On the way from the prison to the palace the accused passed by Charles of Durazzo, to whom the wretched notary whispered, it is said, a promise to reveal nothing of what had formerly passed between them on condition that Charles would provide for the other’s widow and orphans; to which the Duke assented with a nod of the head.
And Nicholas of Melazzo kept his word; for, during all the torments to which he was presently subjected, he held his mouth and played the man. But with the valet it was very different; no sooner did Tommaso Pace feel his arms being dislocated at the shoulder in the torture known as that “of the Cord” than he shrieked for mercy, swearing to tell everything and imploring to be conducted before his judges. And now there ensued the first of a series of hellish scenes that were to follow each other in the drama of mediæval reprisal, that nightmare of cruelty and fear.
As the two prisoners were being taken from the cell where they had been tortured to the hall of San Luigi, up a narrow, winding stairway, the Count of Terlizzi, who was bringing up the doleful procession with several of his men-at-arms—he having been present at the torturing of both the accused, and being in terror of what Tommaso Pace might be about to reveal—suddenly sprang upon the valet (who was walking behind Nicholas of Melazzo and their gaolers) and with the help of one of his soldiers dragged him back into an embrasure of the stairway and there, taking him by the throat, forced him to put out his tongue, which they cut out with a knife. Then, pushing the fainting wretch before them, they rejoined the procession; but not before Pace’s howls had drawn the attention of Charles of Durazzo, who, like Terlizzi, had been a witness of what had taken place in the torture-chamber. So struck was he by the horrid energy of Terlizzi’s act, and understanding its purport as he did, Charles fell for an instant beneath the spell of the very danger which he had so laboriously created for the removal of Joan and Louis of Taranto from his path. It may be that there rang in his ears, together with the miserable valet’s inarticulate protests, the words of the Psalm—“he hath digged a pit for others and is fallen into it himself”; at any rate, he glanced at Nicholas of Melazzo and, halting the procession, drew him aside to where they could speak without being overheard. And Nicholas, reading the half-formed purpose in his face, once more whispered his promise of secrecy. Whereupon Charles, recovering his courage, promised on his part to take care of the notary’s family, adding a command that Nicholas should name every person concerned in the King’s assassination to the Chief Justice, excepting Charles himself, and the Queen and the members of the royal family.
This command Nicholas obeyed implicitly; but when the Chief Justice began to question Tommaso Pace for a confirmation of the notary’s evidence, the mutilated valet could only open his mouth and point to where his tongue had been.
Nevertheless, the Chief Justice ordered the immediate arrest of such of the conspirators as were present in the hall of San Luigi—Robert of Cabano and the Counts of Morcone and Terlizzi, the last of whom had thus gained nothing by his barbarity upon Tommaso Pace. Of the other conspirators, Filippa Cabano and her two daughters, together with Donna Cancia, were thrown into prison immediately afterwards; and the rest, the Lords Mileto, Catanzaro, and Squillace, being warned in season, saved themselves by flight; old Charles of Artois and his son Bertrand being still secure in their fortress of Sant’ Agata of the Goths, near what was probably the real site of the Caudine Forks and from which, centuries later, the last Father of the Church, St. Alphonsus Liguori, was destined to take his episcopal tide as Bishop of Sant’ Agata; where he died in the year 1788.
And, when Nicholas of Melazzo had concluded his testimony, he was sentenced, with his accomplice, Tommaso Pace, to be dragged at the tail of a horse throughout the town and then hanged by the neck in the Mercato, the great market square, in which square Conradin of Hohenstaufen and Frederick of Baden had been decapitated by order of Charles I of Anjou in 1268, after the battle of Tagliacozzo. It was in this same square of the Mercato that Masaniello’s rebellion broke out, in the Seventeenth Century; and here took place also the execution of the misguided Liberals in 1799.
The sentence upon the notary and the valet having been forthwith carried into effect, the other prisoners were on the following day taken out of the Castel Nuovo and conveyed on to a galley in the bay, their hands tied behind their backs and having each a hook passed through their tongue to prevent them from calling out any mention of some forbidding name in passing to the crowd. When they had been tortured on the galley—a precaution for which the Count of Monte Scaglioso would seem to have been answerable—and their depositions against one another duly written down and signed, needless to say they were, one and all, condemned to be burned alive.
The next morning the crowd (composed mainly of descendants of the slaves of the long-ago Romans) filled all the ways from the prison to the Mercato, where on the side towards the Church of Sant’ Eligio—the usual spot on which executions usually took place being before the other Church in the piazza, the ancient Church of Santa Croce—was erected a huge pile of wood and many bundles of twigs about a number of posts with staples to them. This was the pyre.
From an early hour the populace had been swarming the city, tossed and churned hither and thither by its ravening for blood—no matter of whom—and by its impatient excitement for the gratification of its lust of cruelty. At last, however, its waiting was rewarded and there went up to the heavens a roar of pleasure as the prison-gates were thrown open and the spectacle began of the procession to the Mercato. I need not describe it, save to say that all along the way the condemned, each in a separate cart, were tortured in a revolting manner with scourges, razors, and red-hot pincers, so that several succumbed to their sufferings before reaching the pyre intended for them. Amongst those who died thus was Robert of Cabano, Grand Seneschal of the Kingdom, and the only one of them all who refused to utter the least sound by which to betray his torments to the mob. And when, finally, the dying unfortunates were all made fast to the stakes and fire was put to them, that same mob rushed over the intervening soldiers, extinguishing the flames and seizing the still palpitating bodies, tore them in pieces for the sake of the bones, with which to make whistles and dagger-handles.