Chapter TWENTY-SIX: The Eclipse

The sick, cloying smell of the lilies troubled Ludovic. As he closed the door, his eyes slowly, reluctantly, sought the slight figure of the Queen, and the hot resolution that had brought him there, full of loathing for her, died within him. Many things had combined to rouse him to the full limit of his hate: Konrad’s urgings, aroused thoughts of Andreas, a conviction of her guilt, and the sight of Carola of Bohemia.

This, perhaps, most of all, though unconfessed to himself: Maria had slighted him, Sancia repulsed him, but Carola had crossed the seas to throw herself at his feet and beseech him to do it “magnificently.” His wounded pride could salve itself with that consideration--to her he was still a hero.

These things had brought him fiery to the Queen’s chamber, to redeem himself, to punish her--for the murder of his brother and the fooling of himself. He had brought the casket with him, meaning to fling the accusation at her and deal judgment, even as Konrad of Gottif would have done.

But the close, sick atmosphere of the room, her still figure, unnerved him instantly. He let the seconds slip by and could not speak.

Giovanna turned her head. She sat by the wall of her bedchamber; her page stood beside her. A low table, scattered with parchments, was close to her, and behind her a bright tapestry, worked with pheasants and unicorns. She wore a pale blue velvet gown that was gathered about her closely as she sat, slightly hunched together in the deep, massive chair. Her bedroom door was open, and from it could be heard the soft voices of women.

“How long you have been!” said Giovanna to the King. She looked tired, and as if she was cold, though the Italian sunshine was strong in the room.

Ludovic crossed to the table.

“Ye are very pale,” said the Queen. A passion of impatience shone in her eyes. Her little hands were clenched in her lap. “And is this a moment to be silent? Ye know that des Beaux has left Naples, and there is a rising in Sicily?”

Her words gave Ludovic a curious shock. So--her mind ran on nothing but politics, ambition. Always her kingdoms…

“Send away the boy,” he said heavily.

Giovanna motioned the page away instantly, keeping her intense eyes on the King.

“Come,” she breathed ardently. “You were to make me Queen and keep me Queen. I want money--men. These Lombard loans are due.” She pointed to the parchments on the table. “And the infamous interest to the Genoese----”

Ludovic moved away from her. She paused to watch him. He closed her bedchamber door and bolted it on the women within.

“Well, we are private now,” she continued. “What will you do for me?”

“I am considering,” said Ludovic. He kept his eyes from the Queen and stared at the tall lilies in the window, and their vivid shadows in the square of the sunshine.

Giovanna rose.

“What has happened?” she demanded. “Why will you not look at me? You have heard of Maria--do you blame me for that?”

Still he was silent.

“We will hang my fair cousin for this insult,” continued the Queen rapidly. “And shut his widow in a convent, and ye shall have her lands, Ludovic--only--help me.”

He turned to gaze at her. The heavy auburn hair hung in a gold net in the nape of her slender neck. Her violet eyes, shadowed underneath, were frantic with impatience, her underlip swollen where she had torn it with her teeth.

“Help you?” he echoed.

“Yesterday ye held a different language,” she answered hotly. “What has come to ye to-day, Ludovic of Hungary?”

His fingers tightened over the casket concealed in the silk folds of his houppeland.

“This action of Carlo’s has raised you another enemy,” he said, striving to gain time--to probe her.

“I know,” she replied desperately. “He must go----”

Swiftly he turned on her.

“Can ye bring a prince of the blood to execution for what he has done?”

Giovanna sank into her great chair.

“Perhaps not by daylight,” she said; “but there are other means.”

“Such as--murder?” demanded Ludovic.

At his tone she blanched with terror. “No! No! Ludovic--why are you so strange to-day?” In her agitation she again rose. And again sat down.

When she changed from her cold talk of state affairs to womanly trembling, she seemed very young and piteous. Ludovic could not nerve himself. He sat down opposite and hid his face with his hand.

“Are you ill?” she said, distracted. “Are you grieving for Maria?”

“No, no,” he answered. He was trembling, and she marked it. During all these months she had never seen him overcome--never otherwise than gay and bold. She beat her hands together.

“Do you, also, fail me--when I was looking to your strength--your courage?”

As he sat motionless, with averted face, she rose and came round to him.

“You said yesterday,” she whispered, her fine hands fell to his shoulders, her velvet gown touched his knee, “that you loved me,” she finished, speaking like a child.

As she touched him, the deadly sickness of utter cowardice smote Ludovic. He lifted a ghastly face, distorted from its beauty into a mere mask, but he could not move or speak--only sit there, cold to the heart, listening to the trembling beat of his pulses.

Her hands tightened on his shoulder.

“Why did you kiss me yesterday?” she demanded, “to look so on me to-day?”

With an inarticulate sound, he pushed her off and staggered up, meaning to face her standing, but his feet would not bear him. He had to lean against the wall.

He put his hand to his damp forehead and groaned. She stood looking at him, her head strained forward.

The rank scent of the lilies was overpowering. The dazzle of the sunlight on the floor, in her hair, seemed to sear his eyes. He tried to shape the words he wished to brand her with, but his tongue would not obey him.

Giovanna smoothed down the soft folds of her dress with a curious, slow gesture.

“What am I to think of ye, Ludovic?” she asked.

With an effort that shook him, he turned and set the casket on the table, among her parchments. With a trembling hand he pointed to it.

She picked it up quietly, traced the motto with her finger, and read it aloud:

“Remember thy later end, and thou shalt not sin for ever.”

Then she raised her head and laughed coolly, at which his blood was stirred to answer her:

“Open and see--your damnation,” he said, and he put his hand to the sword he had brought to slay her.

She lifted the lid, then dropped the casket from between her hands, leaving them out as if she still held it, while she turned a blank face to him.

“Ye--are--my brother’s--” Ludovic choked into silence. Her eyes were unbearable. He struggled with himself, cursing her that he was weak. Her hands fell to her side. His ragged voice broke again into the stillness:

“Ye murdered Andreas!”

“No,” she said mechanically. “No.”

“The proofs lie at your feet.” He put shaking hands on the sword by his side, fumbling with it.

She looked down at the floor. The piece of brocade Raymond had cut from her gown lay by her hem.

“Found in his hand,” said Ludovic hoarsely.

“He was--clinging to you… I think… your hair too…”

“Whose word?” cried Giovanna clearly. “On whose word do ye judge me?”

He pointed to what lay on the floor between them.

“’Tis enough.”

“This?” She set her foot on the brocade. “Did _you_ find it in his hand?”

She spoke steadily. The white color of her face had not changed.

“Sancia knows--and Maria,” breathed Ludovic. “And I know----”

“The women lie,” cried Giovanna. “Are _you_ their tool?”

Her eyes held scorn. “_You_,” she repeated, “who have been my friend and desired to be my lover, who believed me when I came to you first--you to be moved by their malice, their jealousy?”

Incredulous of her calm, her poise, he stared at her and his hand fell from his sword--would guilt dare so to face it? “However she outbrave it, you must see then,” Konrad had said, and he saw nothing, only the same inscrutable eyes, the same even voice.

“They lie,” said Giovanna. “Sancia may cut a fragment from my robe to swear she found it in his hand, Maria may bring his letter to move you--but I am innocent!”

Ludovic stumbled into the chair and rested his head in his trembling hands. He strove to recall what there was against her. Before it had seemed obvious, a thing crying aloud. Now, as she said, what was it but the word of malice and jealousy?

Maria had refused to speak further. Sancia would not confirm it, and--“God forgive me!” she had said.

The Queen’s voice broke upon his tortured thoughts.

“If ye think I did this thing--take me before my peers at Avignon!”

“God guide me,” muttered Ludovic. “If I knew--if I was sure----”

She moved slowly toward the table, her long shadow, the shadow of the lilies were distinct on the polished boards. She took a crucifix from the wall and held it up in her two hands--by her dress lay her dead husband’s bloody curls.

“If I swore,” she said, “on this?”

He rose in his seat.

“Would you dare?”

She put her lips to the crucifix.

“I call Christ, God and all his angels to witness that I am innocent of the murder of Andreas, my husband.”

She put the crucifix down, and looked into Ludovic’s eyes.

“And may God bring instant judgment upon me if I lie!”

He could not challenge what she had said. He stood vanquished, not daring to disbelieve.

“Does that satisfy you?” she asked. She laughed as she had laughed when she read the motto on the casket. Ludovic moved away sharply to the window and leaned there.

“Do you believe me?” she said again.

A heavy silence filled the low chamber for slow seconds. Then she crept toward him, and for the third time:

“Do you believe me? You see, God does not strike me down.” She touched the edge of his sleeve, then drew away again. He looked at her sideways.

Certainly they had lied about her. Remembering the terrific oath she had taken and her calm, he could not but think they had spoken false. Yet it galled him to be the shuttlecock of these women’s words.

“I think ye have persuaded me,” he said slowly.

She had returned to her chair and sat there, one hand among her parchments.

“Ye can be just,” she answered. There was no warmth in his confession, nor in her acceptance. Again a dragging silence.

Ludovic, gazing at the floor, saw the vivid sunshine less vivid, the shadows fainter, and marveled dully and told himself it was deception.

The Queen spoke steadily: “Is this to come between us?”

He answered brokenly: “God wot, I am enmeshed with doubts…”

“Is this love?” said Giovanna. “Is this a King’s word, Ludovic?”

Beyond question, now, the shadows on the floor, the shadows cast by the Queen’s chair, the table, the lilies and the fallen casket were growing fainter. The King glanced swiftly at the sky. It was utterly cloudless.

“You will believe me, yet abandon me,” continued the Queen hoarsely. “You will neither love nor hate me--you will stand aside--the coward’s part!”

He hardly heard her. As she spoke the light was paling--not as when it fades into twilight, but with no softening of the shadows that remained clear and defined, yet faint, as if it was all looked at through thick glass. Slowly, yet unmistakably, the chamber was darkening. And it was early in the afternoon, while the sky was cloudless.

“What is happening?” whispered Ludovic. He thought she had bewitched him--that he was going mad, going blind.

Now she had noticed it.

“A storm comes on,” she cried, and sprang up, knowing that the sky was clear; that no storm was ever heralded by this.

The steady darkness gathered. The sunlight was like faint stains in the unnatural gloom. Man and woman looked at each other with unutterable terror.

One thing was plain to both.

The sun was going out like a dying lamp. On the stillness of their horror broke a wild clamor of fear--the women locked in the inner room beat on the door.

Ludovic mechanically crossed the chamber and drew the bolt.

The two women stumbled across the floor.

“The end of the world,” said one, and the other shrieked.

In a second they had fled through the outer door, leaving it swinging wide behind them. It was now so dark they could see each other only as vague shapes--the wild clang of bells from the three hundred churches rang through the room.

Giovanna had stood erect, rigid, since she first rose. Now she flung herself on her knees and threw out her hands toward Ludovic, who cowered against the wall. He could just see the pale oval of her face and the shape of her arms as they waved up and down.

A wild voice rose, beating down the bells--he could hardly believe it hers:

“I confess! I confess! God have mercy upon me!”

The blackness descended as a thick veil over his eyes. He cried out in the agony of his terror and helplessness. The last glimmer of the window disappeared, swallowed into the huge darkness. Still that voice continued:

“I have murdered--I have lied--I opened the door to them--I saw him slain at my feet, Ludovic! Kill me! Let me pay that God may have mercy on me! I am red with blood! Let not the world end before I atone!”

Outside other voices, shrieking, and the tramp of panic-stricken feet. Ludovic strove to cling to his senses. This was the end of the world. God had come at last to Judgment, and she--she was confessing.

“Ye murdered him?” he shouted. He could not see his own hand before him.

Her answer came as if from a great distance. “Yes--for the crown of Naples I murdered him--I lured him there--I conceived it--I saw it done--I had Count Raymond slain that he might not speak! Slay me! Slay me! Purge me with the sword before the Devil snatches me to Hell!”

There was a sound as if she dragged herself along the floor. Her words rang about him like the bells, bearing no meaning--he was striving to number his own sins. His lips formed a broken prayer.

She tore her dress, her hair, fighting against the darkness as if it were a living thing. Details of her crimes, dragged from her own soul at last, made the blackness thick with horror. Steadily words poured from her. Ludovic listened at length, and through even the terror of the judgment day, the monstrous thing she had done hurried his heart beats.

Her fiery confession, painted on the blackness as in pictures of blood, her husband’s miserable death, the fires of San Eligio, and the distorted head of her fellow murderer. His hand went to his sword. Even now, on the edge of eternity, that poor weapon could drink her wretched blood--her death would be one thing to him when he came before the judgment seat.

Still she spoke on, as if she told prayers to her beads, assailing his ears with her foul thoughts, her foul deeds.

“He knelt down by my bed. He was bleeding, bleeding--I felt I should like to slay him myself… he would not die… he was very pale… ah, they beat on the door! ‘Bind up my arm, cousin,’ he said… I ran and opened the door. He had no weapon--I opened the door--they rushed in----”

Up through the blackness rose Ludovic’s sword.

“Witch!” he howled. “Devil!” and came at her where he thought her voice rose from.

“Oh, I am blind!” she yelled. “He died in the light!”

His sword plunged. Something clung to his knees. He dropped his weapon in a shrieking terror, and stooped to grapple with her by his hands. With all the strength of his frenzy he caught hold of soft flesh and trailing hair, and flung it from him…

A vast sobbing filled the darkness as if a thousand women wept together. In his madness he thought her kindred devils echoed her. He felt her where she lay and trampled her… then by the silence he knew he had set his foot on her face… on her mouth.

He fled--where, he could not tell, or if he ran forward or round--if he was still in her chamber or not. He seemed to have gone a vast distance, and yet he listened for her sobbing, the steady patter of her confession.

He did not know why he fled. It was not in his mind to escape. Often he ran into objects, bruising himself; yet still he fled.

Presently a red light swung across his vision. He hid his face, thinking Hell had broken loose… someone passed him, walking steadily.

Ludovic looked up. It was a tall man in armor, holding a torch, whose rich glow picked out him and the wall behind him.

“Where is the Queen?” he said calmly.

“’Tis the end of the world,” answered Ludovic wildly, and he fled from the flicker of the torch into the darkness again.

Luigi of Taranto stood still a moment and listened. In the streets and in the gardens the people were gathered, thronging toward the churches. Their clamor pierced the thick walls, but in the palace was silence--it seemed empty.

The Prince of Taranto mounted steadily to the Queen’s room. The utter blackness had changed the aspect of the palace, but presently he found her open door.

“Giovanna!” he said.

He swept the torch round the stillness. Its flaring smoky light revealed her, flung across the floor, with her arms wide apart.

Her dress was torn, her hair tangled over her bare shoulders. Along her face was a little mark of blood. For a moment he could not believe that this half-naked, tattered woman was the grave and splendid Queen.

As he gazed at her, the bells ceased. Even the churches had lost hope. He looked up quickly. There was no alteration in the utter darkness.

He moved round the room, searching for some other means of light, looking at the Queen now and then over his shoulder. With the torch in his hand he was helpless to even lift her up, and there was no place to set it.

As he came to the door, one ran past with a lamp--a slim squire, wailing prayers.

Luigi of Taranto gripped him by the shoulder and dragged him into the room.

The youth shrieked in terror.

“Is there no courage left in Naples?” cried the Prince scornfully. “I am no devil, boy, but Luigi of Taranto.”

The Squire stared at him blankly.

“Help me with the Queen,” commanded the Prince of Taranto. He took the lamp from the youth’s passive hand, set it on the table, and gave him the torch to hold. Then he loosened his cloak and flung it over the Queen’s dishevelment.

The heavy clink of his armor and the cross lights of torch and lamp disturbed the black silence.

“Lift her up,” he said, and raised her head himself. The boy, stayed a little from his terror by the sight of one who retained his calm, obeyed. Between them they carried her into her bedchamber and laid her on her curtained bed.

“God wot, she is very little weight,” said Luigi of Taranto softly.

But the Squire lapsed fresh into his fears. “’Tis the world’s end!” he cried. “I should be in the church!”

The Prince of Taranto looked at him grimly.

“If it is the world’s end,” he said, “which I wot well it is not--being nothing but a sudden darkness, the Devil will claim his own, whether they be in churches or no--and as for God,” he smiled somberly, “He will find us here as well as in the streets----”

“Ye think--?” stammered the Squire.

Luigi of Taranto was putting back the twisted hair from the Queen’s white brow.

“I think,” he said, “I shall be King of Naples to-morrow!”