第23章 CHAPTER IV(5)

Andre insisted,and challenging all the barons present to see who would be up first,he retired with the queen to the room that had been reserved for them,where he very soon fell into a deep and heavy sleep.About two o'clock in the morning,Tommaso Pace,the prince's valet and first usher of the royal apartments,knocked at his 2876master's door to rouse him for the chase.At the first knock,all was silence;at the second,Joan,who had not closed her eyes all night,moved as if to rouse her husband and warn him of the threatened danger;but at the third knock the unfortunate young man suddenly awoke,and hearing in the next room sounds of laughter and whispering,fancied that they were making a joke of his laziness,and jumped out of bed bareheaded,in nothing but his shirt,his shoes half on and half off.He opened the door;and at this point we translate literally the account of Domenico Gravina,a historian of much esteem.As soon as the prince appeared,the conspirators all at once fell upon him,to strangle him with their hands;believing he could not die by poison or sword,because of the charmed ring given him by his poor mother.But Andre was so strong and active,that when he perceived the infamous treason he defended himself with more than human strength,and with dreadful cries got free from his murderers,his face all bloody,his fair hair pulled out in handfuls.

The unhappy young man tried to gain his own bedroom,so as to get some weapon and valiantly resist the assassins;but as he reached the door,Nicholas of Melazzo,putting his dagger like a bolt into the lock,stopped his entrance.The prince,calling aloud the whole time and imploring the protection of his friends,returned to the hall;but all the doors were shut,and no one held out a helping hand;for the queen was silent,showing no uneasiness about her husband's death.

But the nurse Isolda,terrified by the shouting of her beloved son and lord,leapt from her bed and went to the window,filling the house with dreadful cries.The traitors,alarmed by the mighty uproar,although the place was lonely and so far from the centre of the town that nobody could have come to see what the noise was,were on the point of letting their victim go,when Bertrand of Artois,who felt he was more guilty than the others,seized the prince with hellish fury round the waist,and after a desperate struggle got him down;then dragging him by the hair of his head to a balcony which gave upon the garden,and pressing one knee upon his chest,cried out to the others--"Come here,barons:I have what we want to strangle him with."And round his neck he passed a long cord of silk and gold,while the wretched man struggled all he could.Bertrand quickly drew up the knot,and the others threw the body over the parapet of the balcony,leaving it hanging between earth and sky until death ensued.When the Count of Terlizzi averted his eyes from the horrid spectacle,Robert of Cabane cried out imperiously--"What are you doing there?The cord is long enough for us all to hold:we want not witnesses,we want accomplices!"As soon as the last convulsive movements of the dying man had ceased,they let the corpse drop the whole height of the three storeys,and opening the doors of the hall,departed as though nothing had happened.

Isolda,when at last she contrived to get a light,rapidly ran to the queen's chamber,and finding the door shut on the inside,began to call loudly on her Andre.There was no answer,though the queen was in the room.The poor nurse,distracted,trembling,desperate,ran down all the corridors,knocked at all the cells and woke the monks one by one,begging them to help her look for the prince.The monks said that they had indeed heard a noise,but thinking it was a quarrel between soldiers drunken perhaps or mutinous,they had not thought it their business to interfere.Isolda eagerly,entreated:

the alarm spread through the convent;the monks followed the nurse,who went on before with a torch.She entered the garden,saw something white upon the grass,advanced trembling,gave one piercing cry,and fell backward.

The wretched Andre was lying in his blood,a cord round his neck as though he were a thief,his head crushed in by the height from which he fell.Then two monks went upstairs to the queen's room,and respectfully knocking at the door,asked in sepulchral tones--"Madam,what would you have us do with your husband's corpse?"And when the queen made no answer,they went down again slowly to the garden,and kneeling one at the head,the other at the foot of the dead man,they began to recite penitential psalms in a low voice.

When they had spent an hour in prayer,two other monks went up in the same way to Joan's chamber,repeating the same question and getting no answer,whereupon they relieved the first two,and began themselves to pray.Next a third couple went to the door of this inexorable room,and coming away perturbed by their want of success,perceived that there was a disturbance of people outside the convent,while vengeful cries were heard amongst the indignant crowd.The groups became more and more thronged,threatening voices were raised,a torrent of invaders threatened the royal dwelling,when the queen's guard appeared,lance in readiness,and a litter closely shut,surrounded by the principal barons of the court,passed through the crowd,which stood stupidly gazing.Joan,wrapped in a black veil,went back to Castel Nuovo,amid her escort;and nobody,say the historians,had the courage to say a word about this terrible deed.