Chapter NINETEEN: The Queen Wins

Maria d’Anjou accepted it silently. She did not rail or complain. Through the tangled life of the palace she moved quietly, with apparent little heed of what passed about her.

Giovanna’s triumph had been her defeat. The Queen had snatched herself from ruin by winning in an amazing fashion the man to whom Maria was looking for vengeance, justice, and escape. Raymond de Cabane’s death had filled her with more disgust than relief. She stood aside, watching her sister spin her nets and set them, and felt herself as helpless as ever she had done in the old days. At times Sancia di Renato came and wept on her breast, but Maria was too weary for tears. The long-prayed-for deliverance was at hand. Ludovic of Hungary was coming to Naples, but not for her, for Giovanna’s lures.

She listened in secret misery to the Queen’s elated talk of him; heard her praise his courtesy, his voice, even his face; heard her boast how he had put aside all slanders and old calumnies at her mere word, and how he was to enter Naples as her friend and ally.

He would keep her on her throne, this man who had come to hurl her from it. He would chastise her insolent subjects, and the woman who was his promised wife listened silently.

She had always woven vague hopes and dreams round the King of Hungary. When she was a child she had been taught to regard him as her future lord, and through all the storms and intrigues that had held them apart, her lonely soul had remained constant to his image. She had dreamed of the day when she might go to him, to a strange land that yet would be home. She had been loyal to him in every thought. In her bitterest need she had appealed to him, and now he was coming, her knight, and Giovanna had snatched him from her to serve her own pride and ambition.

Sometimes she thought of him with contempt. What manner of man was he to be so easily persuaded? What love had he for Andreas that he was satisfied so soon?

She tortured herself with doubts of him, scorn of him, and of his blindness, his weakness, while she listened to every word spoken of him and strove to picture to herself this unseen lord of hers.

And on the morning of the day he was to enter Naples, Giovanna, pale with triumph, came to her in her lonely little room.

Maria sat on the end of her bed, her bare arms loosely clasped round the carved post that her chin and her twisted fingers rested on. She wore a flowing red dress open at the throat that appeared to mingle with her unbound chestnut locks, so nearly was it of the same hue. Her eyes, blue as the bay that showed through the open window, were sad and steady beneath her level brows. Giovanna came in silence into the room, and went to the window where the early sunlight glimmered over her from head to foot. She had not spoken alone with her sister since the night of the King’s death, nor made any attempt to seek her out, but Maria showed no surprise nor moved from her still position.

Giovanna was superbly dressed in orange velvet stiff with golden embroidery, but she wore no jewels. Though the castle of Bertrand d’Artois had yielded some treasure to the impoverished court, it had not been sufficient to redeem her gems from the Lombards.

She gave Maria a quick glance out of narrow bright eyes and moistened her palely scarlet lips. “Listen,” she said. “Ludovic of Hungary comes here to-day--you know?”

The beautiful face and the still hands did not alter or move.

“Well, well,” said the Queen quickly. “Why are you silent? What more do you desire? Raymond de Cabane is dead--ye are to be the wife of Ludovic--did ye not always wish it?”

Her fine fingers played restlessly on the stone window frame. Still Maria did not speak.

Giovanna stared at her sister’s face, pearl white in the waving burnished hair, and her own took on a strange look.

“Why of two such men did they give me the blundering boy?” she spoke between quick breaths. “You are very fortunate. Ludovic is a man and King--” She changed her tone. “Come,” she said sharply, “why do you not dress yourself and make ready to meet him?”

Maria was silent.

The Queen, as if some wild impatience had caught her soul, stepped up to her sister and seized her by the shoulder.

“Will you not speak to me?” she asked viciously.

“Why am I to endure your proud mockery?” The calm, fair face changed swiftly. Maria sprang up, wrenched herself free, and drew back to the farthest wall.

“You shall not touch me,” she whispered. She shook back the red hair, and the red dress and her white face and throat gleamed in the dusky corner. Her voice came hoarsely. “And you will keep yourself away from me--if Ludovic of Hungary,” she panted over the name, “is to be my lord, you and he must not--ah!--I am not your puppet, Giovanna.” She clasped her hands fiercely. “And I tell you that if this man is coming to your lures he gets none of me--no! he chooses between us--if he believes you, trusts his brother’s widow--his brother’s--” She caught back the word, but her passionate blue eyes shone with undaunted fire. “I say he gets none of me,” she repeated. “I will be the wife of no man you have in your toils.”

Giovanna stood by the bed, looking down. The sunlight picked out the great coil of auburn hair in the nape of her neck and the gold threads in her stiff orange gown.

“How wildly you speak!” she answered quietly. “Why, what is Ludovic of Hungary to me?” She lifted long, evil eyes. “And what should I be to him--seeing you are his betrothed wife?” She laughed noiselessly, bunching her shoulders to her ears where the snaky curls clustered. “Are you afraid of losing him--with that face?” she sneered. “With your pure life and your pure beauty and your rich dowry, are you afraid of me, who am old ere I am young, faded ere I have bloomed--spoiled and tarnished and broken?”

Her voice sank, she seated herself on the end of the bed, huddled together, and flung her arms up over her face.

“Ruined!” she wailed. “Broken, body and soul--old--yes, I am old, Maria, and my heart is stunned, bruised, and dying.”

She sank face downward on the red coverlet and sobbed wildly, pressing her hands to her forehead.

Maria came from the corner and gazed at her, but with no softening in her face. Fair and cold and pitiless she watched the heaving shoulders and bowed head.

At last Giovanna lifted her head, with her fine hair tumbled to her gold-girdled waist and her eyes wild and red.

“No man will look on me with love,” she said fiercely. “I am damaged goods, though I am on the market. God wot, there are ugly things said of me even loyalty cannot be deaf to, and things believed a saint could not live down--you need not be afraid of me, Maria----”

Her sister answered:

“I am afraid of nothing. But witches and evil things have gained of times the love of honest men.”

Giovanna laughed miserably.

“Do you think I have bewitched him, this Ludovic of yours? What do I want with him? He is no finer knight than Luigi of Taranto, whom I might have by lifting my hand----”

Maria spoke scornfully:

“Well ye wot he is a King, and ye are in his power--what could Luigi of Taranto do for ye that this man could?”

The Queen raised her head. Her tear-stained face wore a look of cunning.

“So you think I am coming between your lord and you--you are jealous of me--you are not very sure of that maiden’s face of yours--well, well.” Her sharp little tongue passed over her lips. She rose with her hands in her fallen hair. “Perhaps I shall try to turn him to my purposes, Maria--but you who are so much the fairer have the greater chance.”

She smiled mockingly and tapped her little foot on the floor. Maria turned her face away with a sound of loathing.

“You and I have naught but hate in common,” she said. “Your insult does not hurt.”

Giovanna’s changes of mood had grown bewilderingly quick of late. She laughed now, freshly, and spoke in a light mockery: “Change your gown, Maria; I tell you he is not the man to admire beauty in a simple dress.”

The slow color came into Maria’s averted face. “Be assured I do not seek his admiration.”

Giovanna laughed again.

“As if you had not dreamed of him at nights these many months!”

Then there was the sound of her heavy dress on the floor and the click of the latch. Maria, with a hotter red in burning cheeks, turned to see her pass quietly into the corridor.

The door closed slowly.

Maria d’Anjou stood erect and stared at her own beauty in the mirror that hung from her waist. Eyes and lips were scornful.

She scorned them both--the woman who was the deceiver, the man who was deceived. Love! What did they know of it? She had her ideal of that and a face fair enough to bring her dreams true.

She dropped the mirror.

Ludovic of Hungary! She had had her thoughts of him, but she would not woo him now by one word, one look. Let this hope go as others had gone--pricked bubbles.

There was the convent; there was the tomb waiting in Santa Chiara. She thought of both with a grim pleasure. It would be pleasant to leave proudly the world to which she had never been attuned; it would be pleasant to lie at rest in the dim, rich church, leaving a fair memory behind.

Presently she drew a little key from a ribbon round her neck and, turning, opened her coffer and took out a casket from among her fragrant clothes.

Slowly she turned the key; slowly she raised the lid.

There lay the auburn curl and the scrap of embroidery taken from the King’s dead hand, his own stained locks, his unfinished letter to his brother, the snapped chain with its trinkets.

“How if I were to show you these, my lord of Hungary?” she asked bitterly. “What would you think of her innocence?”

Was he so weak a man that Giovanna’s witch face and slow-glancing, bright eyes could overweigh with him proofs like this?

As she locked them away again she wondered, and felt her blood grow cold and her face hard with contempt. She had done with it all, she said in her heart, she was aloof, apart from the world, she had awakened from dreams of Ludovic of Hungary and was disdainful of herself that she had ever set him in her thoughts.

In the wide, warm window seat, full in the gold and purple light of early morning, she knelt and told her ivory beads. Even the streaming sunshine could not bring animation or color into her quiet countenance, though the stiff waves of hair turned back from her smooth brow, and falling beside her curved cheeks shone like living gold.

When she had finished her rosary she looked down at Naples lying in a haze of heat with the shimmering bay beyond, and the purple coast line of Sorrento and the vivid, blinding glitter of the square roofs set amid the palms and cypress trees that threw blue shadows over the white house fronts.

And as she gazed the bells of San Gonnaro and Santa Chiara burst into a peal that rang over town and bay and was echoed swiftly by the lesser churches.

Maria called to mind how, upon the entry of Andreas, these bells were tolling for the old King’s death; and how, two months later, they had tolled for him when his shapeless corpse was laid to rest beside the altar where he should have been crowned.

And now his brother came to the sound of the joy peals, to meet in friendship the woman--Maria checked her thought, even to herself she could not frame the word that told the thing her sister was. She kept her ghastly knowledge as close as Giovanna herself, a secret too terrible to be put into words or even definite thought.

She put her hair into a purple silk net and fastened it with ruby pins. Then, unsmiling and cold, she descended to the great hall.

There also she must think of Andreas; how here he had first set foot in the palace; how here he had feasted his Hungarians. In this hall had Giovanna held her mad masque; from here Guilia di Terliggi and Filippa da Morcane had been dragged to death and torture.

The high gallery was hung with fine silk tapestries from France. The ruby and topaz, amethyst and emerald hues of the window cast rays of colored light across the dusky, scented atmosphere. Under the canopied dais stood Giovanna, slender, stooping, with painted lips and long brilliant eyes; hard color in her dress with its trailing embroideries and in the orange ribbon binding the curling auburn hair. Against the vivid texture of her gown her shoulders and arms showed a dead white where the fantastic cut and laced sleeves revealed them; on her brow, was the one jewel left to Naples--a low filigree gold crown.

About her stood the gorgeous Italian courtiers: Carlo di Durazzo, in white and wine color; Bertrand gleaming in emerald green, Di Perlucchi in pure scarlet, Luigi of Taranto in azure and silver. Behind the Queen, noticeable among the ladies, showed the rose-hued beauty and pale gold locks of Sancia di Renato. She was clad in a gown of shifting mauve and violet. Her eyes lifted timidly to Maria, who came silently and stood beside her. The rest of the hall was filled with soldiers, servants and pages.

All were silent save Carlo and Di Perlucchi, who whispered together slighting criticisms of the whole pageant. Disapproved of the Queen’s dress, sneered at Ludovic of Hungary, and consoled each other’s jealousy with bitter remarks and scornful laughter.

Once Giovanna looked at them sharply and frowned, but she did not speak.

The doors were opened wide on to the steps, and a shaft of clear sunlight fell across the floor and wall. Maria looked over the Queen’s shoulder. She saw in the courtyard great banners bearing the double eagles of Hungary; the hard glitter of spears, shining armor and the gorgeous garments of pages and footmen.

The trumpets sounded, then were still. Shadows crossed the bar of sunlight; the halberdiers guarding the entrance fell back. A man stepped into the hall, then hesitated, confused by the dark after the sunlight.

The Queen went a little forward to meet him and paused under the soft violet light of one of the windows, Ludovic of Hungary saw her, gleaming in jewel-like color, and strode up. His firm tread was the one sound in the expectant assembly.

“My cousin,” murmured Giovanna.

He put his hand in hers and, slightly leaning forward, looked into her face.

To each the other looked so different from the remembrance they had that there was wonder in their eyes.

Ludovic was dressed with an ostentation of splendor. His heavy, trailing purple mantle, thrown back, showed a gold and scarlet vest stiff with gems. Round his black locks was a circlet, to which was fastened at one side a large plume of peacocks’ feathers, after the manner of the German knights. Different this from the man in the plain mail who had spoken to her in the farm kitchen; different also was she from the pale woman with loosened hair who had pleaded with him there.

The Queen was the first to speak:

“Welcome--in peace--to Naples, my lord the King.”

She withdrew her hand. There was a flash of jewels as he loosened his sword from its gleaming case and held the bare blade between them. The purple light ran down the steel and glimmered like a star on the point.

“Naples and Hungary shall kiss the sword,” said Ludovic in his soft voice. “Set your lips upon the blade, my cousin, the Queen.”

She lifted her stiff dress with cold, white hands and leaned forward. Woman and sword dazzled together as she laid her lips to the hard steel. One of her auburn curls fell across the handle. The King’s intense eyes were always upon her, as if no one else was in the room. Then, as she lifted her head, he leaned his dark face and kissed the sword where she had kissed it.

The trumpets, with a mighty clamor, called witness to the pledge. Ludovic of Hungary swung his sword, an arc of light, and sheathed it, and again he gave his hand to the Queen and walked with her to the dais.

The two princes of his own family, Carlo of Duras and Luigi of Taranto, went on one knee to welcome them to Naples. Luigi he raised and embraced; Carlo he received haughtily, remembering that knight’s demeanor at the camp.

Carlo now, as then, looked at him indifferently.

“Madonna Maria awaits you, Ludovic of Hungary,” he said, and looked to where she stood in front of the gathered ladies.

At that Giovanna gazed musingly on the King. “Maria!” she said, and held out her hand to her sister.

But Maria ignored it, and, stepping down from the dais, fronted the King.

So did Maria d’Anjou come face to face with her long-promised husband and the hero of her lonely thoughts. So, with cold heart and face, did she know him, for all these thoughts had pictured him, among all men there--the King.

As for him, her great, passionless beauty took him with a quick surprise and pleasure, though her unmoved demeanor held neither invitation nor welcome.

But Ludovic of Hungary was never at a loss with women.

“You and I should know each other by report,” he said, and smiled. “Madonna--you have heard of me?”

Her great, blue eyes gazed at him straightly, breaking through the lightness of his manner. “Has not my liege had letters from me that prove I know him?” she said.

At this reference to his brother and the object of his coming, Ludovic looked at her keenly. Here was different metal to Giovanna. She held herself erect, without hint of fear or deference; rather as if she judged and condemned him. He saw it and hardened, but merely said, in that treacherous voice, that was a caress even when the words belied it: “Come and kiss me, my wife that is to be--we have waited long for this meeting.”

“Over-long, my liege,” answered Maria d’Anjou steadily, in a low voice only he would hear, for the others had fallen back. “And my kisses have spoiled with keeping.” She returned to her old place on the dais, with a face marble pale, marble cold.

Her coldness stung Ludovic, effacing the impression her beauty had made. He knew all eyes were upon them; he knew every one had heard his words and gathered her refusal, if not her answer, and he was not a man to take a repulse lightly or humbly from a woman. With a flush in his face, he turned to Giovanna. Her long, narrow eyes, her rouged lips, met his glance with a quiet smile. Maria’s beauty passed from his mind beside the strange loveliness of her sister. As they proceeded to the room where the feast was prepared, he had eyes for the Queen and the Queen alone.

Carlo di Durazzo came beside Maria.

“Do you mark them?” he whispered.

Maria looked where the gilded blue-green of Ludovic’s plumes waved beside her sister’s auburn curls, and she thought of the casket that held one of those same curls, and put her hand over the key lying warm in her bosom.

The gay and splendid crowd, Italians and Hungarians, followed the King and Giovanna, but Maria heard a Hungarian whisper bitterly:

“Our King should remember Andreas--he came for the blood of this wanton woman, not her smiles!”