Chapter THIRTEEN: The Thunderbolt

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

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

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

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

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

The Queen’s violet eyes unclosed.

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

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

She caught his expression, and her eyes grew cunning.

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

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

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

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

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

“I know,” he answered.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She caught eagerly at his words.

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

“No,” he answered.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“He fought like ten,” frowned Raymond.

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

Raymond’s eyes shone fiercely.

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

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

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

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

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

With some muttered words, he left her.

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

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

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

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

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

Giovanna came to the altar.

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

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

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

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

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

They put the great crown on her head.

“How heavy it is!” she said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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