Chapter EIGHT: The King Moves

The King awoke to find himself lying on his gold and crimson bed with the sunlight in a great patch on the floor beside him.

For a while he kept quite still, looking about him. Through the diamond panes of the window was a pleasant view of trees and sky and sunshine. Andreas turned on to his side and watched it lazily; then he noticed some spilled wax over the floor and clothes lying half out of an opened coffer. This led him to observe that he was in his dress still. He held up his arm and saw the sleeve was torn; he sat up and gazed at the rose and white hose he always wore; they were stained, and one of his shoes was gone.

Now he sat up he found his head was heavy and aching, his squire lying under the window asleep.

“Carobert!” he called.

The boy took no heed, and the King, looking round, saw his sword lying on the chair beside him. He seized it, and leaning from the bed, prodded the huddled figure.

“Carobert, fat, lazy good for naught!” he cried. “Wake up!”

The squire groaned and struggled into a sitting posture. Andreas replaced the sword on the chair and sank back on to his bed.

“What happened last night?” he demanded.

Carobert stretched himself and yawned.

“Last night!” he said with another groan. “Mass! What did not happen last night!”

“You were drunk, I suppose,” said the King with an air of disgust.

The squire smiled weakly.

“We met the Conte Raymond and his men----”

Andreas turned his face on the pillow.

“Yes--when we were returning from the Tavern.”

“And there was a fight,” finished Carobert.

The King lay gloomily silent. This was the climax of all the insults, wrongs, and indignities he had to endure at the court of Naples; that he should be driven to take his friends to taverns and have to brawl with the Conte Raymond’s men before he could return to the Palace.

The squire, yawning, was slowly setting the room in order. The growing sun touched the King’s long limbs and his tumbled yellow hair. He was thinking of Giovanna. With softer feelings, with something of the generous sense of youth and chivalry, he had gone to her joust. It had given him great pleasure to overthrow Luigi of Taranto, because he had thought that she, and all of them, finding him a man and a warrior, would be moved to some respect.

But when he had beheld her face, seeing who he was, he had hated her. He hated her now very bitterly, he saw that she would never be won, that always she would seek to humiliate and degrade him, that only by force would he be King in Naples.

He sat up on his bed, and drew a parchment from under his pillow. It was a list of those persons he intended to behead upon his coronation day, and the first on the list came the name of Raymond de Cabane, though he loathed all the smooth nobles who paid court to the Queen and mocked him, most of all did he fiercely loathe this man, who was to win his brother’s betrothed as payment for his intrigues against himself. He thrust the parchment back under the pillow, and his beautiful hand beat up and down on the coverlet.

“Avignon!” he muttered. “When shall I hear from the Pope at Avignon!”

He rose and went to the window. His anger of last night and the tavern revelry that had been the result of it, had left him stale and sick. He rested his square chin in his hand, and, gazing across the great beauty of Naples, thought there was no life he would not change this vile existence for. Brooding over his wrongs he grew sullen and out of humor with every one--with his brother who had sanctioned the match, with the old dead King who had made such late amends, with his envoys in Avignon who were so long.

The only thought that brought him any pleasure was that he could mount his horse, take up his spear, and ride away toward Melito and Capua to the great woods of Aversa after the boar. Leaving behind their music, their painted faces, covert insults, and silken grandeur, he could revel in the knowledge of his youth and strength, the feel of the great steed under him, the swinging past him of the countryside, the farms, the vineyards, the olive trees and chestnuts.

Once he had ridden as far as Baia, with its remains of superb marble palaces, the blues unspeakable and regal purples of the coast; and he had mounted the wall of the old Acropolis and seen such beauty as had shaken his soul.

The perfect islands of Ischia and Procida slept in the vivid Mediterranean, and the mist of enchantment was over them; traced in the foreground were the wild roses and grasses growing round some fallen Greek altar on the shore. Andreas remembered the stillness, the sun on his face, and the translucent sea that was blue beyond belief, and the gulls that had flashed through the enchanted silence, with that light that only three things can give forth--a sea bird’s wings, a ship’s sails, and a man’s sword.

Andreas, thinking of this place, longed for it.

“Carobert,” he said. “We will go hunting to Cuma and Baia.” He moved into the room and, yawning, stretched his long limbs; then relaxed himself quickly and turned, for Konrad of Gottif had flung himself into the chamber, breathing excitement. Andreas thought only of one thing.

“From Avignon?” he cried.

The lord of Gottif fell to his knees and caught the King’s hands.

“The Pope has recognized you,” he said in an unsteady voice. “The legate, with the bull of coronation, waits at Capua. At last--at last ye are master over this proud woman.”

With an inarticulate sound Andreas turned away, his cheeks became crimson, his lips quivered, he said nothing.

Konrad of Gottif, still kneeling and panting with the haste of his coming, broke into hot speech: “The Legate’s forerunner is come secretly and is below, my lord,” he said, “with letters of this import, that the Pope is prepared to support you with the whole of his authority, and has declared that any attempt to put up the Queen will be held as treason against the Holy See.”

Andreas turned about. His shining eyes dwelt ardently on his friend’s face.

“The people?” he asked. “Will the people stand--her--friends----”

“These Neapolitans will not rise against the Pope--they dare not--and if they did ye will have all Italy to back ye.”

The King’s bosom heaved.

“There are some men would give half their estates,” he said huskily, “that they had not insulted me.”

Konrad of Gottif rose to his feet.

“Why, God wot, ye will not have many enemies now.”

“Nay,” answered Andreas, showing his teeth, “for their heads shall grace the pageantry of my coronation, and blood instead of wine shall flow in the streets to celebrate my accession.”

“A fine resolution!” cried Konrad. “We will show them how Hungary may be avenged.”

The King’s eyes gleamed hard and set as steel; his nostrils were distended.

“The Queen,” he said, “does she know?”

“No--is it well she should--before we are ready?”

“She can no longer protect her friends,” breathed Andreas. “God’s Heaven--no; not against me--the King.”

“You will let her know?” cried Konrad.

“I am going to her,” he answered hoarsely.

“Is it wise?” asked Konrad.

The King answered from the door.

“It is my desire.”

Even as he was, in his disordered clothes, his hair disarranged, he sought for her through the palace. Finding the Legate’s messenger in the hall, he took the letters and thrust them into his breast. He was too excited to stay now to read.

By questioning those whom he met, he learned that Giovanna was in the loggia overlooking the garden.

Without a thought as to what he intended to do or say, with no conception what her behavior would be, he entered the antechamber of the loggia.

It was all marble. For background the trembling green of the garden to be seen between the slender pillars of the loggia that was filled with light.

The bright clear colors of the dresses of the company showed like velvet petals of flowers laid on snow.

Andreas stood looking at them.

Sancia and the Conte Raymond were playing chess, seated on scarlet cushions. Her fairness was like the ivory of the pieces, his swarthiness like the ebony. Maria was turning over the pages of a vast book; on the hem of her blue kirtle sat a little white cat. Walking up and down outside was Luigi of Taranto in a striped orange mantle that burned like flame against the marble.

In the center of the room stood Giovanna with a little arrow in her hand.

The pale green côte-hardie that showed her shape to the waist, ended in a jeweled girdle clasped about her hips, and a full white skirt rippled about her on the pavement.

Her auburn hair hung in nets over her ears, and across her brow was a close little wreath of roses.

When she saw Andreas she frowned and a delicate color came into her face.

“So--ye hold court,” he said.

All eyes turned to him. He swaggered nearer the Queen, and the shadow of his big frame fell blue on the marble.

“Giovanna d’Anjou,” he said. “By God His grace, and His Holiness’s commands, I am King here.” He flung up his head and eyed them. Raymond de Cabane rose softly; there was a little rattle as the chessmen fell from the board.

“Have your envoys returned from Avignon?” asked Giovanna faintly.

He stuck his thumbs in his girdle and set his legs wide apart, gazing at their silence with a flushed, triumphant face.

The Queen lifted her eyebrows and glanced at the Conte; she was very piteously pale.

“There are some friends of yours,” said Andreas, “shall find the King remembers.”

“Is this a threat, Lord Andreas?” she answered, breathing fast.

“No; I have no longer need to threaten.”

They had all risen to their feet. The white cat, disturbed, walked away from Maria.

Giovanna glanced round her. “Ladies,” she said, “the Lord Andreas has come for our good wishes--shall we withhold them--and you, Conte, pay your court to him--I am no longer Queen.”

Into Andreas’s young face came bewilderment, crossing the anger. Maria spoke. “May there not be a King and a Queen at one and the same time, Giovanna?”

“If my lord permit it,” said the Queen, “but it is all a matter for Naples to decide.”

Before her cold self-possession Andreas stood speechless, scowling, his insolence of triumph deserting him.

“This has come over suddenly,” she continued. “Maria, take my arm. Good lord, we will speak of this again in a little while.” She gave him a lazy smile and went very slowly out on to the loggia, leaning on her sister. Raymond and Sancia followed.

“I will go and write me a warrant for that man’s arrest,” muttered Andreas; then he thought him he would follow the Queen. He did not trust their quiet.

But as he stepped on to the sun-flecked marble, Luigi of Taranto faced him and laid a hand on his arm.

“My lord the King,” he said gently. “May I speak with ye?”

Andreas flushed at the address.

“Aye,” he assented ungraciously.

“Let us step out of the sun,” said his cousin.

They returned to the antechamber. Andreas looked at the resolute face, the contained gray eyes of the Prince, who, as considerably the older man, held a half-careless authority over him which his calm deference did not lessen.

“Ye unhorsed me splendidly yesterday,” said Luigi frankly. “And by San Gennoro! I have a good seat--a fine knight should make a fine King, cousin,” he smiled pleasantly.

Andreas crimsoned violently with pleasure.

“Why, I was fresh,” he answered apologetically. “Ye had already overthrown many--we must try a bout on equal terms.”

He resolved to ask his cousin to hunt with him and gazed on him with eager eyes of friendship.

“Ye have great strength,” said the Prince. “I had not believed that I could have been so overcome.”

The King laughed in a half-shamefaced manner. “I can squeeze a bough until the sap runs out,” he admitted. “But then it is a common thing in Hungary.”

“We Italians rely more on _finesse_,” remarked the Prince.

Andreas set his back against the marble wall. “Ye wished to speak to me?” he asked.

“Why, as a prince of your house and one near the throne, I am interested in this matter between you and the Queen.”

He took a turn about the chamber. “What do ye intend to do?” he said shortly.

Andreas frowned.

“To arrest her friends and my enemies. I have three hundred names--and as for the Queen,” he hesitated. “We--ye know--how she has treated me--cousin.”

Luigi of Taranto surveyed him with narrowed eyes.

“Ye cannot manage Giovanna,” he said quietly. “Perchance not many could--still we have not come to talk of her as yet, but of you; ’tis a great thing to be a King, cousin.”

“God wot, I have waited.”

Luigi of Taranto suddenly laughed. “I also,” he said.

The King became interested; this stately cousin fascinated him. “For what have ye waited?” he asked.

The Prince looked at him curiously--pityingly, perhaps.

“For fortune,” he answered. The great bars of orange shone on his mantle as he moved to and fro. Andreas wondered what he had to say to him, why he did not come to the matter.

“Have ye letters from Avignon?” asked Luigi at length. Andreas pulled them from his pocket and broke the seal.

“Latin!” he frowned.

“I can decipher them,” smiled the Prince. He took the parchments, unrolled them, and began to read aloud. It seemed to Andreas that his movements were all very slow; he began to fret, but Luigi’s easy imperturbability and calm held him quiet.

The Prince read from beginning to end of Clement’s florid epistle, spelled out all the blessings, the titles, the inscriptions, abused the clerk’s Latin, and made many comments on the contents. When he had almost finished and the King’s patience was exhausted, Henryk of Belgrade burst in upon them.

“Andreas!” he cried. “Carlo of Duras, who was in the suburbs collecting troops, has ridden up to say that he saw the Queen, Maria, and a number of men riding out of Naples!”

“God’s Heaven!” yelled Andreas. “Raymond has gone--they have escaped me!”

Furious, he turned to Luigi, who was quietly folding up the letters.

“Were ye beguiling me here while they fled?”

Luigi of Taranto looked him straight in the eyes. “Giovanna d’Anjou has her friends yet,” he said.