THE SWORD DECIDES (continued 6)

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE. THE BATTLE IN THE STREETS

The great engines of war, dragged by straining men and horses, the companies of heavy cavalry, blocked the streets about the Castel del Nuovo. The drawbridge was up and above the high outer wall. The gleam of the armed warders and the fine line of their spears might be seen as they moved to and fro. At the side rose the high bastions that enclosed the palace gardens, and over them waved the poplar trees, reflected in the moat below.

All was crowned by the standard of Anjou, floating against the cloudless blue from the highest watch tower in a flutter of gold and white.

Ludovic of Hungary, pressing forward, raised his visor and eagerly scanned the enemy’s ramparts. He had not brought his men as far as this unopposed. The populace had striven, with the rude weapons of a mob, to drive them back, and some of the nobles had made sorties upon them as they passed; but overwhelmingly strong in numbers and arms, the Hungarians had fought their way to the heart of the city with little loss.

Ludovic gazed at the castle where he had spent those months of pleasant idleness, Giovanna’s fool, and Maria’s scorn, the suitor of a tirewoman, and the dupe of a court of knaves. His blood was up. He vowed to bring it level with the ground, stone by stone, and hang Luigi of Taranto over the ruins.

There was nothing now to come between Naples and his wrath. He would lay it waste from end to end, sparing none. That great mysterious darkness which the astrologers had declared a portent of disaster, had passed from his mind. With the show of battle round him, it was not possible for him to be anything but elated. Splendid with his weapons, his horse, his swift victories over the Turks had won him the name of “The Triumphant” even in his early youth. The thought of these days came to him now, and nothing was good in his sight but the clangor of arms and the unfaltering decision of the sword.

With a company of knights, he rode up to the great gates that guarded the moat, and turning in his saddle, looked at his host gathered in the Grand Palazzo.

As some relief from the insupportable heat of the blazing sun on the plate armor, the gentlemen wore surcoats, mantles, and lambrequins of cloth, silk, and even fur, while their followers, the footmen, wore on their breasts the badge of their masters. So the whole army was a mass of color, like a vast mosaic, upon which the sun glittered from a purple sky, showing crests, banners, the smooth shapes of horses, while, brown and black between their studded harness, the rude carriages and monstrous shapes of the catapults and mortars, the bright tufts of the arrowheads in their quivers on the backs of the bowmen, and on all that array of scarlet and silver, embroidery and feathers learned by Hungary from the East and at once fierce and splendid.

The drawbridge gates were unguarded, and the castle made no sign when the Hungarian cavalry took them at a gallop, and the engineers, under the shouted commands of the King, began to span the moat with scaling ladders, while some of the horsemen urged their steeds to swim the dark water.

Without any opposition the ladders were grappled to the masonry of the bastions, and the footmen swarmed across, a chain of eager figures. Then from the quiet ramparts descended a stream of living fire, boiling water, and hot stones, while from every loophole flew an arrow.

Men and ladders fell into the moat. Shrieks and groans rose from the invaders, and from the warders on the battlements cries of triumph. A great movement swept through the gathered army. The mortars, belching flame and turned full on the stubborn walls; fresh ladders were thrown across; regardless of those writhing in the water, others flung themselves against the castle, hurling fuses of gunpowder into the interstices of the stone. Arrows and missiles came in a second volley; the moat began to be full of struggling men and horses; they could not get the battering rams near enough to use them. Konrad of Gottif yelled with rage to see his men hurled like flies off the walls. Among the seething confusion, he next to the King was noticeable, spurring his horse to and fro.

Then there arose a great shout from the rear. A party of horsemen, bearing the lilies of Anjou as their device had rushed up one of the narrow streets and were attacking the Hungarians.

At that the castle was abandoned, and Ludovic flung himself on the new enemy. They were too near to use the arrows, so it became a hand-to-hand fight between the knights and lancers.

The leader of the Italians, calling on “Santa Maria,” came at Ludovic and his band of knights, spears shivered against the uplifted shields, crests were lopped off, mantles and surcoats rent; more than one man fell swooning from his horse, vanquished by the weight of his armor and the heat beating on his helm.

Many, too, were unhorsed in attempting to wheel round their cumbersome chargers to meet the unlooked-for attack, and Hungarians trampled their fellows down as they fell on the enemy.

From the ramparts the garrison of the castle watched, standing by the fires, where water and stones were heated in readiness for the next attack. For an hour the lilies strove with the eagles, and neither side gave way, though the dead became numerous and the living faint.

It was now full noon and the heat intolerable. Ludovic struggled in a great press of knights, and the leader of the Italians strove to get at him through the enclosing spears.

Henryk of Belgrade dropped from his horse with a spear thrust between the rivets of his armor. A companion of the King, unlacing his helmet for air, had his head swept off at the bare throat, and his blood scattered over Ludovic’s white horse.

The King ground his teeth and swung up his sword. “At the King!” shouted the Italian to his men, and he pointed with his gold gauntlet to Ludovic, conspicuous by the crown studded with gems on his helmet and the peacock feathers rising high above it. The Hungarians again rallied, again fell back, yet stubbornly, and Ludovic’s clear voice, strained by a very fury of fighting, urged them on.

Then there was a quick sound of grinding chains, the new thunder of hoofs, a fresh battle cry.

“St. Luigi for Anjou!”

And Luigi of Taranto, at the head of his men, made a sally over the lowered drawbridge into the heart of the mêlée.

Wild cries of joy rose from the Italians; the Hungarians, hemmed in on each side, turned at bay, intrepid, without a sound.

Like the huge waves, foaming with the glitter of metal, they met, retreated with the sheer shock of the encounter, met again and grappled.

At last Ludovic found himself face to face with the knight who had brought up the Italians. He did not know who he was. His inlaid armor was dented, his crest gone, his surcoat torn to rags. Through the slit of his helmet his eyes flashed wrath, and Ludovic struck at him, hating him exceedingly. The weapon caught the shield and sparks flew; the King’s horse backed; the other swung his battle-ax; Ludovic caught it on his vambrace and winced with pain. His opponent shouted, came at him with the sword and cut the silken eagles from his breast. The King, transported with rage, brought down his weapon on the other’s helm.

The knight swayed for a moment, then gave a great groan. Ludovic, rising in his stirrups, felled him with his battle-ax.

“Who are you?” he shouted, and leaning forward, he caught the falling man by the throat and forced up his visor.

The smooth features, stained and pallid now, of Carlo di Durazzo were revealed.

“You!” cried Ludovic. “You bought your last follies dear!”

And with that he gave him the “coup de grace” with his studded mace and sent him with a split head backward into the moat, where the gold armor glittered for a moment in the dark water before the waves, thick with blood, closed over what had been Carlo di Durazzo, Duke di Duras, prince of the blood of Anjou, cousin to the Queen, light cavalier, shallow idler, and for a week husband of Maria d’Anjou, and a courageous knight, showing something of the Charles Martel blood in him, after all his softness.

Ludovic, swinging the wet mace, galloped among his men.

“The Duke di Duras is dead!” he shouted. “Up, Hungary. Serve his cousin of Taranto so!”

A groan rose from the Italians. One had seen the Duke slain and rushed to Luigi of Taranto with the news, and even that Prince could not repress a sound of wrath and sorrow. More than a young knight had fallen. The man who held Maria’s lands, his greatest folly, had died heirless, leaving confusion.

The personal followers of Carlo now fell back disheartened, nor could the Prince of Taranto urge them on. The Hungarians, seeing their advantage, pressed it. The Italians began to yield. Luigi, fearful for the castle, tried to make for the drawbridge, which he had commanded to be left down in case of retreat; but the enemy intercepted him with shouts of “Seize the bridge!”

A wild struggle ensued on the edge of the moat. The few men left in the castle and the women rushed onto the ramparts and hurled down stones and steaming water, but their missiles fell on friends as well as enemies, and Luigi of Taranto, his arm half broken by a paving stone flung by one of his own masons, shouted to them to desist. Above the sounds of battle his voice was not heard, and arrows, fire, and boiling water continued to fall on the struggling mass below.

The Prince of Taranto, holding back his curses to save his breath, but white with passion to think that he had ever left the castle, gripping his reins in his maimed right arm and wielding his sword with his left, strove, as valiantly as a man may, to hold the bridge against the rush of the Hungarians.

But Ludovic, exalted by the death of Carlo and the breaking of his ranks which followed, cheered on his men to gigantic exertions. Horse and foot went down before the Hungarian cavalry. The bowmen slipped in the blood of the knights; many were flung backward into the moat. One company of lances broke and fled.

Luigi of Taranto shouted to those within the castle to raise the drawbridge, but they did not understand, and it never occurred to them to cut off the sole retreat of the Italians. But Luigi was thinking of the Queen and the treasure. If he could save them he would gladly lose any man he possessed. Now the spirit of fury, of revenge, rose higher in the ranks of Hungary. Konrad of Gottif had whispered “Andreas!” and the name shuddered from knight to knight.

Imprecations on the witch, the devil, who had slain their prince, mingled with their war cries: “Andreas! Andreas!”

And Luigi of Taranto was beaten back. Konrad of Gottif struck his horse down. On foot among the slain, he tried to rally his men, shouting out that the Queen was within unprotected. But her name had no power to stir them. One even fled, saying:

“I fight no more for the devil!”

With thunderous yells of triumph, the Hungarians swept up to the drawbridge. The King, spurring the white horse over the dead, was galloping through when the Prince of Taranto, still surrounded by a circle of faithful swords, leaped forward and seized the blood-stained bridle.

“Not while I live!” he said.

Ludovic looked down at him.

“Ah, cousin,” he said, his visor was up and his hazel eyes danced merrily, “you play the losing game!”

But Luigi of Taranto, with all his great strength, was holding back the horse. He began to speak when Konrad of Gottif struck at him with his battle-ax. A shriek arose from both Italian and Hungarian as the Prince of Taranto fell back fainting among his little knot of men, and the white charger plunged across the drawbridge, while a great wail rose from the women on the ramparts when they saw the peacock plumes glitter under the archway of the courtyard.

The mere handful who opposed them were struck down at once in their furious onslaught. In the courtyard the knights flung themselves from their horses and came running into the palace, sword in hand. The desperate last bowshots wounded a few, but could not stop them. The pages and grooms in the outer chambers were quickly overcome. Headlong, with Ludovic before them, they rushed into the banqueting hall.

And there they paused and ceased from their shouting for the Queen.

For she stood under the dais at the far wall, facing them.

Her hands were out against the woodwork either side of her, head raised so that they could clearly see the hollow lines of her cheeks and the sweep of her long throat. Her ermine côtehardie was all unbuttoned over the yellow silk as if she had stifled in the heat or torn it in fright, her lips were strained, her eyes shadowed underneath; but she looked at them dauntlessly, and they saw she had a great sword fastened to her side. “Ah!” she said. “Hungary! Ludovic of Hungary! Come ye this time in love or war?” The light flickered down moving swords.

Ludovic made a step forward, then reeled back. “Make her prisoner,” he said. “I am sick from the sun.”

CHAPTER THIRTY. THE CHAMBER OF THE SCARLET TAPESTRY

The sun that had beaten down all day on the desolate streets of Naples was now fading in violet and rose-hued clouds above the vast glittering bay.

For twenty-four hours there had been a truce between Italy and Hungary, but the spirit of the splendid capital was broken. The Queen was a prisoner, Luigi of Taranto, holding the Castel del Durazzo with a mere handful of men; Carlo di Duras, always the favorite of the crowd, slain; and a foreign army, flushed with success, quartered in their midst. During the great darkness the fire had destroyed a large portion of the city, other dwellings had been sacked by the Hungarians, and the streets were full of dead and homeless. Appeals were made to the Legate, who had allied himself with the Queen’s husband, but he was helpless before an enemy that did not tremble at the name of Avignon. So all was chaos, misery, and confusion. The splendid town, with the unburied dead in its beautiful villas, and the ruined wandering helplessly in its fair gardens, seemed to be accursed, even as the astrologers had foretold from the great darkness.

And all men looked to Ludovic of Hungary.

He had taken up his residence in the Palazzo del Obo, the town dwelling of the noble family of Perlucchi, who had abandoned it to flee to their fortress without the walls, and all day had heard deputations from the Legate, from the people, from the Prince of Taranto; all admitting this—that he was master of the Kingdom of Naples.

Now, in the cool of the day, he sat alone and stared through the great windows at the wretched city.

His mood was not one of exaltation or triumph. He had no pride in his position; rather did he feel unsatisfied and conscious of a certain ghastliness in the grandeur about him, a certain horror in the means by which he had obtained his victory.

Too often for his ease did he picture Carlo’s gold armor sinking beneath the slime of the moat and Giovanna’s mad face as they brought her to the Castel del Obo.

He was the conqueror. He held Naples and would hold it. Christendom had no longer cause to laugh at him, and even his mother could not ask for more blood than this to avenge Andreas, yet his soul was troubled and bitter.

And he had yet to deal with the Queen.

The room in which he sat was a magnificent chamber of white and black marble, lofty, spacious, and hung with red and gold tapestries. From the ceiling hung a gilt and crystal lamp. Rich Eastern embroideries, looped back from the tall windows, admitted the evening air. In the center of the room was a table of colored mosaic heaped with documents, armor, and weapons. To Ludovic the place was strangely familiar and strangely distasteful, though it was utterly unknown to him and utterly splendid.

The Persian carpets on the tessellated floor, the painted ceiling, the carved and gorgeous furniture, seemed to him, in an unaccountable manner, like the setting for some ghastly and awful dream.

The tapestries were worked with unicorns and monsters supporting the arms of the Perlucchi family, and as the silk flapped in the breeze, the gold threads sparkled as if they took life. Ludovic went to the table, struggling with that feeling of oppression, apprehension, and seated himself in the somber splendors of a vast cushioned chair. It was feverishly hot and very silent. The sense that the usual life of the city had stopped utterly, increased the King’s sense of dread. He watched the sky flaring into the mercilessly brazen purple of the stifling Italian night, and he thought of the dead lying in the streets and the living sleeping among them, of the dismantled castle and the ruined gardens.

The horror of destruction, the bitterness of roofless homes, of weed-grown hearths and broken stairways, of dusty bedchambers, of statues flung down and bramble-grown moats, made him shudder. What horror is like the horror of desolation? Life is in itself so beautiful that no sin is black enough, no misery deep enough, utterly to destroy the joy of it. The end of life is the one hideous thing, the falling into decay of the fair things it made for itself the one thing unbearable. So Ludovic thought, sitting alone in his stolen palace overlooking the slain city.

What did it matter that the Queen was a murderess and the court a set of knaves, so long as the people would sing and dance, work and be merry? He would have had it now as it was when he first came to Naples… Judgment!—who was he or any of them to sit in judgment? Let them live and, if they would, laugh—it was all God asked of them.

Through the sultry dusk a little song rose, chanted to the strumming notes of a theorbo. Very distinctly Ludovic could hear the words:

The King went to the window and looked out, leaning from the marble sill. Down in the white of the garden walks and the deep green of the foliage he could see the dwarf with a shining striped theorbo in his hands, and at his feet a girl wrapped in a crimson shawl.

Thrum, thrum went the theorbo, and such light as was left in the heavens gathered itself into great stars. Ludovic put his hands over his eyes. On a faster note came the next verse:

Thrum, thrum, and a circle of fireflies rose about the laurels. Ludovic moved from the window and began walking up and down the room; still he could not escape the song:

The sound of the theorbo stopped. A little laughter and a pause, while the singer bent over a snapped string; then the girl’s voice taking up the tune:

The softer sob of the viol rose, and the sound of the clanking armor of soldiers gathered round to hear the sweet Italian melody. Ludovic, pacing to and fro in the magnificent black and white chamber, could not choose but listen also.

Ludovic sat down by the table and rang a gold hand bell, and watched while the crystal lamp was lit.

Zither, theorbo, and viol rose together:

Ludovic looked at the golden monsters on the scarlet tapestry, flapping on the black and white walls, and hated the place, shuddering in himself.

A little savage, exulting laugh broke the song, then the wail of the viol.

The King turned heavily to the squire. “Bring my barons to me here, and—the Queen.”

The squire had left the room. Ludovic paced up and down, up and down under the shining lamp, while over the miserable city rose the dwarf’s song with its strumming melody:

Now the girl’s voice rose, intense and delicate:

Up and down paced Ludovic of Hungary, up and down with troubled thoughts.

In lower notes the girl and the viol sang:

The dwarf and the theorbo took it up:

The viol again rose sobbing:

The King sank down in his old place by the table. He heard approaching footsteps.

The magnificent doors opened and the King’s splendid nobles entered. The stir they made in the chamber drowned the song, and the King roused himself to speak to them. Close behind them was the clatter of the guard.

“She comes!” said Konrad of Gottif.

“Who?” demanded Ludovic with a strange start.

“This woman who was queen, this Giovanna.”

Black and white, gold and scarlet, swirled for a moment before the King’s eyes, then his vision cleared to see her standing in the doorway with her guard either side.

Her ermine côtehardie was buttoned close to the throat, her hair neatly dressed, her hands tied together in front of her with a fine silk cord. Thinking of her in her palace, in the hunt, in the masque and the council, always regal, splendid, an extraordinary feeling caught his heart to see her a bound prisoner.

“Did I bid ye manacle her?” he demanded, and pushed the heavy black hair off his eyes.

“Good, my liege, she is dangerous with her hands,” answered Konrad of Gottif.

“Her little hands!” muttered Ludovic. He frowned at her guards, yet neither offered her a seat nor rose himself.

She was looking past him in an abstracted way at the square of sky shown in the high window, and the fine tendrils of her hair trembled on her hollow cheeks and cast shadows faintly on her long throat.

The King leaned from his chair. The lamplight cast depths of purple over his violet robe. His face showed clear cut, heavily outlined by the shadows.

“Giovanna!” he said.

She turned her face to him calmly.

“Ah, you,” she said, in that way she had of late, as if she recognized people with an effort and was perplexed at seeing them.

“Yes, I,” he answered. “What do you think I will do with you, Giovanna?”

“Why,” she said, “I suppose I am to die.” She smiled suddenly. “Do you see the bruise on my cheek, Ludovic, where you cast me down?” She turned her head round, showing a stain on the smooth flesh where the sharp line of her chin swept into her throat. “Where you kissed me when I was queen.”

He sprang up, his haggard face flushed painfully.

“Her mind is gone,” said one softly. “She speaks, not knowing what she says.”

The King spoke, standing by his chair and facing her.

“Madonna, I have heard from your husband.”

“My husband is in Santa Chiara,” she answered quickly.

“Not he, Madonna, but Luigi of Taranto, at the Palazzo di Durazzo.”

“My cousin Luigi,” murmured Giovanna, and her brows gathered in a bewildered manner.

“Yea,” answered Ludovic thickly, “and he still finds you worth somewhat. He will leave Naples and retire to Provence if I will give you back to him.”

In the pause that followed, he set his lips together, while he stared at her intently, and his barons glanced from one to another in silence.

Giovanna of Naples looked nowhere. Her great eyes were blank, her lips lightly parted. The insistent strum of the theorbo sounded without, and her little foot beat time to it.

“Giovanna!” he said at last. “I am going to send you to your husband.”

There was a movement among the men behind him. Ludovic, feeling it, half swung round upon them.

“Here I stand no interference!” he cried. “Good lords, this is a matter of mine.”

But Konrad of Gottif could not repress a bitter sneer. “So ye vowed—the sword shall decide. Is this how, Ludovic of Hungary?”

“Yea,” said the King gravely, “this is how.” He drew the slender weapon that he wore and came a little toward her. He remembered how she had kissed his sword once while he held it, two carnations of hers at his breast, and he trembled as he approached her.

“Hold out your hands,” he commanded. She obeyed with a little look of wonder, of patience. He severed the cords with the sword edge, and, as she shook her hands free, stepped back to his place. “Now you are free—get you to your second husband, my cousin,” he said heavily. “You,” he spoke to the captain of the guard, “see her there, and see this Prince on board the galley for Provence.”

A noble beside the King spoke: “Ye give him a vast advantage in her. Think ye he will be quiet in Provence?”

“God knows,” answered Ludovic wearily. “Let him reign or live—or die—in Provence. I care not.” He watched her as she turned slowly to the door, rubbing her wrists and looking at them with vacant eyes.

It seemed as if she would leave as she had come, with neither word nor action to express either fear or courage, remorse or effrontery. But quite suddenly she stopped, dropped her hands by her side, raised her head and looked at the King, not blankly now, but with eyes of intense meaning.

“Ludovic!” she said. “Ludovic!”

At the sound of her voice they all started as if another woman had entered and spoken while they were unawares.

Giovanna still gazed at the King, her whole face and body intent with some effort of her poor brain at recollection, expression. “I—want—to say something I did not think of.” She whispered, she put her hand to her forehead. The concentration in her eyes was painful. A sense of horror seemed to have curled her mouth and contracted her brows into the likeness of a tragic mask.

Then gradually this expression faded. Her hand fell heavily against her gown. She shook her head. “I have forgotten,” she murmured vaguely, and moved slowly away.

So she passed from them, the soldiers behind her, and not until the last echo of their footsteps had long died away, did any stir or speak. Then the nobles began to move.

“A hot night,” said one.

“Mass yes. Where shall we sup?”

Ludovic looked up at the speaker. “I? Here to-night. My head is wonderfully heavy.”

“Curse this Italian weather. It kills more men than a month’s warfare. And they say the next thing will be drought and famine!”

The King rose.

“Marko,” he said to the last speaker, “have you yet heard of the lady I asked you of, the Queen’s tirewoman?”

“Good liege, no. Somehow she escaped the palace when we sacked it. At least, I have questioned many, and none knows of her. ’Tis likely she would flee to Madonna Maria.”

Ludovic turned away.

“I shall call a council in the morning,” he announced abruptly. “It will be needful to win the legate—anon we will speak of it. Sirs, good-night.”

“My lord, good-night.”

They left the chamber, their mail clattering on the marble. As Konrad of Gottif passed him, the King spoke:

“Will you sup with me to-night?”

“I am too rough company, my lord—and too out of humor.”

Ludovic flushed and kept silence. When the last had gone, the very essence of silence prevailed in the vast room. The King sat very still, tracing with absorbed eyes the forms of the monstrous beasts on the scarlet tapestry.

Did they scorn him, his lords, for weak clemency? He told himself he was above their censure. Yet their silence, and Konrad of Gottif’s words, rankled in his heart. It was hot, ah, so hot. He loathed Italy and this chamber—what had ever happened in the Perlucchi Palace that he should hate it so? What was going to happen?

He longed intensely for the day, though the clypsidera fastened against the wall told him it was not yet eight in the evening.

Presently squires and pages entered with his supper, served with that rich elegance that had always been one of the charms to hold him to Italy. But to-night the splendor of the gilded silver and painted glass seemed foreign things.

He sent them all away, locked the door on them, and sat down by the table. The food he could not touch. He drank one glass of the fine red wine. Then some fancied sound caused him to start, and his violet sleeve caught the bottle and cast it on the marble. He sprang up, unaccountably agitated, and stared at the deep stains running over the black and white floor.

“What is the matter with me?” he asked himself, walking about. He wished now he had kept some company to pass the intolerable hours. Pausing, he stared at the door, picturing Giovanna passing out in the patience of forgetfulness; then he thought of Maria, waiting for Carlo—waiting, while the bloody slime of the moat tarnished the gold armor.

With an effort at composure, he crossed to the bedchamber adjoining the apartment. It opened by wide windows onto the street, and was filled with the shine of the moon and stars. Ludovic could discern the vast outlines of the bed, hung with armorial bearings, silver tassels glittering on the satin baldaquin.

With an imprecation on the heat, the King flung off his violet houppeland, and, with a sigh of relief, stretched himself in his undergarment of close mauve velvet, that was laced with black over his white shirt. The moonlight cast intense shadows about the room. Ludovic went to the window and looked out into the street. He could see the spears of his guards gleam as they walked to and fro outside the palace doors. For the rest, it was very quiet; so still that not even the trees quivered beneath the burning purple sky, throbbing with stars.

After awhile he left the window and crossed to the outer chamber to search for a light.

“What is the matter with me?” he said again, seeing how his hand was shaking.

Then he turned round, suddenly and quietly, as if some one had called him. Yet there was silence in the chamber.

In the doorway of the bedroom stood Sancia di Renato in a citron-colored gown.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE. THE SWORD DECIDES!

He thought that she had died somewhere in the miserable city, and this pale appearance had come to tell him so.

She crossed the floor in a quick silence. A hazy veil of the hue of a turkis was bound in her faint hair and floated about her as she walked.

She came to where he stood, dumbly, and put her hands on his shoulders. As she touched him, he knew she lived, and an extraordinary joy made his eyes sparkle.

Sancia sighed. A spell of wonder was over them—absorbed in the marvel of each other. They could not speak. Then he took her hands from his shoulders and clasped them in his own.

“We meet strangely,” he said, in a shaking voice, and she:

“Did you think of this?”

“I did not dare! I thought—ah, no matter.”

“I had to come. I have been walking the streets all day—thinking of it. I had to come.”

“Sancia! Sweet—my sweet!” he cried.

“You understand—I was in the Palazzo di Durazzo last night. I saw them bring Carlo home—and then—what was I saying? When you look at me I cannot think… Nothing mattered… save that I should come to you.”

“I have searched for you, Sancia. How strange it is! When I saw you I thought you were dead——”

So their low, broken thought trembled in the stillness it scarcely disturbed, and the forgotten taper he had lit flared among the untouched supper things on the table. At last he let go of her, and she sank in the chair.

“My feeling for you,” she said, “hurts my heart—exceedingly.”

She clasped her hands over the citron gown.

“Tell me you have thought of me.”

“Yes—yes.”

Leaning on the back of her chair, he stared down at her loveliness. It seemed as if her coming were a blaze of crystal light on many things—on everything. All the strange thoughts that had distracted him before she came had fled like a dance of shadows—he could not even recall them.

“I have been sick and weary,” she whispered, “but now I am healed. Look at me—never cease to look at me. Am I changed? My soul is different. I have been walking among the dead.”

“Sancia… I thought you hated me now… I did not dream of—this!”

Her blue eyes glowed with an intense animation. “Do you remember—in the library? I lied—you must have known it. Beyond all words I—you—it was always you. Listen!” She put up her hands and clung to his sleeve. “I was a fool—I tried to forget—to serve the queen and be virtuous like Maria. But I have come to you—I will stay with you until you are weary of me—then I will go away and die.”

“Sancia, you will do that? You could leave your people for me?” In a wondering way, he looked into her trembling face. A long breath shook her.

“Give me leave to be near you,” she cried, with her heart panting on her lips. “Let me follow you, and I will clothe me as your foot-boy, take such food as your varlets eat, such shelter as your horses have——”

He was silent, shamed by a passion that so far outshone his own feelings. Yet he loved her; he told himself that certainly he loved her. But a curious giddiness was beating in his head, a shiver like fever was in his blood, making his manner strange. He wondered vaguely if he were sick, or if her presence had excited him into bewilderment.

“The fairest face in Italy!” he said. “Will you come with me to Hungary if I go?”

“To the world’s end,” she answered.

“Will you stay with me in Naples if I stay?”

“Yea, and dance upon graves and sing above the dying, so you will smile—Ludovic! Ludovic! Ludovic——”

He seated himself opposite her at the table, and gazed across with a fiery brightness in his hazel eyes.

“The dying! We will revel it in this city, my Sancia!” he said gayly. “You and I—and you love me! By God’s truth, it is a fine thing to be loved. My soul, but you are beautiful. Will you sup with me to-night?”

She laughed suddenly, in a weak way.

“I have not eaten since morning.” Then her mood flashed swiftly into mirth. “I might be seated on a star, I feel so high above the earth.”

She leaned on the table, resting her two fair hands among the glass and silver. In an impassioned gayety, she related how she had found where he was, how she had taken the robe from a dead monk and, hidden under it, had crept into the Perlucchi Palace, found her way to his bedchamber, and lain concealed there until he was alone.

Her sudden joyous spirits infected the King. He found himself laughing in sheer elation of heart, as if this were a well-planned frolic her wit had achieved. The wild delight of stolen pleasure touched him. He crossed to her and kissed her on the forehead, where the pale hair rippled, on her ardent mouth. He thought her brow was hot, her lips feverish. Was not his own head reeling, his limbs on fire.

He swore by all he knew he loved her. Swore in a wild, half-defiant way—drew his chair beside hers.

Was it fancy that he staggered as he seated himself? She, at least, did not notice it. “This is the end of it!” he cried. “I will build another Naples—a sunny city on the sea—and of these old miseries, Sancia, we will make tales to spice our pleasures!”

He blew out the taper. She laughed, as if her mood flung words aside as useless things. She did not appear to know or care where she was, only that she stared at him over a glitter of glass and gold.

But to Ludovic the details of his surroundings were the real things. Her coming, her passionate statements of her motives, her very presence, were unreal, clouded. He could not bring his mind to comprehend them, for he was living only in the moment, and in some tattered recollections the monstrous beasts on the scarlet tapestry, the straight lines of the windows, and the vast stars beyond them, the dark square of the door opening into the bedchamber, the band of seed-pearls that edged Sancia’s gown where it lay round her throat; her foot, in its dusty little shoe, resting on the black and white marble—these held his attention. He set food on her plate, and she eat a little. He looked down at the spilt wine, and opened another bottle. A great desire to laugh and talk was upon him. Speech was a means to drug thought he could not pause to understand. The wine shivered from side to side of the crystal as he held up the glass.

“To my new Naples!” he cried.

They both drank. Then he was kissing her hands, and they laughed together.

“Listen!” he said. “I let the Queen go—I wanted no more blood.”

“I am glad,” answered Sancia.

“Yea, you understand!” His eyes were ardent. “We shall be happy—what does anything matter if one may have peace to laugh and sing in? Yet I have killed men in my time.” His black brows frowned. “What did Maria say when they brought Carlo home?” He stared into his wine glass as if he saw his cousin’s death mirrored there.

“They brought him to the chapel,” answered Sancia, “where the Duchess waited—the green weed was over his breast and the water dripped from him onto the floor. She closed his visor. ‘I am grieved there is none save I to sorrow for him,’ she said, ‘for he died like a knight.’ The hard-faced Prince of Taranto was beside her, and he answered: ‘No one can be mourned unworthily who has your tender thoughts, Madonna!’ ”

“Would I had slain him instead!” cried Ludovic. “I never loved him! Many a festival has his heavy face marred. But no more of this—I have golden thoughts of the future—ah, love of mine, golden thoughts indeed!”

He filled his glass again, and hers. There was heaped-up fruit in a mother o’ pearl and silver dish, lustrous grapes, bloomy peaches and golden apples. He turned them into her lap, smiling.

She picked up a bunch of grapes and gazed at it. He was watching her with enthralled eyes.

“Of late,” she said, “I have had visions of curious and beautiful things: women with roses pressed into their hair, ivory lutes and wonderful crimson birds, marble walks set with tangles of lilies, the bay at sunset, when the sails of the boats are all stained gold; gilded crowns and lordly armor, wrought at Milan—even as I wandered through the deserted city, I had visions of these things.”

The grapes fell from her fingers onto the floor, fell on the dried wine stain. She put her hand to her eyes.

“My head feels strange to-day.”

The King’s great eyes glowed with a kind of horror.

“You are weary, my heart,” he said wildly. “I, also——”

A silence fell on both. They sat up and touched hands across the table. As their fingers intertwined, each shuddered at the other’s burning flesh. Sancia looked slowly and fearfully round the chamber. The scarlet arras shuddered a little on the marble walls. Her clasp of the King’s fingers grew tighter.

“Ludovic,” she said in a toneless voice, “what is the matter with this place?”

Ludovic shivered.

“Why, I might have spared Carlo,” he muttered. “It is hideous to die so young, and unshriven—unshriven!”

Their eyes met. “What did you speak of?” she asked.

“I? Nothing—and you?”

Hollowly she answered, “Nothing.”

For all the heat, a little breeze had risen. It stirred the fair hair back from Sancia’s cheek and fluttered the edges of the long lace cloth.

Ludovic roused himself with a great laugh. “By God’s death, we are very somber! One was playing without—thrum, thrum—on a theorbo.”

He unlocked his fingers from hers and rose. The mauve hue of his tight velvet habit showed the flush on his swarthy face in a notable manner. Sancia, fallen back in her chair, watched him. The wick of the lamp was fluttering in the breeze, and cast a dancing shadow about him as he moved to the corner and took a theorbo of ebony and ivory from the wall. The water clock said midnight. After all, the hours had fled quickly.

Laughing, Ludovic of Hungary set one foot on his chair, and commenced playing:

“Why do you sing that?” cried Sancia passionately. “Ludovic, sing to me of love!”

Had not his gay singing and his skill with music won her first? But not this song——

But the King fixed his eyes on her and continued in his wonderful, soft voice:

“Come to me,” whispered Sancia. Her voice shuddered through the pause on the ceasing of the song. The King dropped the theorbo onto the chair and came to her.

They clung together a minute. Then she spoke: “What is the matter with the place?”

“Santa Maria, Santa Maria!” muttered the King.

Silence again enwrapped them. She loosened herself from his arms.

“Hush!”

“What did you hear?” he asked.

“Horses—in the distance.”

“Who should be abroad to-night?”

“Who? Who? I fancied it. This time is ours—yours and mine. Look at me! Speak to me! Hold me!”

This time it was the King who said, “Hush!”

He spoke thickly, as if his tongue were swollen, and his eyes stared over her shoulder.

“There is—something in the bedroom!”

She shrank against him.

“You are ill! Jesu! Your brow is hot!” She shuddered. “You fancied it.”

“Look!” he said.

She turned her head and stared into the shadows of the bedchamber. His swarthy fingers gripped her white wrist, but she did not feel it.

“What do you see?” His voice was so roughened she could hardly hear.

“A man!” she muttered. “I see a man moving about. He moves very softly. I—I do not hear his footfalls.”

“Do you see what he wears?” whispered Ludovic, “now—as he passes the moonlight!”

“Rose and white hose,” she answered. “But I cannot see his face…”

Ludovic cried out in a great burst of agony: “He has no face. Did they not mutilate him? Andreas!”

“Why, you are mad!” shrieked Sancia. “It was not there—the thing is gone. There is nothing—nothing but the moonlight and the shadow from the bed——”

Quivering from head to foot, he set her from him and sank into a chair.

“This a cursed place,” he muttered. “I—but you, also, saw it!”

“No,” she said staunchly. “No—I fancied it. Why should he come to you?”

“I have not avenged him!”

She was down on her knees beside him, in a glory of passion, of beauty transfigured, of strength and courage. “You shall not think of these things to-night—but of me! Not of the dead, but of me—not of the past, but of me! Am I not fair enough to beguile you from these miseries?”

She fired him.

“Yes—yes!” He leaned from the chair and caught her up to him. With a sound of triumph, of joy, she laid her face against his.

Then—even in the midst of their kiss, she thrust him off and stood erect, with an awful change in her face.

“What is the matter with me to-night?” she said. She tried to laugh. The citron gown was heaving painfully over her breast. She snatched up the untasted glass of wine Ludovic had left.

“To drink!” she said thickly. “To our happiness!” She endeavored to put it to her lips, but spilled it over her bosom.

“Sancia!” shrieked Ludovic.

Her face was awful. Even as he stared at her she half turned round in a grotesque fashion, as if she were commencing to dance, then fell backwards.

Her head, with its cloud of hair unloosened, struck the chair and theorbo. There was a jangle of the strings, and she lay at his feet…

He looked down at her face staring up at him. For some seconds he could not believe she was there. He thought it some vision of a distracted brain—that she should have risen from his embrace to drop as if an arrow had touched her heart.

He went on his knees beside her. He lifted her up, and the soft blond hair entangled in his fingers. The lines of the little song he had sung:

ran in his head foolishly.

She was quite dead.

Love, life and passion had been extinguished in her eyes as a little candle before a vast wind. He thought of their devilish Italian poisons. Could anything else have slain her so swiftly? Then he swore aloud that she was not dead and must not die!

With eager fingers he tore her bodice open to feel her heart. Silk and linen ripped under his hand.

He rose—sobered by the shock of sudden knowledge. The fantasies cleared from his brain. He backed from Sancia to the farthest wall, and, with pale lips, shaped a ghastly whisper:

“The Plague!”

On her white bosom were the black marks. It had been in her veins all the evening. The Black Death was abroad in the city! The robe from the dead monk! His brain worked quickly; he saw it clearly. Her excitement, her hot lips, her aching head—the Plague was abroad in Naples—the Black Death—the Mortality!

And now a wild horror of the infection seized him. It was the most terrible thing men knew—the Black Death. And he was shut up with it! For awhile he beat on the door. Then a new thought held him icy still.

It was also the secret of his reeling head, his distorted vision. He, also, was infected. His death was a matter of moments.

So it was for this tragedy the scene had been set. This was the horror that had lurked in the splendid chamber—the black and white, the scarlet and gold.

To die young and unshriven! Yet not as Carlo, in the press of battle, but in the lonely night, with this dead woman for company.

He pressed his face against the cold marble wall, and thought on such stories of the Plague as he had heard: how some died suddenly, some slowly. How some felt it so little that they fell silent in the midst of laughter. How to others it was a long agony—and always a thing beyond man’s understanding or cure.

This was what the great darkness had predicted—the Plague! the Plague!

His thoughts began to lose coherence. He paced up and down in a very torment of fear, incapable of speech or action; knowing only that he would sooner have died in the streets than amid this awful grandeur.

The water clock was at one. He stopped by the body of Sancia. How long since she had come breathing love, but hand in hand with Death? How long since she had kissed him with Death’s kiss on her lips?

Oh, future glorious indeed! Who would revel now over the dead and dying? Who would laugh over ruined Naples? Not these two, at least—since from the conquered city this horror had arisen to vanquish the victor! Ludovic the Triumphant, they had named him. It was a mockery now. Who was triumphant to-night? Neither Hungary nor Italy.

Outside the stars shone over the pointed dark poplars. He found himself wondering what this dawn would be like—this dawn he should never see? He felt himself weakening, and sank into the chair by the table, his fingers in his hair. All his youth, his beauty, his wealth, his rank, now—for life—yea, for life such as his footboy enjoyed—for life such as a beggar had who wailed in the streets of Buda!

The strum of zither and theorbo rose suddenly. Some wordless song struck the stillness. The stars were dancing in the heavens, and the great beasts on the arras began to move. Ludovic sat still, with starting eyes, while around him the stillness broke into a devil’s pageant of noise and color. Keeping time to the music was the sound of galloping horses and meeting spears, and banners tearing against the wind.

The monsters were out of the tapestry, and gold and glittering, they crept over the tessellated floor.

Thrum, thrum, and nameless things were dancing to the shrill melody. The harsh, metallic clang of cymbals strove against the steady march of eager drums. Voices rose, shrieking, shouting—some near, some far away.

Sancia sprang up from the floor and commenced dancing; her hair, in a spreading cloud, filled the chamber. She wore red shoes, and they shone in and out of her citron gown.

An uncontrollable excitement seized Ludovic. He sprang up and shrieked to the circle spinning round in a swirl of screaming color. The upward lift of the battle cries became intenser. Then someone shrieked:

“The Plague! the Plague! The King and the King’s love are stricken!”

Ludovic drew his sword. The door was flung open. Mailed men rushed in and out again. Thrum, thrum, went the theorbo. “Sancia!” cried Ludovic, and tried to catch her as she passed. Then the wild melody ceased, the dancers disappeared like smoke. A man came from the bedchamber door toward the King. He wore rose and white hose, and a mask was on his face. The sounds of battle and of dancing rose, unbearable and harsh, with a steady beat. The man took off his mask, and where his face should have been, should have been the face of Andreas.

The King sprang from the table. He strove to cut his way through the yelling rabble, but they closed on him. Sancia’s arms twisted round his neck. Andreas turned his faceless face as she dragged him down.

“Giovanna!” shrieked Ludovic. He leaped to the door, pulled it open. The darkness of the stairway smote him like a blow. The delirium cleared from his brain. He looked back over his shoulder and saw Sancia, a dead woman, on the wine-stained pavement, some unfelt breeze from some unseen window fluttering the citron silk on her still limbs, the fallen fruit lying near her soft, blond, scattered hair.

“Konrad!” he cried. He put his hand to his sword, and leaned over the marble banister. His terror-stricken voice echoed through the lofty palace, and distant shouting answered.

Unhelmed, unarmed, Ludovic of Hungary ran down the stairs; then, where they turned, he halted. A man was running up them.

The newcomer carried a great torch, that flamed across the King’s vision, and caused him to cry out with the bright pain of it, and to shrink back against the wall.

“Who are you?” shouted the other, not seeing him for the trailing fire and smoke of the torch.

“The King!” answered Ludovic. Then he added the one word that was the key to the wild horror of it all: “The Plague!”

Konrad of Gottif swung the flambeau above his head and stared into the King’s face.

“And Luigi of Taranto!” he cried. “The Neapolitans have risen.”

“The Queen?”

“Yea, by God Almighty, that witch is with them, Ludovic of Hungary.”

“And up above there is the Plague!” The King put his hand on Konrad’s breastplate, where the hungry flame was reflected, and thrust him back. “Let me pass. By all the saints, sooner Luigi of Taranto than the Plague. Let me pass!”

“Who is up above?” cried Konrad of Gottif, flinging up the torch. The streaming light showed a reddened sweep of marble walls. The King, leaning against them in his velvet undress, showed the one who carried it hard faced in ruddied armor.

“The Plague!” shrieked Ludovic. “The Plague is in Naples! Get me a horse—a shield!” He broke past Konrad, and dashed down the stairs, the other after him, clattering in his heavy mail.

In the splendid entrance hall cross lights shook and gleamed, interchanging with lurking shadows in the folds of the sumptuous tapestry, and round the figures of the assembled warriors. The great doors were open, and beyond them the burning night swooned with a regal dawn above the gorgeous, languorous garden. Through the dark masses of the poplars and cypresses the last stars blazed.

Ludovic came into the midst of them, staggering like a sick man.

“God’s curse upon this Italy!” he said. “Hungarians, we ride home to-night!”

Amidst the clamor and the hurrying to and fro they armed him, and as they buckled the straps and fastened the rivets, he shouted to them to make haste—make haste! They did not need his words. The Plague, invisible and strong as death, was behind all of them, urging, threatening.

Before the last stars had died, they were a-horse and gathered before the Perlucchi Palace. It stood empty to the dawn, save for the woman in the citron-colored gown, who lay on the floor of the scarlet tapestried chamber.

Like a dark cloud sweeping over the desolate city, the Hungarian army clashed through the streets, that were bare of everything save the dead and the dying, and no man among them gave a thought to this most beautiful city in the world, save to the leaving of it, for they had ravaged its loveliness in the lust of conquest, spoiled it of its wealth and ease, and now they fled before the Specter arisen from its ruins to avenge on Hungary the wounds of Naples.

In some of the streets there was fighting. Luigi of Taranto’s men and the Hungarian guards strove together in between the houses, and the meeting of the spears echoed through deserted homes and palaces, their gorgeous gates flung open to the foe.

But Ludovic of Hungary paused for none of it. He and his men hurtled through the dawning day, toward the doors of the city, toward Aversa, Benevento.

As they swept into the Palazzo San Eligio, they saw a great press of knights facing them, and against the pale purple of the Eastern sky hung the lilied banner if the Angevin kings.

There was a quick movement among either army, the putting of spears in rest, the tossing of plumes and bridles. But the two captains of the Neapolitans rode forward (one very slender, in golden mail, carried a bright, bare sword across the saddle. The other showed through the opening of his casque the masterful face of Luigi of Taranto).

Ludovic of Hungary spurred his horse to meet him.

“I leave your cursed city, Prince,” he said. “Am I to cut my way through your men?”

Luigi of Taranto backed his charger.

“No, Hungary—the way lies free through Italy.”

“Desolation is in Naples, and the Plague lurks in the Perlucchi Palace,” answered the King. “Joy to ye in your kingdom, Prince.”

The slender knight in golden mail removed the glittering helm, and red curls fell out like wine from a burnished mager either side of the frail face of Giovanna d’Anjou.

“Good-morrow, cousin,” she said, looking full at the King of Hungary. She raised her bare weapon. “Is it the sword that decides—after all?”

“The day is before us,” he answered madly. “We face the dawn, and Andreas is not ill-avenged!” With that he raised his hand, and the cavalry of Hungary thundered after him to the great gates that opened on the homeward road.

The Queen looked at Luigi of Taranto, and her eyes were not the eyes of a sane woman.

“Was that Andreas rode past?” she asked, and the sword shuddered in her hand. “Yet I am Queen,” she said, and laughed a little, staring at the stricken city.

THE END