those at home, my liege, think them too dangerous for you.”

“There are those at home whom I will hang for meddling varlets,” flashed Ludovic. “Have ye made yourself the spokesman of such, Konrad of Gottif?” He rose and pushed back his chair. Above his high ermine collar his face showed pale and set in angry lines.

“I am the spokesman of your people and your mother,” said Konrad. “For those—and for King Andreas, lying in his bloody grave a bowshot from where ye dally with his vengeance.”

“I have avenged my brother,” answered the King quickly.

“No!” cried Konrad. “The Queen still lives!”

The two men looked at each other.

“I know not why I take this from ye,” said Ludovic. “Little do I care what they say of me at home—yet let not these impertinences reach too high, lest I return—over-suddenly.”

Konrad of Gottif folded his arms across his breast.

“Still ye do not answer me, Lord of Hungary. I say the woman, Giovanna of Naples, still lives.”

“And I say—ye are not her judge,” replied Ludovic hotly.

“Yet I stand for justice—is it for you to palter with the truth? From autumn till the spring have ye stayed here in idleness. I do think Christendom will smile to see such as ye beguiled by such as she.”

The King gave him a ghastly look.

“Come,” he said hoarsely. “Put it more plainly—ye think I have been fooled, cajoled—ye think this little cousin of mine—” he paused—“murdered my brother?” he finished.

“I believe it,” was the answer. “And so they think in Hungary.”

The King caught hold of the bookcase.

“Mother of God, if it should be so!”

Konrad of Gottif spoke quietly:

“It is so.”

Ludovic stood silent, looking down; his brow gathered into lines of pain, his right hand grasping the embossed back of “Les Trois Vertu,” his left hanging by his side, and the dusty gold light touching the silk and fur of his robe, the jewels round his throat and on his fingers.

Konrad of Gottif moved nearer. His breath began to come quickly.

“Even now,” he said in an intense tone, “as I rode through Naples, I saw them fortifying the Castel di Duras—they told me Maria d’Anjou was within, and that her cousin would hold her against the world. Shall Hungary take that insult? Shall she, also, laugh at you? Shall that fool Carlo prove himself the better man? Oh, Hungary, Hungary, up and act! Shake Naples about their heads—bring this woman to punishment—show them we breed no puppet kings—no hesitating men!”

The King looked up with a flushed face.

“What do ye goad me to?” he asked thickly.

“The man’s part,” breathed Konrad. “Take your sword and go to her—in the name of God, of Andreas, and of Hungary!”

Ludovic sat down in the massive chair.

“ ’Tis a woman,” he muttered.

“The fouler was the deed—would ye soften murder because a woman’s hand wrought it?”

Ludovic raised tortured eyes.

“ ’Tis a woman I have kissed,” he said. “And she—looks to me—and—oh, that is all of it,” he finished passionately. “ ’Tis a woman I have kissed!”

In the silence was the clink of Konrad’s armor as he moved slightly, then his voice:

“Still ye will deal judgment on her none the less because of—kisses.”

“Do ye know she is guilty?” demanded Ludovic.

“You know it,” was the answer.

It was true. In his soul he knew it now. Thinking on all the evidence against her—of Maria, of Sancia, he saw her guilt and his folly. Yet, though the thought of Andreas’s foul death shook him with fury, he could not associate Giovanna with her crime—remembering her, he strove to silence the accusation in his heart.

“I am waiting,” said Konrad of Gottif.

“For what?” asked Ludovic.

“For your decision, my liege.”

Ludovic sat up in his chair. He trembled exceedingly.

“If she is guilty——”

“I say she is—guilty of her husband’s death, guilty of Raymond de Cabane’s death, guilty of lies innumerable——”

“Then, if she cannot answer me when I accuse her of these things, I will shake her from her throne as I placed her on it——”

“And nothing more?”

Ludovic rose.

“If ye mean what I think ye mean,” he said hoarsely.

“I mean ye vowed in Buda to slay this woman——”

“Then I did not know myself—or her—if she was twice damned with blood, I could not do it——”

“Ye shall,” said Konrad of Gottif through set teeth, “or deliver her to some more dishonorable death—a death like his—over the balcony of Aversa!”

The King faced him fiercely.

“I say I cannot do it. Do you know how we parted—last night, only last night? And to-day I am to go to her—and murder her?”

“So—is this foreign woman more to ye than your blood—your own land?”

Ludovic steadied himself against the wall. “They have all been in league to deceive me,” he said brokenly. “This morning I heard—for the first time—Maria was too cold, too silent—but let it pass——”

Konrad of Gottif’s voice filled the pause with quiet weight:

“Remember what ye vowed in Buda!”

Ludovic clenched his hand against the bookcase.

“Peace of what I vowed in Buda!” he cried. “Have I not said—I am not convinced?”

Konrad flung up his head. “Will you go to her—will you accuse her to her face? And if she braves it out, ye must see her guilt then—come, will you do this?”

“And what then—what if I do?” breathed the King. “What if I see her, speak to her, and know this horror true—man, ye goad me past bearing. What then, I say?”

“What then? Ye ask me what then? Ye who are his brother, and wear a sword—ye could face her and know her guilty, and wonder what to do?” He struck his hand down on the great weapon he wore as he spoke, and his brows scowled heavily. “By God’s Heaven, if the King hesitates, there is one from Hungary will not! I, even I, will strike down at sight the cold wanton who slew my young lord Andreas!”

With the last words, his voice fell to softness. Ludovic looked up at him and the color rose into his haggard face.

“Ye always loved him,” he said.

Konrad of Gottif was silent, but his breast heaved under the shining armor, and his hand tightened convulsively on his sword hilt.

“Let her go,” continued the King. “I—I would not see her again. Let her be banished to Naples—let God decide——”

“A coward’s decision, Ludovic of Hungary! Let the sword decide!”

“My God!” answered the King thickly. “Ye forget your station.”

“And you yours,” said Konrad of Gottif bitterly. “But ye are one for the women to manage—a man might speak to ye in vain, while ye would respond to the flutter of a lady’s hand. I—I—have not moved ye?”

There was a soft sound of silk as the King stirred in his place.

“No!” he answered sternly.

The other smiled sourly.

“Mind ye of a little princess at your mother’s court who once had some influence with ye?”

Ludovic stared at him.

“She crossed the seas with me,” continued Konrad grimly. “By your mother’s desire—to move ye if I failed.” He turned toward the door. “Shall she come in?”

“Carola of Bohemia!” cried Ludovic. “Carola of Bohemia here?”

Konrad’s bitter smile deepened as he marked the success of his last move. The change in the King’s voice and face, his half movement from the wall.

“Come,” he said quietly. “We will see if we of Hungary cannot set a woman against the Neapolitan enchantress.”

The King put his hand to his ermine collar and drew himself up, as if he would make some motion to stay the other, but Konrad of Gottif had opened the door.

“Princess!” he said.

A light footstep sounded without. In a second she was within the room, and Konrad had closed the door behind her. She wore a heavy traveling mantle, the hood pushed back from her black hair, and clasped with a great emerald at the base of her white throat. She looked at the King with eyes as dark as his own. The rich color of her lips and cheeks had faded, and she trembled exceedingly.

Ludovic glanced from her to Konrad.

“You put some fine tricks upon me,” he said hotly.

Carola of Bohemia crossed the room and went on her knees by the King’s side and took his hand. “Ludovic!” she said. “You will deal with this Queen, and you will return, Ludovic—for Andreas, for Hungary—home?”

He strove to free his hand, to raise her up. The sudden sight of her face made him weak before her. She would not loose her hold on him. She spoke again, low, insistent:

“For the sake of the time we danced and sang and laughed in Buda—we three. The time when you loved me a little, Ludovic! For the sake of his mother, who cannot sleep thinking of him—alone—alone in his grave! For the sake of the people who wait for you in Hungary—for the glory of the eagles—for—for——”

She broke off abruptly, and rose in front of the bookcase. She looked at Ludovic and he at her. The golden light glittered over her plain attire and burned a green flame in the jewel at her throat.

“You will do it?” said Carola of Bohemia. “I have always known you were—magnificent! You will do this—magnificently!”

The King, looking at her steadily, with gleaming eyes, held out his hand, but before he could speak——

“Hush!” said Konrad of Gottif, and the door opened.

Carola put her hand in his. It was a page in Giovanna’s livery who entered.

“The Queen bid me say she waits,” he said to the King. “And the matters will not brook delay.”

Ludovic of Hungary, still looking at the woman whose hand he held, answered:

“Tell her I come.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX. THE ECLIPSE

The sick, cloying smell of the lilies troubled Ludovic. As he closed the door, his eyes slowly, reluctantly, sought the slight figure of the Queen, and the hot resolution that had brought him there, full of loathing for her, died within him. Many things had combined to rouse him to the full limit of his hate: Konrad’s urgings, aroused thoughts of Andreas, a conviction of her guilt, and the sight of Carola of Bohemia.

This, perhaps, most of all, though unconfessed to himself: Maria had slighted him, Sancia repulsed him, but Carola had crossed the seas to throw herself at his feet and beseech him to do it “magnificently.” His wounded pride could salve itself with that consideration—to her he was still a hero.

These things had brought him fiery to the Queen’s chamber, to redeem himself, to punish her—for the murder of his brother and the fooling of himself. He had brought the casket with him, meaning to fling the accusation at her and deal judgment, even as Konrad of Gottif would have done.

But the close, sick atmosphere of the room, her still figure, unnerved him instantly. He let the seconds slip by and could not speak.

Giovanna turned her head. She sat by the wall of her bedchamber; her page stood beside her. A low table, scattered with parchments, was close to her, and behind her a bright tapestry, worked with pheasants and unicorns. She wore a pale blue velvet gown that was gathered about her closely as she sat, slightly hunched together in the deep, massive chair. Her bedroom door was open, and from it could be heard the soft voices of women.

“How long you have been!” said Giovanna to the King. She looked tired, and as if she was cold, though the Italian sunshine was strong in the room.

Ludovic crossed to the table.

“Ye are very pale,” said the Queen. A passion of impatience shone in her eyes. Her little hands were clenched in her lap. “And is this a moment to be silent? Ye know that des Beaux has left Naples, and there is a rising in Sicily?”

Her words gave Ludovic a curious shock. So—her mind ran on nothing but politics, ambition. Always her kingdoms…

“Send away the boy,” he said heavily.

Giovanna motioned the page away instantly, keeping her intense eyes on the King.

“Come,” she breathed ardently. “You were to make me Queen and keep me Queen. I want money—men. These Lombard loans are due.” She pointed to the parchments on the table. “And the infamous interest to the Genoese——”

Ludovic moved away from her. She paused to watch him. He closed her bedchamber door and bolted it on the women within.

“Well, we are private now,” she continued. “What will you do for me?”

“I am considering,” said Ludovic. He kept his eyes from the Queen and stared at the tall lilies in the window, and their vivid shadows in the square of the sunshine.

Giovanna rose.

“What has happened?” she demanded. “Why will you not look at me? You have heard of Maria—do you blame me for that?”

Still he was silent.

“We will hang my fair cousin for this insult,” continued the Queen rapidly. “And shut his widow in a convent, and ye shall have her lands, Ludovic—only—help me.”

He turned to gaze at her. The heavy auburn hair hung in a gold net in the nape of her slender neck. Her violet eyes, shadowed underneath, were frantic with impatience, her underlip swollen where she had torn it with her teeth.

“Help you?” he echoed.

“Yesterday ye held a different language,” she answered hotly. “What has come to ye to-day, Ludovic of Hungary?”

His fingers tightened over the casket concealed in the silk folds of his houppeland.

“This action of Carlo’s has raised you another enemy,” he said, striving to gain time—to probe her.

“I know,” she replied desperately. “He must go——”

Swiftly he turned on her.

“Can ye bring a prince of the blood to execution for what he has done?”

Giovanna sank into her great chair.

“Perhaps not by daylight,” she said; “but there are other means.”

“Such as—murder?” demanded Ludovic.

At his tone she blanched with terror. “No! No! Ludovic—why are you so strange to-day?” In her agitation she again rose. And again sat down.

When she changed from her cold talk of state affairs to womanly trembling, she seemed very young and piteous. Ludovic could not nerve himself. He sat down opposite and hid his face with his hand.

“Are you ill?” she said, distracted. “Are you grieving for Maria?”

“No, no,” he answered. He was trembling, and she marked it. During all these months she had never seen him overcome—never otherwise than gay and bold. She beat her hands together.

“Do you, also, fail me—when I was looking to your strength—your courage?”

As he sat motionless, with averted face, she rose and came round to him.

“You said yesterday,” she whispered, her fine hands fell to his shoulders, her velvet gown touched his knee, “that you loved me,” she finished, speaking like a child.

As she touched him, the deadly sickness of utter cowardice smote Ludovic. He lifted a ghastly face, distorted from its beauty into a mere mask, but he could not move or speak—only sit there, cold to the heart, listening to the trembling beat of his pulses.

Her hands tightened on his shoulder.

“Why did you kiss me yesterday?” she demanded, “to look so on me to-day?”

With an inarticulate sound, he pushed her off and staggered up, meaning to face her standing, but his feet would not bear him. He had to lean against the wall.

He put his hand to his damp forehead and groaned. She stood looking at him, her head strained forward.

The rank scent of the lilies was overpowering. The dazzle of the sunlight on the floor, in her hair, seemed to sear his eyes. He tried to shape the words he wished to brand her with, but his tongue would not obey him.

Giovanna smoothed down the soft folds of her dress with a curious, slow gesture.

“What am I to think of ye, Ludovic?” she asked.

With an effort that shook him, he turned and set the casket on the table, among her parchments. With a trembling hand he pointed to it.

She picked it up quietly, traced the motto with her finger, and read it aloud:

“Remember thy later end, and thou shalt not sin for ever.”

Then she raised her head and laughed coolly, at which his blood was stirred to answer her:

“Open and see—your damnation,” he said, and he put his hand to the sword he had brought to slay her.

She lifted the lid, then dropped the casket from between her hands, leaving them out as if she still held it, while she turned a blank face to him.

“Ye—are—my brother’s—” Ludovic choked into silence. Her eyes were unbearable. He struggled with himself, cursing her that he was weak. Her hands fell to her side. His ragged voice broke again into the stillness:

“Ye murdered Andreas!”

“No,” she said mechanically. “No.”

“The proofs lie at your feet.” He put shaking hands on the sword by his side, fumbling with it.

She looked down at the floor. The piece of brocade Raymond had cut from her gown lay by her hem.

“Found in his hand,” said Ludovic hoarsely.

“He was—clinging to you… I think… your hair too…”

“Whose word?” cried Giovanna clearly. “On whose word do ye judge me?”

He pointed to what lay on the floor between them.

“ ’Tis enough.”

“This?” She set her foot on the brocade. “Did you find it in his hand?”

She spoke steadily. The white color of her face had not changed.

“Sancia knows—and Maria,” breathed Ludovic. “And I know——”

“The women lie,” cried Giovanna. “Are you their tool?”

Her eyes held scorn. “You,” she repeated, “who have been my friend and desired to be my lover, who believed me when I came to you first—you to be moved by their malice, their jealousy?”

Incredulous of her calm, her poise, he stared at her and his hand fell from his sword—would guilt dare so to face it? “However she outbrave it, you must see then,” Konrad had said, and he saw nothing, only the same inscrutable eyes, the same even voice.

“They lie,” said Giovanna. “Sancia may cut a fragment from my robe to swear she found it in his hand, Maria may bring his letter to move you—but I am innocent!”

Ludovic stumbled into the chair and rested his head in his trembling hands. He strove to recall what there was against her. Before it had seemed obvious, a thing crying aloud. Now, as she said, what was it but the word of malice and jealousy?

Maria had refused to speak further. Sancia would not confirm it, and—“God forgive me!” she had said.

The Queen’s voice broke upon his tortured thoughts.

“If ye think I did this thing—take me before my peers at Avignon!”

“God guide me,” muttered Ludovic. “If I knew—if I was sure——”

She moved slowly toward the table, her long shadow, the shadow of the lilies were distinct on the polished boards. She took a crucifix from the wall and held it up in her two hands—by her dress lay her dead husband’s bloody curls.

“If I swore,” she said, “on this?”

He rose in his seat.

“Would you dare?”

She put her lips to the crucifix.

“I call Christ, God and all his angels to witness that I am innocent of the murder of Andreas, my husband.”

She put the crucifix down, and looked into Ludovic’s eyes.

“And may God bring instant judgment upon me if I lie!”

He could not challenge what she had said. He stood vanquished, not daring to disbelieve.

“Does that satisfy you?” she asked. She laughed as she had laughed when she read the motto on the casket. Ludovic moved away sharply to the window and leaned there.

“Do you believe me?” she said again.

A heavy silence filled the low chamber for slow seconds. Then she crept toward him, and for the third time:

“Do you believe me? You see, God does not strike me down.” She touched the edge of his sleeve, then drew away again. He looked at her sideways.

Certainly they had lied about her. Remembering the terrific oath she had taken and her calm, he could not but think they had spoken false. Yet it galled him to be the shuttlecock of these women’s words.

“I think ye have persuaded me,” he said slowly.

She had returned to her chair and sat there, one hand among her parchments.

“Ye can be just,” she answered. There was no warmth in his confession, nor in her acceptance. Again a dragging silence.

Ludovic, gazing at the floor, saw the vivid sunshine less vivid, the shadows fainter, and marveled dully and told himself it was deception.

The Queen spoke steadily: “Is this to come between us?”

He answered brokenly: “God wot, I am enmeshed with doubts…”

“Is this love?” said Giovanna. “Is this a King’s word, Ludovic?”

Beyond question, now, the shadows on the floor, the shadows cast by the Queen’s chair, the table, the lilies and the fallen casket were growing fainter. The King glanced swiftly at the sky. It was utterly cloudless.

“You will believe me, yet abandon me,” continued the Queen hoarsely. “You will neither love nor hate me—you will stand aside—the coward’s part!”

He hardly heard her. As she spoke the light was paling—not as when it fades into twilight, but with no softening of the shadows that remained clear and defined, yet faint, as if it was all looked at through thick glass. Slowly, yet unmistakably, the chamber was darkening. And it was early in the afternoon, while the sky was cloudless.

“What is happening?” whispered Ludovic. He thought she had bewitched him—that he was going mad, going blind.

Now she had noticed it.

“A storm comes on,” she cried, and sprang up, knowing that the sky was clear; that no storm was ever heralded by this.

The steady darkness gathered. The sunlight was like faint stains in the unnatural gloom. Man and woman looked at each other with unutterable terror.

One thing was plain to both.

The sun was going out like a dying lamp. On the stillness of their horror broke a wild clamor of fear—the women locked in the inner room beat on the door.

Ludovic mechanically crossed the chamber and drew the bolt.

The two women stumbled across the floor.

“The end of the world,” said one, and the other shrieked.

In a second they had fled through the outer door, leaving it swinging wide behind them. It was now so dark they could see each other only as vague shapes—the wild clang of bells from the three hundred churches rang through the room.

Giovanna had stood erect, rigid, since she first rose. Now she flung herself on her knees and threw out her hands toward Ludovic, who cowered against the wall. He could just see the pale oval of her face and the shape of her arms as they waved up and down.

A wild voice rose, beating down the bells—he could hardly believe it hers:

“I confess! I confess! God have mercy upon me!”

The blackness descended as a thick veil over his eyes. He cried out in the agony of his terror and helplessness. The last glimmer of the window disappeared, swallowed into the huge darkness. Still that voice continued:

“I have murdered—I have lied—I opened the door to them—I saw him slain at my feet, Ludovic! Kill me! Let me pay that God may have mercy on me! I am red with blood! Let not the world end before I atone!”

Outside other voices, shrieking, and the tramp of panic-stricken feet. Ludovic strove to cling to his senses. This was the end of the world. God had come at last to Judgment, and she—she was confessing.

“Ye murdered him?” he shouted. He could not see his own hand before him.

Her answer came as if from a great distance. “Yes—for the crown of Naples I murdered him—I lured him there—I conceived it—I saw it done—I had Count Raymond slain that he might not speak! Slay me! Slay me! Purge me with the sword before the Devil snatches me to Hell!”

There was a sound as if she dragged herself along the floor. Her words rang about him like the bells, bearing no meaning—he was striving to number his own sins. His lips formed a broken prayer.

She tore her dress, her hair, fighting against the darkness as if it were a living thing. Details of her crimes, dragged from her own soul at last, made the blackness thick with horror. Steadily words poured from her. Ludovic listened at length, and through even the terror of the judgment day, the monstrous thing she had done hurried his heart beats.

Her fiery confession, painted on the blackness as in pictures of blood, her husband’s miserable death, the fires of San Eligio, and the distorted head of her fellow murderer. His hand went to his sword. Even now, on the edge of eternity, that poor weapon could drink her wretched blood—her death would be one thing to him when he came before the judgment seat.

Still she spoke on, as if she told prayers to her beads, assailing his ears with her foul thoughts, her foul deeds.

“He knelt down by my bed. He was bleeding, bleeding—I felt I should like to slay him myself… he would not die… he was very pale… ah, they beat on the door! ‘Bind up my arm, cousin,’ he said… I ran and opened the door. He had no weapon—I opened the door—they rushed in——”

Up through the blackness rose Ludovic’s sword.

“Witch!” he howled. “Devil!” and came at her where he thought her voice rose from.

“Oh, I am blind!” she yelled. “He died in the light!”

His sword plunged. Something clung to his knees. He dropped his weapon in a shrieking terror, and stooped to grapple with her by his hands. With all the strength of his frenzy he caught hold of soft flesh and trailing hair, and flung it from him…

A vast sobbing filled the darkness as if a thousand women wept together. In his madness he thought her kindred devils echoed her. He felt her where she lay and trampled her… then by the silence he knew he had set his foot on her face… on her mouth.

He fled—where, he could not tell, or if he ran forward or round—if he was still in her chamber or not. He seemed to have gone a vast distance, and yet he listened for her sobbing, the steady patter of her confession.

He did not know why he fled. It was not in his mind to escape. Often he ran into objects, bruising himself; yet still he fled.

Presently a red light swung across his vision. He hid his face, thinking Hell had broken loose… someone passed him, walking steadily.

Ludovic looked up. It was a tall man in armor, holding a torch, whose rich glow picked out him and the wall behind him.

“Where is the Queen?” he said calmly.

“ ’Tis the end of the world,” answered Ludovic wildly, and he fled from the flicker of the torch into the darkness again.

Luigi of Taranto stood still a moment and listened. In the streets and in the gardens the people were gathered, thronging toward the churches. Their clamor pierced the thick walls, but in the palace was silence—it seemed empty.

The Prince of Taranto mounted steadily to the Queen’s room. The utter blackness had changed the aspect of the palace, but presently he found her open door.

“Giovanna!” he said.

He swept the torch round the stillness. Its flaring smoky light revealed her, flung across the floor, with her arms wide apart.

Her dress was torn, her hair tangled over her bare shoulders. Along her face was a little mark of blood. For a moment he could not believe that this half-naked, tattered woman was the grave and splendid Queen.

As he gazed at her, the bells ceased. Even the churches had lost hope. He looked up quickly. There was no alteration in the utter darkness.

He moved round the room, searching for some other means of light, looking at the Queen now and then over his shoulder. With the torch in his hand he was helpless to even lift her up, and there was no place to set it.

As he came to the door, one ran past with a lamp—a slim squire, wailing prayers.

Luigi of Taranto gripped him by the shoulder and dragged him into the room.

The youth shrieked in terror.

“Is there no courage left in Naples?” cried the Prince scornfully. “I am no devil, boy, but Luigi of Taranto.”

The Squire stared at him blankly.

“Help me with the Queen,” commanded the Prince of Taranto. He took the lamp from the youth’s passive hand, set it on the table, and gave him the torch to hold. Then he loosened his cloak and flung it over the Queen’s dishevelment.

The heavy clink of his armor and the cross lights of torch and lamp disturbed the black silence.

“Lift her up,” he said, and raised her head himself. The boy, stayed a little from his terror by the sight of one who retained his calm, obeyed. Between them they carried her into her bedchamber and laid her on her curtained bed.

“God wot, she is very little weight,” said Luigi of Taranto softly.

But the Squire lapsed fresh into his fears. “ ’Tis the world’s end!” he cried. “I should be in the church!”

The Prince of Taranto looked at him grimly.

“If it is the world’s end,” he said, “which I wot well it is not—being nothing but a sudden darkness, the Devil will claim his own, whether they be in churches or no—and as for God,” he smiled somberly, “He will find us here as well as in the streets——”

“Ye think—?” stammered the Squire.

Luigi of Taranto was putting back the twisted hair from the Queen’s white brow.

“I think,” he said, “I shall be King of Naples to-morrow!”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN. KONRAD OF GOTTIF’S WIFE

The evil glow of Vesuvius, against which the flames rose and leaped, the multitudes about him bearing torches, lanterns, candles, showed Ludovic that he was in the street.

He strove to draw himself aside from the surging throng. It was impossible, the King was swept along next the beggar on the tide of panic and despair. Now the clamor of the bells had ceased, the guiding sound of the crowd had gone, and with it their last hope. They took it that God had forsaken the wicked city, since even the churches were overcome. Fighting and shrieking among themselves, they swayed to and fro, trampling each other under foot, pressing themselves to death against the high houses. One, gibbering with fear, dropped his torch. It caught the wooden threshold of a dwelling and the whole leaped into soaring fire. In the glow of it they scrambled, drawn like moths to a candle, yelling for “Light! Light!” Some, laughing horribly, threw themselves in, and the flames closed over them as they called for “Light! Light!” Like a runner bending to the race the fire curled low before the wind and leaped from house to house, till all to the right of Ludovic was scarlet and all to the left black, while the sounds of broken timber and falling walls mingled with the sobbing of the flames.

And now the terror of fire mastered the terror of the dark. The crowd turned and rushed back to the Palazzo San Eligio.

A troop of soldiers on panic-stricken horses dashed past, hurling down and trampling the people in their way.

Ludovic knew them for some of his Hungarians, but they did not see him in the press.

Forced along in the shouting confusion with the flames urging them behind, Ludovic found himself opposite a building blazing with light.

Some one cried out that it was the Castel di Durazzo and that the Duke had drawn the bridge up. Ludovic thought in a sick way of Maria and struggled on. A wild thought had come to him. The dead would rise at Judgment Day. Andreas was buried in San Gonnaro—if he would be there to meet him.… He forced his way to the cathedral. Again a horseman clattered by with a troop behind him. The torchlight fell on the face of Luigi of Taranto riding in the direction of the palace.

Ludovic, abreast of the crowd, entered the church. Tumultuous prayers rose to the roof and the air was thick with incense; a hundred wax candles lit up jeweled altars and gorgeous tombs, soaring columns and splendid carvings.

The King made his way to the chapel beside the altar, where his brother lay, and fell across his gravestone face downward.

This corner was unlit and empty. Ludovic thought himself alone until voices broke across his swounding prayers. He looked up to see the whole church sway together, the columns spring up, the lights break into innumerable stars, the people reel in the incense smoke, and above it all the face of Carola of Bohemia.

He rose to meet it standing.

“Andreas!” he cried, and fell forward.

* * * * *

Ludovic of Hungary opened his eyes on neither Heaven nor Hell, but on the empty church of San Gonnaro, and the placid sunlight about his feet. He dragged himself up, sick, bruised, exhausted, and gazed about him.

The evening sun, pouring through the rich glass, glowed on the tall pillars, the quiet tombs, the splendor of the altars. Ludovic rose and staggered from the chapel into the body of the church. Though there were traces of confusion, benches overturned, articles of clothing, books scattered about, there was not one person left of the hundreds who had crowded there, deafening the ears of the priests.

For the sun had come forth again.

Ludovic leaned against one of the smooth pillars a long while, striving, with a numb brain, to retrace what had occurred.

Had he slain her—had he seen Luigi of Taranto riding by torchlight like a war god toward the palace with soldiers clattering after him?—had that man seized the moment?

Slowly, painfully, he made his way to the door, crept into the porch beneath the semicircle of saints and angels, and stared down upon the city.

The earth had not opened and swallowed it; neither had the sky rent apart and showered fire upon it. The white houses with their colored roofs, the vivid palaces, showed in the softened light of evening. Ludovic gazed at the purple shadows gratefully and drank in the sunshine with a shiver of pleasure.

Many people hurried past. Officials of Naples on horseback, endeavoring to restore order; thieves creeping by with booty snatched in the confusion; tradesmen rushing to protect their shops; dark companies of nuns and monks bearing the wounded to the hospices; solitary passers-by wandering with dazed countenances and idle feet.

None noticed the young man in the tattered silk houppeland who stood in the shadow of the porch with his sick head resting against the stone feet of San Gonnaro.

Once a number of Hungarians in red and blue swept by, and Ludovic called out to them, but they passed without hearing, and he could not marvel at it, for to himself his voice sounded very faint.

Presently, as he waited with tumultuous thoughts and quiet face, another rode by, shading his eyes with a mailed hand on which the sun glittered, and looking from left to right.

“Konrad!” said the King. He came out on to the steps and the horseman drew rein. It was Konrad of Gottif; his helmet hung at his saddle, and his horse was red from the spur.

“The King!” he said, and leaped to the ground. Ludovic descended the steps to meet him. Konrad, holding the bridle in one hand, spoke again. “Up and down have I sought for ye—know ye what has happened at the palace?”

Ludovic shook his head wearily.

“Luigi of Taranto has flung himself and all the men he could gather into the Castel del Nuovo, and they have taken the drawbridge up—” He looked at the King intently. “Swiftly now, my liege, or we lose Naples.”

“He will oppose me?” asked Ludovic with his hand to his head.

“He has threatened to drive us as dogs from Naples—he will marry the Queen.”

The color rose into Ludovic’s swarthy face. Had he not slain the Queen? He dare not speak of it for fear he was distraught.

“Give me your horse,” he said abruptly, and sprang into the saddle. “Now, where are my Hungarians?”

As curtly Konrad answered:

“We have mustered in the Grand Palazzo.”

Before he gathered up the reins, Ludovic put his hand furtively to his side. His sword was gone. He had left it in Giovanna’s chamber. Certainly she was not alive to marry Luigi of Taranto.

With Konrad of Gottif at his horse’s head, he rode to the Grand Palazzo.

The sight of his men, the sound of their shouts as they saw him, the banners of Hungary against the evening sky, the blazoned arms, the pomp and glitter, roused Ludovic into his former gayety. Fear and horror had fled like phantoms before the sun. He galloped along the line of his soldiers, smiling at them.

“Shall we lose Naples?” he flashed to Konrad. “No!” and he stopped before one of the knights.

“Give me your sword,” he said, and thrust it into his belt. “Now am I armed again! Glory to God!”

They shouted furiously for their King in the tattered silks, and Ludovic cast his sparkling eyes to where Carola of Bohemia sat on a white palfrey close to the straining banner poles that bore the Hungarian eagles.

Like the first star when the storm clouds have passed was her pale fair face to him. Giovanna, Maria, Sancia were but memories dim with horror, while she, with eyes that spoke of home—she who crossed the seas to him after he had left her for his Italian bride—she who had been a child with him. His weary senses dwelt with an exquisite pleasure on her gentle presence. He turned the white horse toward her, in anticipation of her sweet welcome.

As he came alongside her, he spoke, in his marvelous soft voice:

“Carola—were you frightened?”

She looked at him straightly. Above her head the flag made a strong, fluttering sound.

“My husband was with me,” she said simply. “Yet even then, my liege, was I a little afraid.”

A great faintness came over Ludovic. He felt as he had felt when he stood in the church porch and idly watched the crowd hurrying past.

“Your husband?” he repeated.

“Konrad of Gottif,” answered Carola. “We have been wed these two months.”

For a second the King was silent, then he laughed. “I give you joy”—then he flushed—“of the better man,” he added, “though ye might have had a throne.”

Then he rode up to Henryk of Belgrade, and his hazel eyes were the eyes of a soldier.

“I have done with the women, Henryk,” and he laid his hand on the other’s shoulder. “Now,” and his breath came quickly, “I play with Kingdoms.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT. THE QUEEN’S SECOND HUSBAND

Giovanna lay in her great bed. Her head rested on a silk pillow with a heavy gold fringe, and the coverlet, striped green and purple, was drawn up to her pointed chin.

The room was shielded from the sun by purple velvet curtains and lit by red lamps on hanging chains. By the bedside sat Sancia di Renato with a great painted book on her knee and an ivory and jasper rosary in her hand; both, it seemed, forgotten, for she looked across the room with musing eyes, as if she traced pictures of her own on the dark walls.

From the next room drifted the scent of the lilies and pale gleams of sunshine, and from outside came heavy, unusual sounds, the metallic clink of hammers, the thud of wood on wood, men’s voices, eager and strained.

Presently Sancia rose, put aside the book and the rosary, and stood looking down at the Queen.

Giovanna opened her eyes.

“What are those noises?” she said. She had not spoken since Ludovic of Hungary had thrust her from his knees.

“The engines they bring into the palace,” answered Sancia softly, “and the masons fortifying the walls.”

“I have heard them for a long time,” said the Queen, and she closed her eyes again.

A sudden chatter of birds flying past fell across the hammer strokes, and Sancia shuddered.

“The Prince of Taranto is in the palace,” she whispered. “And you have been sick these many days.”

“Naples, Naples,” murmured the Queen, and did not open her eyes.

Sancia crept to the door of the antechamber. An old man sat half asleep before a table spread with bottles and glasses, and two women were spreading herbs and roots to dry in the sun.

“The Queen hath spoken,” whispered Sancia. “Will one tell the Prince?”

The physician roused himself with a start.

“Did I not say so?” he muttered, “on the third or seventh day, according as Jupiter is in conjunction with Mars—well, keep the sun off her——”

“And tell the Prince,” repeated Sancia. “He did most earnestly desire it.”

Softly she returned to the bed, took up her book and rosary, and sank into her old place.

The steady rise and fall of the hammers, the impression they created of sunshine and life outside this darkened sick chamber, the Queen’s low breathing, and the red flicker of the lamps, swayed her senses into dreaminess.

Suddenly Giovanna moved and the weary violet eyes opened again.

“Who rules in Naples?” she asked.

“You are the Queen,” said Sancia.

For a while she was silent as a child thinking over a problem, then she spoke again:

“Where is my cousin Ludovic?”

Sancia winced. Giovanna’s face and voice were so expressionless, it seemed she must have forgotten.

“He holds half Naples,” answered Sancia, in a low tone. “Against the Prince of Taranto—he fled hence in the great darkness—he——”

Giovanna did not notice the unfinished sentence.

“And Maria?” she whispered, turning her head on the pillow.

“She is the Duchess di Duras now.”

The Queen turned her head away again, as if she had not heard.

“It is surely the springtide,” she murmured, “for the hammer strokes sound so clearly and the flowers smell so sweet—like the violets round the villas at Baiae.” As she spoke one of the women came to the outer door.

“The Prince would see the Queen.”

Giovanna caught the words, softly as they were spoken. “Bring him to me,” she said. “Oh, aye, bring him here.” She sat up in bed. Her heavy silk nightgown, edged with fur, fell open at the throat, and her auburn hair twisted on to her shoulders. Then she dropped back against the pillows, with her frail white hands on the coverlet.

“She remembers nothing,” thought Sancia, and she said:

“Shall I bind up your hair, Madonna, and put some robe on you?”

“It was a beautiful dress,” whispered Giovanna; “with gorgeous embroideries on it—peacocks, apples and flowers. Do you remember the thirteenth day of September? But bring him up.”

Sancia shrank away from the bed. Outside a quick step sounded, and Luigi of Taranto appeared in the doorway. Over his armor he wore a loose scarlet robe and his heavy face was set and stern.

He crossed at once to the bed and held aside the curtains.

“Oh, you!” said Giovanna. “You!”

He lifted her hand from the shimmering coverlet.

“Do you know me?” he said earnestly.

A troubled look passed across her face.

“Yes,” she assented, but half fearfully.

He was silent a while, looking at her, and his gray eyes grew hard with calculation. The lamplight flickered in the black damascening of his armor, where it showed on the opening of his robe.

Sancia, standing against the wall, watched them—the great knight and the lady on the vast bed, his roughly shaped hand holding her fragile fingers.

“Listen,” said the Prince at length. “I have saved you from your enemies—do you understand, Giovanna?”

She nodded.

“Ludovic of Hungary, who is no great King after all,” and he smiled grimly, “I have already driven to the very gates of Naples. I seized the palace, and with it great quantities of his treasure. The people, hating the foreigner, are gathering round me again. Do you understand, Giovanna?”

“Yes,” she said faintly.

“And because of these things,” he continued, “I shall marry you, and the Pope shall recognize me as King of this land. And it is the only way for you, even if you mislike me, for you are in my power. But I swear by Christ, you need not mislike me, for I like you as well as ever I liked a woman, and, if you do not cross me, I will make life pleasant for you.” At the end of this speech he let go of her hand and leaned against the bedpost, frowning at her, and she turned her face to the pillow, while her long throat was caught with sobs.

“Fetch the notary,” said Luigi to Sancia, and when she had gone he bent over the Queen and touched her shoulder.

“My kingdom,” she moaned.

“Would ye rather Hungary had your kingdom?” he answered fiercely. “Ye shall rule it with me—for truly I like you well.”

At that she sat up and faced him, putting aside the tangle of her hair. Under the heavy silk her shoulders heaved.

“I slew my first husband,” she said wildly.

Luigi of Taranto looked at her somberly. “I knew it—always. Do you think I am afraid? I am not such an one as Andreas.”

She wrung her hands together.

“Oh, how I hated him! A boy—to snatch my crown from me! Yet it was black sin, and Ludovic—” She stopped as if her memory had suddenly failed her.

“Ludovic,” repeated the Prince. “What is he to you? He dallied round you. He has a fair face, God wot, yet I think he is a man of little worth, or he had settled this before—come, do you care for him?”

“For none,” she answered dully. “Least of all for him.” Then her face suddenly brightened. “Luigi, he was a fool, was he not? Finely I cajoled him, and then—ah, what has happened to me? I cannot think—” She sat up, with her fingers to her lips, staring at him.

“Listen to me,” he said. “I know—and some others. This King knows, does he not? But what I found on the floor in yonder chamber I burned. He has no proof. He came for his vengeance and has failed—by God, I think so—and I shall know how to deal with defamers of my wife. Once more, do ye understand me—that ye are safe?”

She turned her head away and would not speak, but when the notary entered with his parchments, she put her name to the marriage contract, and wrote it steadily beside her cousin’s signature, and, at his request, they brought her royal seal and she set that on it. But when they had gone she put her face in her hands and wept.

“Am I a footstool to your ambition?” she sobbed. Then, “Have I lost my kingdom?”

Luigi of Taranto stood watching her, frowning and biting his forefinger. On the other side of the bed Sancia waited, with a weary face.

“Will you arise?” he said at length. “I have the Legate in the chapel to marry us.”

She looked up at him with wild, wet eyes.

“I did read of a man once—’twas in a great clasped book—and he sinned, sinned, yet for nothing. And still he served the ends of others, sinning deeper, and when he came to die, he was poor and old. The Devil fetched him, and he said, I might have lived honorably—for ye are a bad paymaster.” The tears rolled slowly down her face, as she stared at him blindly.

“Ye are weak,” he said. “Where had ye been without me? At the mercy of Hungary’s tardy vengeance.”

She choked back her tears.

“Let me arise,” she said. “Help me.”

She laid her hand on his arm and rose, setting her bare feet on the green carpet of the bed steps. She sat so, with her hand to her forehead, and Sancia brought her scarlet velvet shoes.

Silent the Prince took them, and, kneeling, put them on the Queen’s feet, while Sancia folded a golden silk robe about her.

She sat quite still, until the Prince got onto his feet. Then she rose also, and tried to walk, but, being very weak, she fell against the hard armor on his breast, and lay there, silent for shame and rage at her helplessness.

He set her in a chair by the bed.

“Would you have your sister see you?” he asked. “For Carlo and I are in league.”

She shook her head. “It was black sin,” she said, “but I hated him. Why am I always driven into sin? I would be Queen. Queen! Why”—she flashed a desperate look on him—“did I not take his kisses because he would make me Queen? What was he to me—or any man?” She put her hand to her throat, gathering the silks together. “Did I not promise Maria to Raymond if he would make me Queen?”

“I will do that for you,” answered the Prince. “Will I not clear your kingdom of the invaders? Ludovic would not leave you your throne—now he knows.”

“Aye,” she cried feverishly. “He knows—and all the world beside! Yet, how I kept my secret—though it made me mad——”

“These things are not things to speak of,” he answered, and made to bend closer to her, but she held him off with a weak resistance by her feeble hand on his arm.

“Oh, you!” she said. “I never thought of you—you seemed to me an unambitious man.”

“God wot, I waited.”

“And now,” she answered, “ye snatch the greatest prize of all—my Kingdom!”

He moved away from her somberly.

“Bring her to the chapel,” he said to Sancia, and was gone.

Giovanna sat slackly, her long fingers playing with her hair.

“My cousin Luigi,” she murmured. “Why, I am very tired, and the flowers smell so sweet—if I could remember!”

Sancia crossed the room, with a pale gleam of yellow draperies in the gloomy light, and in her hand a girdle of plates of gold set with amethyst, that she clasped round the passive Queen.

As she was turning again, Giovanna caught her by the white wrists and held her with a sudden strength.

“Could we escape?” she whispered hurriedly. “If I could get among the people they might shout for me as they did when the old King died—I might be Queen again.”

“It is not possible,” answered Sancia. She thought she had never seen the Queen’s upturned face look so lovely as it did now, softened by tears.

The golden girdle heaved under Giovanna’s bosom. “What he said he would do for me! You—have you ever loved?”

“Let me free,” breathed Sancia. “Aye, I have loved and repented.”

“And been loved?” questioned the Queen.

“I know not,” shuddered Sancia, and dragged her hands away.

“Love! It is but a word!” cried Giovanna. “Nothing he did for me—nothing!” She leaned forward and clung to the other’s arm with cold fingers. Her voice changed and sank.

“I have lain so long—listening to the hammers, and I fancied they were building my tomb. See! they make it splendid! Let me lie with a crown on my head, and a scepter in my hand; under my feet a lion, and beside me a shield, thick with lilies of the Angevin Kings——”

She paused, then whispered:

“For, even if my soul is in Hell, let my body be housed magnificently with enamel, gems and carved angels. So I may lie a thousand years—a crowned Queen!”

“I deck you for a wedding, not a funeral,” answered Sancia quickly.

Giovanna let go of her.

“My wedding! When they married me before, I clenched my hand that I might not strike his proxy in the face, but the men stood close as gathered spears about me to see it done. These men—shall we be never better than their tools!”

She rose up, drawn to her full height, held her hand out and looked at it. “I took his ring from off that finger as they slew him outside my door,” she said passionately. “And shall my cousin Luigi bind me to slavery with another ring?”

“Much misery has distracted you,” answered Sancia, trembling. “Yet speak more quietly, or I, also, shall run mad.”

The fire died out of the Queen’s eyes. She sat down in a quiet silence and let Sancia dress her hair, put gold on her neck and arms, and fasten an ermine côtehardie over the yellow silk.

Leaning on Sancia’s arm, she came passively to the chapel at the end of the corridor. Soldiers were gathered round the entrance, and she looked at them strangely.

Luigi of Taranto stood by the little altar, with his hand on the gilded rails, talking to the Legate. The light from the rose window that glowed in overlapping petals of purple, gold, orange and Turkish blue, fell upon his close red hair and scarlet mantle, casting a dusky shadow behind him.

Into this glory of color, the Queen crept, holding her gown off her shoes.

The Legate turned to her: “Is this by your full consent, my liege?” he said, surveying her wisely through half-closed eyes.

The color slowly rose into her face. A wild thought of defying them shook her for a moment. Yet, if she did, they would drag her before the court at Avignon. She looked at her cousin’s quiet gray eyes, at his clasp of the altar rails. She moistened her lips, and said lifelessly:

“Yea.”

The chapel was full of nobles and their wives, bribed by some means to follow the Prince of Taranto. Her mad eyes swept the circle of their faces, then she sank on her knees on the violet cushion placed for her.

Luigi of Taranto knelt beside her. She heard his armor strike the flags. She looked at his hand, still clasped on the rails.

The pale notary unrolled his parchment, and commenced reading the marriage contract between the very illustrious Luigi, Prince of Taranto, and Giovanna d’Anjou, Queen of Naples, Jerusalem and Sicily. This was followed by the grand almoner’s reading of the apostolical letters (supplied on his own authority by the Legate, and yet lacking confirmation from Avignon) of His Holiness, which sanctioned the marriage and gave his well-beloved son and daughter his benediction. At that, the Legate put the Queen’s hand in her cousin’s, and he helped her to her feet as he rose himself.

“Before God and man,” Luigi said, in a strong voice, half turning, “this is my wife.”

“And this is my husband,” Giovanna replied dully.

The gathered witnesses began leaving the chapel. Giovanna took no heed of them. She was leaning against the wall, and, by the shimmering of the yellow silk above her broad girdle, it might be seen how pantingly her breath came. There were white roses on the altar, and she had picked up one from the steps. She looked at it now, then presently dropped it, on purpose, it seemed.

Luigi of Taranto, pausing in his conversation with the Legate, stooped, picked up the flower, and gave it her.

She took it, moved a little forward, and dashed it in his face with such force that the fine petals were scattered over his robe and armor, and the stem snapped in her hand.

There were many curious eyes watching her, upright, with a white face and furious, narrow glance, and him, gazing at her quietly and slowly, flicking the petals from his sleeve.

Then, suddenly, she turned from his steady eyes, put out her hands, and fell down by the wall as if an arrow had touched her heart.

“Take her away,” said the Prince.

In silence they took her up, two of the women at her head, and two of the men at her feet.

Luigi fell into his trick of biting his forefinger as he watched her carried out. One of the red shoes had been dropped, and he saw her white foot against her gown, and her white face against her hair, all stained red from the scarlet blazonry of the window.

After a little silence, he, also, left the chapel.

Without the door stood Sancia. First he passed her, but, looking back, retraced his steps and spoke to her.

“Do you not desire, Madonna, to return to Padua?”

“I am content here,” she answered.

“Ye have been very devoted to the Queen,” he said, as if he could not understand. “I would not keep you here when you are not of this Kingdom. Truly there will be great fighting, and, if you will, I can see you safely out of Naples.”

She lifted her lovely face, and fixed on him large, earnest eyes.

“What is my life to me?” she answered. “You know, I think, that I betrayed the Queen, who was my mistress and had not harmed me—God wot, I would a little make amends.”

“The Queen,” he said softly, “does not remember you, nor what you did. Something I learned—from Maria, I do think,” and he looked down at the ground, “we cannot judge one another. I—who have always known—do not rate her the less for this”—he broke off—“nay, if you will, depart in friendliness.”

“Let me stay,” she said.

He frowned. “Why, if you will.” He went from her heavily. At the end of the corridor he paused and listened.

Dull, thick sounds filled the palace. He flung himself down the stairs. Half-way, he met some running up.

“The Hungarians!” they cried.

He swept off the scarlet robe on to the stairs and shouted for his helmet.

Steadily came the noise of the catapult and battering ram, the distant cry of the enemy.