The terrible part that Charles of Durazzo was to play began as soon as this crime was accomplished.The duke left the corpse two whole days exposed to the wind and the rain,unburied and dishonoured,the corpse of a man whom the pope had made King of Sicily and Jerusalem,so that the indignation of the mob might be increased by the dreadful sight.On the third he ordered it to be conveyed with the utmost pomp to the cathedral of Naples,and assembling all the Hungarians around the catafalque,he thus addressed them,in a voice of thunder:--"Nobles and commoners,behold our king hanged like a dog by infamous traitors.God will soon make known to us the names of all the guilty:let those who desire that justice may be done hold up their hands and swear against murderers bloody persecution,implacable hatred,everlasting vengeance."It was this one man's cry that brought death and desolation to the murderers'hearts,and the people dispersed about the town,shrieking,"Vengeance,vengeance!"Divine justice,which knows naught of privilege and respects no crown,struck Joan first of all in her love.When the two lovers first met,both were seized alike with terror and disgust;they recoiled trembling,the queen seeing in Bertrand her husband's executioner,and he in her the cause of his crime,possibly of his speedy punishment.Bertrand's looks were disordered,his cheeks hollow,his eyes encircled with black rings,his mouth horribly distorted;his arm and forefinger extended towards his accomplice,he seemed to behold a frightful vision rising before him.The same cord he had used when he strangled Andre,he now saw round the queen's neck,so tight that it made its way into her flesh:an invisible force,a Satanic impulse,urged him to strangle with his own hands the woman he had loved so dearly,had at one time adored on his knees.The count rushed out of the room with gestures of desperation,muttering incoherent words;and as he shewed plain signs of mental aberration,his father,Charles of Artois,took him away,and they went that same evening to their palace of St.Agatha,and there prepared a defence in case they should be attacked.
But Joan's punishment,which was destined to be slow as well as dreadful,to last thirty-seven years and--end in a ghastly death,was now only beginning.All the wretched beings who were stained with Andre's death came in turn to her to demand the price of blood.The Catanese and her son,who held in their hands not only the queen's honour but her life,now became doubly greedy and exacting.Dona Cancha no longer put any bridle on her licentiousness;and the Empress of Constantinople ordered her niece to marry her eldest son,Robert,Prince of Tarentum.Joan,consumed by remorse,full of indignation and shame at the arrogant conduct of her subjects,dared scarcely lift her head,and stooped to entreaties,only stipulating for a few days'delay before giving her answer:the empress consented,on condition that her son should come to reside at Castel Nuovo,with permission to see the queen once a day.Joan bowed her head in silence,and Robert of Tarentum was installed at the castle.
Charles of Durazzo,who by the death of Andre had practically become the head of the family,and,would,by the terms of his grandfather's will,inherit the kingdom by right of his wife Marie in the case of Joan's dying without lawful issue,sent to the queen two commands:first,that she should not dream of contracting a new marriage without first consulting him in the choice of a husband;secondly,that she should invest him at once with the title of Duke of Calabria.To compel his cousin to make these two concessions,he added that if she should be so ill advised as to refuse either of them,he should hand over to justice the proofs of the crime and the names of the murderers.Joan,bending beneath the weight of this new difficulty,could think of no way to avoid it;but Catherine,who alone was stout enough to fight this nephew of hers,insisted that they must strike at the Duke of Durazzo in his ambition and hopes,and tell him,to begin with--what was the fact--that the queen was pregnant.If,in spite of this news,he persisted in his plans,she would find some means or other,she said,of causing trouble and discord in her nephew's family,and wounding him in his most intimate affections or closest interests,by publicly dishonouring him through his wife or his mother.
Charles smiled coldly when his aunt came to tell him from the queen that she was about to bring into the world an infant,Andre's posthumous child.What importance could a babe yet unborn possibly have--as a fact,it lived only a few months--in the eyes of a man who with such admirable coolness got rid of people who stood in his wary,and that moreover by the hand of his own enemies?He told the empress that the happy news she had condescended to bring him in person,far from diminishing his kindness towards his cousin,inspired him rather with more interest and goodwill;that consequently he reiterated his suggestion,and renewed his promise not to seek vengeance for his dear Andre,since in a certain sense the crime was not complete should a child be destined to survive;but in case of a refusal he declared himself inexorable.He cleverly gave Catherine to understand that,as she had some interest herself in the prince's death,she ought for her own sake to persuade the queen to stop legal proceedings.
