Chapter TWELVE: The Last Masquerade

They held a great fête at the Castel del Nuovo, more splendid than had been known for many years. The dead, disfigured King was in his tomb in Santa Chiara, and no one spoke his name.

It was three days before the coronation of the young Queen, and the marriage contract between Raymond de Cabane, Conte d’Eboli, and Maria d’Anjou had that day been drawn up by the notary Nicolo de Melaggo. They who knew the state of the Kingdom, the discontent of the people, the quarrels of the nobles, the emptiness of the Queen’s coffers--those who guessed at a slow vengeance gathering against the Kingdom that had slain its King, marked a wildness, a reckless profusion in the festivities that showed both defiance and imprudence.

It was the Queen’s wish that she should shine with great magnificence before her people. Raymond de Cabane, of all things no statesman, made little effort to restrain her with talk of unpaid troops and a murmuring people; he also was near the summit of his desires, and careless of the last step.

The splendor of the scene in the great hall and garden was beyond words. The Duke di Duras, masked in purple, leaned from the gallery with the Contessa di Terliggi, who wore a trembling crown of peacocks’ feathers, and watched the shifting, laughing crowd below.

“Can she pay for it?” asked the Contessa, and her black eyes flashed through her bronze-colored mask.

“An Emperor could not pay for it,” answered the Duke. “They say the supper cost a year’s revenue--and the prizes at the tournament yesterday were fabulous.”

“It does not matter,” said the Contessa. “Let her dance to ruin--after all, it is better than crawling to it!”

The Duke smoothed his silver sleeve.

“But what of us?”

She shrugged until her white shoulders rose out of her bright green gown.

“We must die as gayly as we have lived, Carlo.”

“That,” answered Duras, “is the talk of a woman--the way the Queen talks. At the same time you are both of you trusting in the men to avert the disaster.”

She turned her face to him. Her painted lips and her round chin showed under her mask.

“Carlo, why are you despondent?” She laughed and laid her warm, bare arm along the gallery rail and caressed his clasped hands with her little fingers.

“Guilia, enchantress, the Queen has absolutely no money--she has squeezed from her own estates and borrowed from the nobles----”

“My husband,” said the Contessa, “told me that she had great hopes in Bertrand d’Artois--his father has a great treasure at Santa Agatha.”

“Yes--but the old man is close as a Jew.”

“Well, I suppose one could take it by force--at least, while the money _does_ last, Carlo, let us enjoy it.”

“For my part,” said the Duke, “I do not enjoy dancing on a triumphal arch with a loose keystone. There is Hungary--and Avignon----”

“And the present moment,” interrupted Guilia di Terliggi. “And--me----”

“Sweetheart, you beguile me into folly----”

“Am I not folly?” said the Contessa. “Am I not a woman? And the business of a woman lies, not with past or future, but with the present--now, I am--to-morrow, I may not be--yet I could die laughing any day, being Folly, who cannot weep--and so--and so----”

“Guilia, you are entrancing----”

“Hush! I would see the Queen.”

They bent over the gallery and looked down; in the press of gorgeous costumes they could not discern Giovanna or her sister.

“She is changed of late,” said the Contessa. “She laughs too much and makes a show of herself--she did not use to----”

“You think she knew--about the King?”

“Knew!” the Contessa laughed. “My husband will never speak of it to me, but I think--” She lowered her voice. “I think the Queen was even there--when it was done----”

“Christ, no!”

“Sancia di Renato tells me she was shut out of her mistress’s room that night--and she says ever since that the Queen will sleep with a light--and that she puts her hands to her neck as if to loosen something--she will have no cords to her bed and fancies she is being strangled.”

“I have noticed that,” answered the Duke. “But I do not think she more than knew----”

“Listen,” insisted the Contessa. “The day after the Queen herself took all the sheets off her bed, and rolled them in the coverlet--and forbade Sancia, very sharply, to meddle with them. But before they left the convent the Queen took occasion to call the washerwoman, who had come with her linen, and gave her the bundle. Sancia followed the washerwoman, and found her taking the sheets off the King’s bed to wrap him in, for even de Cabane didn’t care to leave him in the garden--once the sun grew fierce--and Sancia looked into the bundle, and all the Queen’s bed linen was dabbled over with blood. Sancia spoke of it to the woman, who said the Queen had told her that she had cut her foot on a broken wine glass, and as this happened on the night of the murder, she desired the sheets washed quietly--to which end she gave the woman a ducat. Now Sancia knows that is a lie--there was no wound on the Queen’s foot and no glass in her chamber.”

“You think, then--” began the Duke.

She interrupted.

“Oh, I think a great deal--put it to yourself, my Carlo--if they slew the King in the outer chamber, her door locked, as she says, the whole time, how did those bloodstains come upon her coverlet? And how was it that her dress, that was whole the night before, was torn in the morning, and how was it they could not find the piece, though search was made everywhere?”

“Where was it, then?” asked di Duras.

The Contessa dropped her voice.

“In the King’s hand. Who knows--and the Queen lives in terror that someone may perhaps--who knows?”

“Di Terliggi must know, then--and the others.”

“They will not speak--no one dare believe them if they did. As for my husband, he went so sick he knows not what happened.” She grimaced and shrugged her shoulders.

The Duke shuddered. “Do not let us speak of it, Guilia--Maria, at least, believes her sister’s innocence----”

“Oh, bah!” cried the Contessa. “She knows well enough--she knows Raymond did the thing and the Queen sanctioned it----”

“She would not be so calm an’ she did,” replied the Duke, firmly. “There is no evil nor condoning of evil in Maria d’Anjou.”

The Contessa laughed.

“My simple Carlo, she is marrying the most powerful man in the Kingdom--she is not displeased. There are no saints in this court of Naples.”

“The Queen,” said Duras, and pointed to her, passing through the throng beneath.

“Ah,” answered the Contessa, watching her curiously. “Whatever they may say, she is not beautiful----”

Giovanna was fantastically dressed in a gown of close brown, clouded with veils of hyacinth blue; her auburn hair hung down in thin curls to her waist; her mask was of gold brocade; her slender arms were bare and her fingers almost hidden in rings. She was leaning, rather heavily, on the arm of Luigi of Taranto, who wore a vizard in the shape of a wolf’s face and a gray mantle.

A hundred figures of fantasy followed her: men and women in extraordinary rich garments; dyed, painted faces, distorted masks, bare limbs and tumbled autumn flowers, flashing, interchanging colors, and a riot of jewels.

Their shrieks of laughter, their broken songs, rose to the ears of the two watchers in the gallery.

“She is fair enough,” said the Duke, who was gazing at the Queen.

“Well, she has broken no hearts yet,” smiled the Contessa.

“She could an’ she would,” he answered. “But she is too proud.”

Guilia di Terliggi shrugged her shoulders again carelessly. “Where is Maria?” she asked.

Duras rose from his leaning posture on the gallery rails and the silver tissue of his coat glittered in the hazy lamplight.

Some of the revelers were running up the stairs and invading the quiet spaces; a half-naked girl, masked as a leopard and hung with roses, and a minstrel in pink, with a zither fluttering yellow ribbons, ran by laughing. The Contessa and Carlo di Durazzo turned and descended into the great hall.

The doors opening on to the garden were flung wide and the trees without and the room within were lit by softly-glowing lamps that mingled with the ivory moonlight; the walls were hidden beneath hangings of velvet and brocade. Everywhere the triumphant lilies of Anjou gleamed in gold and silver.

Giovanna had moved to the dais where the forgotten King often sat. She sat there now among green cushions, laughing. Before her a space was cleared, where a tall girl in white danced with the dwarf in black, to the accompaniment of faint instruments, played by gorgeous minstrels.

Shining vases of porphyry and serpentine, crushed full of trailing flowers, stood on the steps of the dais; fine white dogs moved to and fro in stately fashion, and among them dwarfs dressed like animals; from the garden came the sound of flutes and song and laughter; negro slaves in yellow and scarlet passed up and down, carrying salvers heavy with grapes and peaches; costly wines were handed about, spilled and drunk with careless profusion; the masquers danced together, danced apart and swirled round, a many-hued wave of brilliancy.

From out the thickest crowd came a lady in a turquoise blue habit and a black mask and ran toward the door. A misty white veil floated about her and hid her hair.

A mask in dusty lavender and russet red detached himself from the dancers and pursued her.

The lady turned down a side path, where the lamps glowed, globes of light in the rose bushes, and he followed to a marble fountain, where the water plashed softly into a cool, deep basin and wetted the citron leaves. The moonlight lay ivory-hued and clear over everything. From the distant chestnuts a voice came singing:

No triumphs with red trophies hung
And measured march of captive Kings,
No glories such as Ovid sung
And Petrarch sings
Could please me as your boat within the foam,
Your white boat--the evening brings
To Naples home.

The lady sank on the edge of the fountain and looked at the man following her.

“Messer Raymond de Cabane,” she said quietly: “are you also tired of the noise within?”

He took off his mask impatiently and showed his sullen face.

“I am soon weary of folly.” He sat beside her and stared into the fountain.

The song rose again, plaintively:

The Emperor’s victories could not buy
The joy of your return
When your late white sail draws nigh
Where my signals burn;
Not all the pomp of Germany, or France or Rome,
Are glad as I when your oars turn
To Naples home--

“You have wondered,” said Raymond de Cabane, speaking slowly, “at the Queen’s profusion?”

“At nothing,” answered Maria d’Anjou. She shook out her veil in the moonlight, and her voice was as expressionless as her mask.

“She stands on the edge of ruin,” said the Conte Raymond, speaking very low. “The people seethe beneath her rule. Hungary is on the watch, and Avignon----”

“Well?” asked Maria.

“She is straining the resources of the Kingdom for this coronation, but I have saved your estates. I have wrung from her the moneys of the title of Duke of Calabria. She does refuse me nothing--we, Madonna, shall not suffer by her follies.”

Maria’s hand, like a lily in the moonshine, floated lightly on the surface of the water. He gazed at her black mask with straining eyes.

“Are you not pleased, Madonna, that I have spared your revenues?”

“Oh, you have done so much for me,” she answered quietly. “Even--murder.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Of whose vengeance?”

“He has a brother who is a king.”

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

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

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

“And Giovanna?” She gave a little start.

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

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

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

“You will endure me?” he said unsteadily.

Her blue eyes flashed through her mask.

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

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

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

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

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

She looked at him quickly.

“And why?”

The dark face clouded; he frowned at her.

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

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

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

He sprang up, the embroidery on his clothes glittering.

“Maria! Maria!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Maria seated herself beside her.

“Giovanna struck you?”

Sancia sobbed afresh.

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

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

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

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

Fresh, miserable weeping checked Sancia’s words.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Maria crossed herself with a shaking hand.

“Have you spoken of this to any?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Ah!--you have had no answer?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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