Seeing clearly who it was to whom he referred in these terms, Joan attempted feebly to protest; but was powerless to prevent him from continuing with what he had to say of the certainty he felt that, if Andrew of Hungary were ever to be admitted to an actual share in the government, the people of Naples would infallibly rise in arms against him and the detested Hungarians who surrounded him. It would, indeed, Duke Charles assured the unhappy Queen, be only another instance of the Sicilian Vespers; the Neapolitans would, of a surety, rise up as one man and exterminate their foreign oppressors, including Andrew himself and the monk whose mistaken counsels had inspired him with so suicidal an ambition.
“But of what fault do they accuse Andrew?” asked Joan, uncertainly.
In reply, the Albanian said that the people hated the Prince for his stupidity, his coarseness, and savagery; that the nobles accused him of violating their privileges and of surrounding himself to their detriment with the basest adventurers; and that, lastly, he himself, Charles of Durazzo, accused Andrew of making Joan’s life a misery to her.
And then, before she could recover from her amazement at his boldness, Charles wound up by offering to remove Andrew from her path by murdering him; whereupon, the better part in Joan triumphing for a moment over the lower side of her nature, she dismissed Charles angrily from her presence, calling him coward and insolent. Without undue haste or appearance of anger, Charles left her, merely reminding her that it was not altogether impossible that, some day, it should be his turn to condemn and hers to be judged.
So that Duke Charles, having failed in his attempt to obtain Joan’s consent to the murder of Andrew, must instead have recourse to the second of the alternatives that had presented themselves to him.
This was to make himself the husband of the next heir to the throne—the thirteen-year-old Maria, sister of Queen Joan. On reaching his own palace, therefore, he sent for a notary, one Nicholas of Melazzo, whose fate he held in his hands by means of a certain knowledge, and ordered him to draw up a contract of marriage between the Princess Maria, his cousin, and himself, Charles of Durazzo. This the notary, albeit terrified at the audacity of the thing (seeing that Maria, as will be remembered, was intended by the terms of King Robert’s will to be the wife of either King Louis of Hungary or of the Duke of Normandy), consented to do; and then Duke Charles ordered him at the same time to seek out Tommaso Pace, the valet of King Andrew and the notary’s own closest friend, and to find out if Pace had been approached at all by any of Queen Joan’s partisans with a view to drawing him into any plot against Andrew’s life. For, as Charles argued, if such a conspiracy should ever arise, those concerned in it would be almost sure to endeavour to win over the King’s valet to their undertaking in order the more easily to carry it into effect.
From that day on it was noticed that a complete change had taken place in the manner of the Duke of Durazzo towards King Andrew—or, to give the latter the only title hitherto accorded to him, the Duke of Calabria. For, whereas hitherto Charles had shown himself the reverse of friendly towards Andrew, and had been ever the loudest in his denial of Andrew’s right to be crowned King of Naples, he now overwhelmed the Hungarian with every kind of courtesy and friendly advance. Charles even took pains to propitiate Andrew’s shadow, the honest Dominican, excusing himself to Father Robert for his outrageous conduct in proclaiming Joan alone as their new Queen to the people of Naples by pleading the necessity of making an apparent concession to the popular dislike of the Hungarian element in the kingdom. He did not hesitate to declare to Father Robert his detestation of the persons who were bent upon estranging the young Queen from her husband for their own ends; finally he concluded by placing what power he possessed at the monk’s disposal for the purpose of defeating the machinations of Joan’s treacherous favourites directed against her rightful husband and the legal partner of her throne.
To these assurances Father Robert lent a willing, although not an entirely believing, ear; for he could only attribute the change in Duke Charles to some misunderstanding with the young Queen. At the same time, Charles and Andrew of Hungary were become the closest of comrades; never, now, was Andrew seen in public without his Albanian cousin by marriage; never did he withdraw himself from the circle of his friends to the seclusion of his apartments but Charles of Durazzo walked at his elbow.
And so things went on for a while, until at length the whole Court was ranged definitely on one side or on the other: on that of Queen Joan and the Neapolitan people itself to whom Andrew and his followers were entirely odious, or, else, on that of Andrew and those who hoped eventually to make him sole sovereign of Naples to their own advantage—the Hungarian “Hey-ducs,” the Count of Altamura, and their kind.