Chapter SIXTEEN: Ludovic the Triumphant

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

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

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

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

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

“And if not?” asked the Duke idly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What was he doing?” said Giovanna.

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

The Queen looked at Durazzo.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Why is he so beloved?” sneered Carlo.

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

Here Giovanna, who had listened in silence, spoke:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Ah, you are frightened?” he said.

Her face changed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Are you Ludovic of Hungary?”

His smile slightly deepened. “Yes.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She saw the hot color flood his face.

“I thought so,” he said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ludovic gazed at her intently.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I have none.”

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

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

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

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

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

His eyes lifted quickly.

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

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

“What of his avowed murderers rewarded, unpunished?”

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

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

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

The King interrupted her broken words.

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

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

His hazel eyes darkened.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She had fallen from her vehemence into quiet.

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

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

She sat quite still.

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

“I am in your hands,” whispered Giovanna.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

His dark face flushed.

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

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

“Why?” asked Ludovic.

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

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

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

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

“I will!” she said.

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

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

“There are no others?” asked the King.

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

“Will you give me your sister?”

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

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

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

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

“You will come to Naples?” she whispered.

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

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

His fingers tightened over hers.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She lifted the homely latch and went out.