Chapter TWENTY-TWO: The Casket

Maria rose from her knees in her little chapel, stiff from praying.

The pointed west window glowed in the last glory of the sunset, and patches of faint bright color lay over the stone altar and the smooth stone flags.

Maria kissed her rosary and her psalter and laid them in her bosom; then, with the calm step and composed face of a nun, opened the little door that led into her bedchamber.

The place was full of shadows--about the canopied bed and the corners, peaceful, and perfumed with incense from the chapel.

And leaning against one of the high dark chairs was Sancia di Renato.

Maria paused with a low sound of surprise, and Sancia lifted a distorted face and slipped from the chair to her knees without a word.

The Princess’s heart turned sick with half-formed dreads and terrors. The girl’s look of passionate misery, her attitude as she knelt there, her disordered dress and hair, her silence, seemed omens of disaster beyond bearing.

“What has happened?” she demanded. “God’s name, get up and speak to me----”

She stooped, almost unconsciously, and caught the shrinking shoulder. In a second supplicating arms were about her and a hot face pressed against her bosom, while a passion of dry sobs shook Sancia.

Maria sat down weakly in the high-backed chair, the other clinging to her.

“You have always been my friend,” came muffled from Sancia. “I--have no one else.” Sobs again choked her; she shuddered throughout her whole body with the force of them. Maria gazed at the pale golden head and heaving shoulders, and her noble face grew pale with pity.

“Will you not tell it me?” she whispered.

Sancia sobbed out frantic incoherent words, clasping Maria’s arms tightly in a kind of desperate weakness.

At last with an effort she lifted her head. “He said I had the loveliest face in Italy!” she whispered. “He said--it was I--and only I----”

“Who?” cried Maria, bewildered.

“He has broken my heart,” gasped Sancia, unheeding. “He swore false to me--he kissed the Queen.”

“His name!” said Maria imperiously. “Who is it you speak of?”

But the tide of Sancia’s agony had burst beyond control.

“I love him,” she sobbed, “I adore him----”

Maria cried out sternly:

“You shall answer me--who is it?”

“Ludovic of Hungary!”

The Princess rose and tried to cast her off. “This to my face!” she said proudly, and struggled to unlock the clinging hands, “to my face that ye love the King!”

“All know he is naught to you,” answered Sancia wildly. “Nothing to you--hardly have ye spoken together--but to me----”

“Come ye with these confidences to his betrothed?” demanded Maria. She drew away sharply and Sancia, loosened from her hold, fell across the chair.

“I have no other friend,” she said in a stifled voice. “But if it please ye, cast me off--I will go----”

The Princess stood still and speechless, her blue eyes dark with pity and passion, her hand clenched against the wooden ribbing of the wall behind her.

Sancia half raised herself. Through the flush of her hot tears her loveliness showed dazzling from her bright unbound hair to her white interlocked fingers.

“Ye are like a statue of the Virgin,” she said hoarsely. “But I--who am not holy--can ye blame me that I love him?”

Maria struggled for words, something of a bitter smile touched her mouth; she turned her face away and was silent.

To her the moment was beyond speech, as her feelings were beyond Sancia’s understanding. The soft, wailing voice continued: “Have pity on me--I would I was dead! Have pity on me!”

Maria looked at her with a bright disdain; suddenly found her voice and used it, steadily. “I do not blame you in this matter, Sancia,” she said. “But tell me of it from the first--and what you said--of the--Queen.”

Sancia, crouching at her feet, with her head against the chair, whispered her story in the pauses of her heavy sobs. A pitiful story as she told it in her grief, yet holding still some of the glory of a first and passionate love, and full of the innocence of a childlike soul.

She told how she had given her dreaming heart to Ludovic at first sight of him, how he had read her adoration in her eyes and found each day some intoxicating snatched moment to woo her in, how he had spoken splendid wild things of what his first love would do for her, and how she had believed it, trusting in him until to-day--to-day, when she had seen the Queen in his arms and heard her words:

“You and I as lovers!”

Maria listened to the broken recital with a still face. Another smirch on her one-time idol, another proof of the unworthiness of her hero. Her thoughts flashed to Andreas lying in his tomb in San Gonnaro, and her lips tightened.

“This man is not worth your tears!” she cried, stooping over Sancia. “He has come to use Naples for his pleasure, making a mock of his vengeance and a jest of his brother’s death--because we all lie in his hand he plays with us as things below thought!”

“And the Queen?” gasped Sancia. “The Queen? He kissed the Queen--and she is--Andreas was her husband--” The girl’s fine nostrils distended, her lips whitened with fury. She rose stiffly from her knees.

“You know and I know,” she whispered intensely, “that it was his brother’s murderess he caressed!”

“Stop!” commanded Maria. She flung her hand up over her face, and even Sancia’s wrath was awed by her voice, her still figure.

“You have the proofs of it,” said Sancia in a weak tone. “Do you mean to be always silent?”

Maria uncovered her eyes.

“You speak of what touches madness,” she answered under her breath. “Listen to me--” she came a step forward and the girl cowered against the bedpost. “We know nothing--either of us--I have said so before--do you hear me?--do you understand me?”

“I know what I know,” breathed Sancia, clenching her hands. “I know the white devil has enchanted him--I know where you found the fragment of her gown--I know why she rises at night to look from the window with her fingers at her throat----”

She paused, panting, and Maria laid a cold hand on her shoulder.

“Of none of these things will you speak to Ludovic of Hungary,” she said steadily.

Sancia writhed beneath an authority she was not strong enough to outface.

“Why?” she cried. “I want him to loathe the Queen as I loathe her--to kill her as I would kill her if I could--why do you shield her--I came to you for those things you have that damn her--will you not give them to me? Will you not show them to the King? Why do you stand so silent?”

“Because these things are in God’s hands,” said Maria in a low voice. “And I cannot do what you ask.”

Sancia, baffled, mastered, broke into impotent sobbing, calling down judgment on the Queen between her gasping breaths.

Neither had noticed that the room had grown nearly dark. Maria, moving, saw that the window was a mere patch of dull light, and that the sun had long set.

With unfeeling fingers she lit the little lamp beside her bed and the tall candle on the table.

The small flame touched with gold her own incense-scented hair, and cast a wavering shadow round Sancia’s disordered loveliness and palely gleaming locks.

“God help thee,” said Maria compassionately. “For there is no aid save in heaven----”

Sancia broke out:

“I will speak--I will speak,” and struck her hand on the bedpost. “For I love him.”

A faint color came into the Princess’s face. “Ye do not think of me,” she said quietly. “Of how I have stood aside--how I have nursed my heart in secret--ye do not think that I have had my hopes and dreams--perhaps--and you forget that I am the King’s promised wife.”

“But I,” cried Sancia with the selfishness of passion, “I love him----”

“Then ye are more fortunate than I,” flashed Maria, “for I cannot love him--nor any man--ye can cherish thoughts of him in a convent, but I must feed an empty life with dreams.”

Sancia sobbed on.

“Aye,” continued Maria, walking slowly up and down, with her head held disdainfully, “do what you can with your love while you have it--think of it, weep over it. Ye are happier than those who cannot stoop to it--but I--for me, there is another way.”

She paused beside Sancia. The lamp and candle threw cross shadows over them.

“Get back to Padua,” she said.

“I cannot leave him,” murmured Sancia. “Madonna, I cannot!”

“You must,” said Maria, “or you will speak--and shall what I have concealed in deep bitterness and prayer be revealed through your jealousy? I say you shall leave Naples!”

“O Jesu!” moaned Sancia.

“Nay,” continued Maria in a softer tone. “It is the wiser thing for your soul’s sake--and what is there for ye here but misery? Certainly I will not marry this man, but he will not wed with you, and if you love him there is but shame for you--therefore go home to Padua.”

Sancia was silent a great while, and Maria put her arms about her and kissed her quietly. At which Sancia said in a faint voice:

“I will go home.”

“God be praised,” answered Maria trembling.

“And I will be silent.”

Maria kissed her again.

“Now let me rest upon your bed awhile,” pleaded Sancia. “For I am heartbroken unto death, and this place is very peaceful.”

The Princess looked at her in a manner between shame and scorn.

“That ye should break your heart for him!”

The tearful eyes flashed with pride. “There is no knight more splendid in the circle of the world--and I would give my heart again, nay, my soul, that he might smile on me!” She turned away, sank face downward on the pillows, and lay very still, save for the long shudders of exhausted passion that shook her huddled figure.

Maria watched her for a little, then moved across the room and leaned against the window, her head bowed, her hands slack.

Her strongest feeling was one of utter disdain for Sancia, herself--for Ludovic of Hungary. She remembered the night of the masquerade when she had prayed with such fervency for this man’s coming; she remembered the golden pictures her fancy had drawn of him, a hero saint, a stern avenger, a just man, a wise king, a true knight, one greatly different to those who intrigued in the court of Naples.

And now had he not proved himself such an one as any of them. Careless of his brother, he had stooped to dally with the Queen; careless of his honor, he idled the days in too fair Naples; careless of his betrothed, he deigned to turn to Sancia’s adoring loveliness. Bitterly she asked herself--are these the actions my knight would grace his mission with? Bitterly she answered herself--no.

And she felt as if the shame he was unconscious of rested upon her soul. The memory of the dead Andreas in the syringa bushes was as an accusation; the thought of him in Santa Chiara as the thought of a sin.

To her the seal of damnation was very surely upon Giovanna that moment when her lips touched those of her murdered husband’s brother, and the terrible shadow of it was over her own soul. The awful thing that had driven the Queen to madness was unsettling her sister’s clear reason. She tortured herself thinking that to be passive was a sin, thinking that to speak was a sin. She felt herself gripped by a doom that was steadily nearing--nearing burning Naples, nearing the wicked palace, where Giovanna smiled in her sin, where Ludovic caressed her and Sancia wept for love of him--nearing all these tangled nightmare miseries to blot them out forever under the blackness of utter annihilation.

With a fierce effort she controlled her wild thoughts and crept slowly to the bed to look at Sancia.

The Paduan girl was seemingly asleep. Her flushed wet face showed with the freshness of a rose between the twisted yellow of her locks. Where her dress had slipped, her bosom shone white and soft, and heaved now and then with light sobs.

“Would I could find rest as easily,” whispered Maria d’Anjou. She gazed at the childish beauty before her with compassion and no touch of envy, though she did not forget that the splendid Ludovic, for whose coming she had waited so anxiously, had turned from her to this--the Queen’s waiting woman.

Presently a soft knock on the door disturbed her. It was her page, who attended in the antechamber, with a message that the company awaited her in the dining hall. Maria put out the candle and trimmed the lamp, drew the bed curtain so as to shade Sancia’s sleeping face, and left the chamber.

In the outer room sat her tire maid, under a bronze statue of Santa Chiara. She worked at endless lengths of embroidery, and the page was at her feet, holding skeins of somber-colored silk.

“Sancia di Renato sleeps on my bed,” said Maria. “I think she will not wake until my return--ye will not rouse her.”

She sat at the supper table that night as she always sat there--silent, holding herself aloof, so quiet amid the talk and laughter that few looked her way, yet herself acutely observant, with sad eyes of judgment. This evening the whole scene flared before her in colors so sharp and with a meaning so ghastly that more than once she lowered her lids to escape it; still, like a great bedizened picture, it rose, even before her closed eyes: Ludovic of Hungary, flamboyant in black and golden tissues; Giovanna beside him, robed in yellow with her red hair gleaming against a background of cushions of noir and murrey; the dark faces of the Hungarians, the smiling faces of the Italians, beautiful forms of women, sitting carelessly round the board between the upright figures of the men; the shape and glitter of gilt vessels and the sparkle of rich glass; Luigi of Taranto, with the eyes of a reckless man, lounging forward on the table, the emerald studs in his collar shining over his scarlet dress and his face flushed and heavy; Carlo di Durazzo, fallen into the glooms, frowning at the white hounds who fawned beside him; and all lit by the soft yet gleaming light of wax candles that showed like vivid stars in a bright haze.

Opening her eyes resolutely and gazing down the table at the King’s dark face, Maria d’Anjou came to a resolution.

All the long dread and horror had culminated to-day in Sancia’s tale. She would fly from the impending doom, leave the sinners to their sin. In a convent she would pray for the soul of the forgotten Andreas.

First she would speak, for once, to Ludovic of Hungary, and release him from the formal bonds he deemed so light.

When they rose from the table, she waited by her place for the King to pass.

The Queen went by, but never looked at Maria. Ludovic, seeing her waiting, glanced at her expectantly.

“My noble cousin,” she said in a low voice.

He stopped instantly and surveyed her, unsmiling, though he was not ill-pleased that her stately coldness had been brought at last to notice him.

“I do desire,” continued Maria very softly, “to have speech with you on matters of import--to me, at least,” she added proudly.

Ludovic bent his head in a slightly mocking manner. He never took a woman seriously enough to be ever impressed by her gravity, and he thought of this cold bride of his as a heartless creature of caprice.

Maria saw his estimate of her in his arrogant eyes, and the pride of her own regal blood fired her beauty.

“Well,” she said in a louder voice. “Have I that privilege to speak to you?”

The King was looking at her very obvious loveliness. When, as now, she was flushed with animation, she owned a color and a sparkle that made the Queen hard by comparison and Sancia faded.

“My time is yours,” he answered in a stately fashion, but with smiling eyes. “Put me at your commands.”

“If you will be here in the morning when none are abroad, I will come to you.”

He lifted his brows.

“Mass! Is it so weighty--and so secretive?”

“Neither,” she replied quickly. “Yet I pray you come.”

He laughed a little.

“’Tis not a difficult request, God wot.” Maria’s blue eyes lifted to his steadily.

“I shall be here--and now, fair liege, the Queen waits for you.”

She turned from him with so considered and quiet a dismissal that his magnificence was moved to a half-angry, half-amused interest.

Resisting the desire to follow her, he turned to Giovanna, watching with fearful eyes, standing in the doorway, waiting him.

“What did she say?” she asked, as he came up to her, for she was afraid of her sister, although she had so completely won the King from her.

“Naught of any matter,” smiled Ludovic. “Naught that can trouble you or I----”

And he touched her hand delicately, where it hung against her robe, as if he would recall that afternoon to her mind.

But she gave him a sick glance and a forced smile for his answer.

Maria went back to her chamber. The page had gone, the maid was half asleep over the endless sewing that crept in its shining colors about her knees.

“Has Sancia gone?” asked the Princess.

“Some moments since, Madonna.”

Maria turned into the bedchamber and locked the door.

To-night, that was to be the last night of it all, she would destroy those pitiful relics of the murdered King, and with them all temptation and all hope or expectation of worldly help or pleasure.

Ludovic of Hungary had failed her. From first to last the Queen had triumphed. It was not for her, but for God’s avenging angels to seek their judgment and their punishment.

She lit a couple of candles and turned up the lamp.

The sight of the tumbled coverlet recalled Sancia’s bitter distress. Maria thought sadly of taking her with her into the convent of Santa Chiara; then of the King and Sancia’s hot words, “the most splendid knight in the circle of the world.” Perhaps he was. She held her breath to think of him. What if he had spurned Giovanna, avenged his brother--and, her lover and lord, taken her back to Hungary?

For a moment’s space she flushed and stood still, thinking of him, then--“Giovanna’s lover,” she said to herself. “And Sancia’s flatterer!”

She went swiftly to her coffer. The lions and cherubs of the molding were picked out in the yellow light as she raised the lid. The breeze from the bay blowing through the open window stirred the tapestry on the wall and her red dress.

With a prayer on her lips, she prepared to burn into ashes and oblivion these things, the destruction of which she had dallied with so long, drawing the candle closer with cold fingers.

Then shock relaxed the quiet of her nervous tension. She cried out in a strange voice and flared the candle full into the open coffer. It was bare. The little casket had gone. She had left the chest unlocked, never thinking--and some one----

Then she remembered and knew.

“Sancia,” she whispered, “Sancia will show them to the King.”