Part 70

“I?” Charles fell back, changing colour, his legs trembling under him.

“You!” the King answered him furiously. “His death would never have come about but for your intrigues to keep him out of the royal power, to hinder his coronation.”

“It is false!” cried Charles. “False! I swear it before God!”

“Perjured dog! Do you deny that you sought the aid of your precious uncle the Cardinal of Perigord to restrain the Pope from granting the Bull required?”

“I do deny it. The facts deny it. The Bull was forthcoming.”

“Then your denial but proves your guilt,” the King answered him, and from the leather pouch hanging from his belt, he pulled out a parchment, and held it under the Duke's staring eyes. It was the letter he had written to the Cardinal of Perigord, enjoining him to prevent the Pope from signing the Bull sanctioning Andreas's coronation.

The King smiled terribly into that white, twitching face.

“Deny it now,” he mocked him. “Deny, too, that, bribed by the title of Duke of Calabria, you turned to the service of the Queen, to abandon it again for ours when you perceived your danger. You think to use us, traitor, as a stepping-stone to help you to mount the throne--as you sought to use my brother even to the extent of encompassing his murder.”

“No, no! I had no hand in that. I was his friend--”

“Liar!” Ludwig struck him across the mouth.

On the instant the officers of Ludwig laid hands upon the Duke, fearing that the indignity might spur him to retaliation.

“You are very opportune,” said Ludwig; and added coldly, “Dispatch him.”

Charles screamed a moment, even as Andreas had screamed on that same spot, when he found himself staring into the fearful face of death. Then the scream became a cough as a Hungarian sword went through him from side to side.

They picked up his body from the tessellated floor of the loggia, carried it to the parapet as Andreas's had been carried, and flung it down into the Abbot's garden as Andreas's had been flung. It lay in a rosebush, dyeing the Abbot's roses a deeper red.

Never was justice more poetic.

XI. THE NIGHT OF HATE--The Murder Of The Duke Of Gandia

The Cardinal Vice-Chancellor took the packet proffered him by the fair-haired, scarlet-liveried page, and turned it over, considering it, the gentle, finely featured, almost ascetic face very thoughtful.

“It was brought, my lord, by a man in a mask, who will give no name. He waits below,” said the scarlet stripling.

“A man in a mask, eh? What mystery!”

The thoughtful brown eyes smiled, the fine hands broke the fragment of wax. A gold ring fell out and rolled some little way along the black and purple Eastern rug. The boy dived after it, and presented it to his lordship.

The ring bore an escutcheon, and the Cardinal found graven upon this escutcheon his own arms the Sforza lion and the flower of the quince. Instantly those dark, thoughtful eyes of his grew keen as they flashed upon the page.

“Did you see the device?” he asked, a hint of steel under the silkiness of his voice.

“I saw nothing, my lord--a ring, no more. I did not even look.”

The Cardinal continued to ponder him for a long moment very searchingly.

“Go--bring this man,” he said at last; and the boy departed, soon to reappear; holding aside the tapestry that masked the door to give passage to a man of middle height wrapped in a black cloak, his face under a shower of golden hair, covered from chin to brow by a black visor.

At a sign from the Cardinal the page departed. Then the man, coming forward, let fall his cloak, revealing a rich dress of close-fitting violet silk, sword and dagger hanging from his jewelled girdle; he plucked away the mask, and disclosed the handsome, weak face of Giovanni Sforza, Lord of Pesaro and Cotignola, the discarded husband of Madonna Lucrezia, Pope Alexander's daughter.

The Cardinal considered his nephew gravely, without surprise. He had expected at first no more than a messenger from the owner of that ring. But at sight of his figure and long, fair hair he had recognized Giovanni before the latter had removed his mask.

“I have always accounted you something mad,” said the Cardinal softly. “But never mad enough for this. What brings you to Rome?”