Chapter TWENTY-ONE: The Queen’s Lover

“We have lost our way,” said Giovanna.

She came through the trees slowly, holding up the front of her long green dress. The cool, rich leaves and moss were spangled with sunlight, that flickered also over her hair as she moved.

King Ludovic paused and looked back at her.

“I never heeded the path,” he said.

“Nor I.” She frowned over her words, and they proceeded in silence.

It was hours since they had wandered from the gay encampment of the hunting party, where the brilliant courtiers had sat round a feast, spread on the shady grass, or roamed in couples through the trees, and the sun was past the zenith.

Giovanna stopped, still with a frown on her delicate brows.

“I am tired, Ludovic.”

Everything about them was green, from the ferns at their feet to the transparent beech leaves over their heads. The Queen’s gown, also of that color, blended with the foliage, but Ludovic of Hungary was clad in a blood-purple that blazed against it.

He looked at her sideways.

“There is a building of some fashion ahead,” he answered her, and moved forward again down the soft glade.

Giovanna followed. He made no attempt to break her sudden silence.

They came upon the building he had discerned. It was a mere ruin. Three slender Roman pillars of weather-stained marble, with the moss green round the bases, the portion of a wall holding an empty niche, and, adjoining this elegant ancient beauty, this defaced temple to some old-world deity, a rude shed of wattled plaster, placed there in a later age. This, also, had fallen into decay. Gaping walls and a broken roof showed a wooden crucifix and a font for holy water, long since dry, or filled only with the raindrops.

So the two dead temples jostled each other. The mud walls of the Christian God leaning against the enduring shaft of the Pagan, both peaceful in the lonely mellow sunshine; each grown alike with maidenhair fern and the faint wood violets. They were over everything, these violets, in such great clusters that they outnumbered the blades of grass. Here and there, among the blue haze of color, arose the dead-white flower of a narcissus, with the gold crown on its heart, and under the crucifix twisted a blossomless brier rose, the long, thorny stems covered in young spring green.

Giovanna, stooping and putting aside the flowers, disclosed a fallen Jupiter, almost hidden in the grass.

She seated herself on his smooth pedestal, and smiled up at Ludovic.

“What have we been talking of this while?” she asked dreamily, and her left hand drooped by her side among the violets, as if it trailed in water.

“Of Kings and Queens,” answered Ludovic, his sweet voice suited to the lonely loveliness of the spot and the once sacred ground on which they stood, “of statecraft and wars and kingdoms.”

He leaned against one of the marble pillars, and its narrow shadow lay over him and fell straightly to her feet.

“Of what is the quality of greatness?” she mused, and she turned from the living King to gaze through the grass at the placid face of the dead god.

Ludovic laughed.

“If one might know, Giovanna!”

“To rule,” she murmured, “always to rule--above the world--not of it.”

Her slight figure showed in fine lines through the straight gown. Her white throat rose above a broad band of gold; round the turn of her cheek hung the soft, shining auburn curls, escaping from their gilt net. Suddenly she lifted those eyes, that were of a purple more deep and wonderful than the violets, and stared into the King’s gazing face.

“Why do you not return to Hungary?” she asked. “Why do you not take your wife and go?”

“Why do we any of us linger in the pleasant places?” he answered, in no way disconcerted by the sudden coldness of her tone.

A white butterfly darted between them, and settled on the Queen’s hand.

“I think you must go,” she said, still gazing at him intently. “Can there be two rulers in Naples, and none in Hungary?”

His bright color rose.

“Are you jealous of me, Giovanna?” he demanded.

She considered a moment.

“I am, perhaps, afraid of you--you have done too much for me.” She trembled, and the white butterfly rose from her hand.

He knew as well as she that she and Naples both were in his power. He smiled easily, and the clear hazel eyes sparkled behind the soft lashes.

“You stay over-long,” she continued in a low voice. “People make a talk of it--and in my own city I am not Queen----”

He lifted his splendid head, and the sun glittered down the peacock feathers in his cap. “Maria is not so impatient,” he remarked.

“You will not consider her,” returned Giovanna. “She is the woman you have always asked for--the wife you demanded of me.”

Ludovic suddenly moved toward her, trampling down the violets.

“Giovanna! Giovanna!” he said, his soft voice impatient. “Why will you talk of these things?” He flung himself beside her on the fallen statue. “Giovanna--you must understand me.”

He paused. She sat silent, with her clear profile toward him.

“God wot,” continued the King, “you are the most regal and proud woman I have ever seen--you are a glorious thing, and had you not been called my brother’s wife----”

A silence again, while the white butterfly fluttered over the violets.

Then Ludovic took her cold wrists and turned her round to face him. “I think I love you,” he said, and laughed.

She stared at him, with no sign of discomposure or surprise. “I do not understand,” she answered.

He laughed again.

“You have understood this month past, if you are a woman, and not a witch.”

The blank look passed from her eyes as if by a great effort she forced herself to comprehend.

“You love me?” she said slowly. Doubt and suspicion crossed her face.

Ludovic of Hungary waited for the moment he had resolved to enjoy since he first saw the cold, young Queen; the moment when he, invincible, in love as in arms, should see her, who had not turned her head for any, tremble into confession, submission--a very woman, after all.

But there was no response in her face. For an instant her eyes narrowed with a look of calculation and cunning.

“Have you given me my Kingdom because you love me?” she murmured.

“Scarcely would you call it hate--or policy?” he whispered. His clasp on her hands tightened, and her cold countenance flushed with some feeling.

“And what else would you do for me?” she said breathlessly.

The dark, rich-colored face was brought nearer to hers; his voice dropped, tempered to the most throbbing softness of passion:

“All that a man and a King may,” he answered.

For an instant her eyes shone with triumphant fire. Then her mood clouded with discontent.

“How do you love me?” she demanded, in a voice almost scornful. “This love is a strange thing.”

“Giovanna!” he answered, and the proud blood darkened in his cheek. “Giovanna!”

She appeared to divine that his fiery arrogance was rising at her coldness, and fell, though in a bewildered way, into excuses.

“God wot, my liege--this is no talk for us. I am the Queen. Maria----”

Ludovic interrupted. He held her hands down on the knees of her green gown and spoke quickly. “Let Maria take her cold face into a convent. Ye are the Queen, and as such I speak to ye--a King to a Queen--my regal cousin, ye understand me?”

Her face was blank with the ignorance of a child, he thought she lured him on, and he laughed.

“Come, little enchantress--teach me how they woo in Italy, since my Hungarian fashion cannot move yet----”

Her hands strove under his.

“What do you mean--what do you mean?”

Fear and dislike were in her tone. She drew back stiffly, crushing into the tall violets. The King’s mouth set in unpleasant lines of hardness.

“What have ye meant these weeks I have been in Naples? Have I not done great things for you--and to be flouted?”

She understood the covert threat as she had not the open love, and she faced it as a thing familiar.

“Yes, yes.” Her great eyes widened. “Ye have done everything for me.” She was silent a space, grasping a new idea; then, “this is the price?” she said, and her hands became still in his grasp.

Ludovic of Hungary gazed at her curiously. “Do ye mock me, Giovanna?” he asked.

Her smooth, oval face was passionless.

“What do you want of me?” she returned. “I do think you have bought me by giving me my realm.”

He took his hands from hers.

“This is a strange wooing,” he said. “I think you are no woman----”

“Do I put it too plainly?” she asked, with brightening eyes. “I am not quick at courtly speech----”

He bore down her words with sudden impatience in his soft voice.

“Giovanna--in one syllable--could ye love me?”

His breath was almost on her face. She could not escape his magnificent presence, as he leaned on the fallen stone god toward her.

“Ye are a knight any woman might love,” she answered.

Baffled, he drew back a little.

“Ye practice a deft evasion,” he said. “But ye have no page to trifle with. Hark to me!” he caught her arm, compelling her attention. “I, Ludovic of Hungary, have said--I do think I love ye----”

With the cunning of the helpless, she sought to soothe him.

“Aye, give me a little time--I have never thought of those things.”

She put her hands to her forehead.

“Ye play with me!” cried the King. “And ye play with a man who will not suffer it----”

He rose and turned from her.

Seeing his anger, the living fear sprang into her eyes. She thought of her kingdom, what this man could do for her--what he had done and might undo. After all, was not this what she had wanted?

“Ludovic!” she cried desperately.

He half turned, but would not move toward her. She sprang up, stumbled, caught his arm and clung to it.

“Why--I love you,” she said in a low, terrified voice. “Do not turn from me, my cousin--I will be very obedient----”

“Is this the truth at last?” he asked, with a hard little smile, “or do ye seek to fool me?”

She closed her eyes and laid her white face against the purple of his rich habit.

“Judge me mercifully,” she whispered, “for I am yours by all ways.”

The King looked down into her curious, fair face, pallid between the auburn locks, and his feeling for her, fanned by the strangeness of her reception of his wooing and her final complete submission, verged almost on to the love he spoke of.

“Kiss me, Giovanna,” he said under his breath, yet imperiously.

She opened her eyes and lifted her face obediently, yet, when he bent his head, she drew back sharply before his lips could touch hers.

Instantly she recovered herself.

“Never have any kissed me before,” she said, wild-eyed; “woman or man.”

Ludovic smiled.

“Ye are a strange lady, and likely lie--yet if it be truth, I am not displeased to be the first.”

As he spoke, he lightly kissed her cheek, almost before she was aware.

She stood still a moment, and such swift horror seized her that she shrunk together like a blasted thing--one other had kissed her--Andreas of Hungary, red with wounds, a few minutes before his death. His words came back to her, blotting out the present:

“I could have killed you if I would--remember that afterward!”

The old, fearful consciousness of madness shook her. She groped, in a dusky unreality of horror. The blood beat like drums in her ears, and her limbs trembled.

“Mass! Are ye ill?” cried Ludovic of Hungary. He took her slim body in his arms, and drew her frail weight on to his heart.

She struggled to regain a hold on herself, and half thrust him off.

“You and I as lovers!” she cried, and laughed deliriously.

He thought she referred to her sister.

“Why not?” he answered. “We are not as other people. We can mask it with the rest, but afterward as King and Queen--and there are other ways--the Pope.”

A little sound, like a small animal in pain, came sharply across his words. He paused, looked round and saw nothing.

“A hawk hath found a prey,” he said.

But Giovanna had drawn away from him and was gazing toward the shattered white pillars. There stood Sancia di Renato, the setting sun illuminating her gentle loveliness.

The two women looked at each other across the space of violets. The King alone was at his ease.

“Have ye come to search for us?” he asked. “God wot, we lost our way some time since--the Queen and I.”

With his hand on his hip, he smiled at her, but Sancia di Renato turned her face away.

“They have all missed you, my liege,” she said, and her fingers pulled fiercely at the brier rose beside her. “They are behind me--the rest----”

Ludovic, standing midway between her and the Queen, answered her with a deepening smile and a little gleam in the hazel eyes behind the thick, dusky lashes:

“You hurt your hand, Madonna--on the thorns.”

She swung round, her exquisite young face flushed from brow to chin.

“It is not my hand that--hurts.”

He marked her swiftly rising bosom, her soft, trembling mouth, her wet eyes, her agitated voice, with an interested gaze.

Giovanna, a mute spectator, gazed at Sancia with vacant eyes and troubled brows, and pulled at her slim fingers.

Behind them the sun was dazzling the color out of trees and flowers, burning in the last blaze before its setting. Before them a slow cavalcade was wending down the grassy paths toward the ruin, and broken laughter, jangling bells and low voices came to the three in the ancient temple.

Sancia di Renato turned away abruptly. Through the quivering leafage Duke Carlo showed, leading the Queen’s white horse.

Ludovic laughed gayly, half at the Queen, half to himself.

But Giovanna kept her eyes on the ground and twisted her fingers vacantly.