“My most beloved ones” (Dilettissimi miei), “pray report to our friend Charles that we desire to speak with him privately upon a matter of equal interest to us both; and that he need feel no uneasiness at seeing us come thus with an armed force to him, for we have done so expressly for a certain purpose, the which we will explain to him at our leisure. We know that he is confined to his bed with an attack of gout, and so we were not surprised that he did not come out in person to greet us. And so pray salute him from us and reassure him as to our intentions towards him; and say that we would fain enter to him—if such be his pleasure—with Master Nicholas Acciajuoli our privy councillor, and no more than ten of our soldiers, in order to confer with him upon a subject too important to be confided to messengers.”
Completely deceived by the pernicious woman’s fair words as reported to him, Count Charles sent out his son Bertrand to receive her with all due ceremony, and to escort her to where he himself lay prostrate with illness. Their meeting was cordial in the extreme; after expressing the most heartfelt regrets at the venerable knight’s sad condition, the Empress so soon as they were alone together, lowering her voice, said that her object in so coming to him was to consult him in regard to the state of affairs in Naples and to enlist his active support on behalf of the Queen. At the same time, she went on to say, there being no immediate reason for her return to the capital, she would be more than grateful for the favour of being allowed to remain yet a few days with him at Saint Agatha, in order to profit by his advice, and to give him some account of all that had come to pass in Naples during his absence.
It ended in Count Charles’s head being quite turned by the Empress’s flattery; so that he not only begged her to remain his guest for so long as she pleased, but also gave orders for the gates of the castle to be left open so that she might be accessible at all times to her officers, civil and military, that were encamped outside the walls with her army.
But the fatuous credulity of Count Charles was soon undeceived. At a late hour of the following night, the gates of the fortress being still open, and its rightful inmates sound asleep for the most part, the foolish old Count was suddenly awakened from his slumbers by the Empress of Constantinople, who, followed by several of her soldiers, entered his room, a dagger in her hand, and, advancing to his couch, seized him by the throat.
“O accursed traitor, you are now going to be punished as you deserve!” she cried. And when he begged only mercy for his son—thinking the Empress had in mind to slay them both lest at any time they should conspire against the kingship of her son, Louis of Taranto—and offered to put her in possession of his entire treasury if only she would spare the life of his adored son. But to all his entreaties she answered only that he must prepare to part for ever from his son, whom she had decided to send away to the castle of Malfi; and that as for Count Charles himself, the probability was that he would end his days in the dungeons of that of Saint Agatha of the Goths. Prior to pronouncing these sentences, however, she had compelled him to show her where his immense treasures were concealed behind the wall of his bed-chamber—a veritable Aladdin’s cave of gold in bars and in plate and of precious stones.
The chronicler, Domenico Gravina, relates how that, a few days later, Count Charles was found dead in his prison, the lips covered with a bloody froth and the wrists all gnawed away—so we may suppose him to have died either of rage or of some corrosive poison; or, very likely, of both. And not long afterwards, his son Bertrand, in despair, hanged himself from a grating in the vault at Malfi, into which he had been transferred by order of Catherine of Taranto.
But retribution as condign as it was merited was about to fall upon the head of that wicked woman.
On returning, laden with her ill-gotten spoils, to Naples, her triumph was dashed to the ground to learn that, during her absence, Charles of Durazzo, her ancient enemy and that of her house, had once more sent word to Joan, demanding that she should instantly create him Duke of Calabria, and so acknowledge him to be the rightful heir to the throne as the husband of her sister Maria. This demand the Queen had rejected with contumely; and Charles, stung to madness by her refusal, had thereupon sent back word to inform her that he had, accordingly, written to King Louis of Hungary, inviting him to take possession of the kingdom, and promising to deliver to him the chief murderers of his brother Andrew, who had so far escaped the just consequences of their iniquity.
It was now indispensable, as Joan saw clearly, to secure the public opinion of Europe to her side in the life-and-death struggle with her implacable foe. Therefore she sent ambassadors to plead her cause with the Florentine Republic, and to exonerate her of the crime generally imputed to her of having caused the murder of her husband. She even wrote in the same sense to the Hungarian King himself; but only received for reply a letter in which Louis of Hungary enumerated the proofs against her: her disordered life both before and after marriage; the exclusive power that she had arrogated to herself; the fact that it had been in no way owing to her exertions that King Andrew’s murderers had ever been brought to justice; and that she had so quickly taken another husband in his place,—all of which certainly pointed to Joan’s aggravated guilt.
Indeed, the King of Hungary had already, on receipt of Charles of Durazzo’s letter, written back to accept the offer of the throne and to say that he would at once set about making preparations for coming down to Naples at the head of a large army of Hungarians. For, apart from Charles’s invitation to him, King Louis, stirred up by love for his murdered brother, as well as by the tears of their mother, Elizabeth, and the incitement of the Dominican Father Robert, who after Andrew’s demise had taken refuge in Budapest, was now entirely bent on avenging his brother to the utmost of his ability.