The Strangled Queen (12 page)

THERE are cities that defy the centuries; time does not change them. Empires succeed each other, civilisations leave their remains in them like geological strata, but they preserve their character through the ages, their peculiar ambience, the sound and rhythm which distinguish them from all other cities upon earth. Naples is one of these cities, and appears to the traveller today, as it was in the Middle Ages, and doubtless a thousand years before, half-African, half-Latin, with its terraced alleys, its street-cries, its smells of olive oil, charcoal, saffron and frying fish, its sun
coloured dust, the sound of bells ringing on the necks of horses and of mules.

The Greeks founded it, the Romans conquered it, the barbarians despoiled it, the Byzantines and the Normans each in turn took possession of it as masters. But they did no more than modify a little the architecture of its houses and add certain superstitions, a few legends, to the traditions of its streets.

The population is neither Greek, Roman nor Byzantine; the people are Neapolitan in perpetuity, a population distinct from all others in the world. Their gaiety is but a facade concealing the tragedy of poverty, their magniloquence an accent relieving the monotony of the daily round, their leisure a virtue in refusing to pretend to be busy when there is in fact nothing -to do; its population is life-loving, meeting the setbacks of fate with guile, with a gift of speech and a contempt for all things military because peace never becomes boring.

At this time the Princes of Anjou had reigned over Naples for fifty years. The two permanent signs of their rule were the woollen industry in the suburbs and the residential quarter they had built by the sea, dominated by the huge Castel Nuovo, the work of the French architect Pierre de Chaulnes, an immense pile rising above the skyline which the Neapolitans; subject for thousands of years to phallic superstitions, had immediately baptised, because of its shape, it Maschio Angiovino, the Male Angevin.

One morning at
the beginning of January 131
5, in a room high in this castle, floored with huge white paving-stones, Roberto Oderisi, a young Neapolitan painter of the Giotto school, was gazing at the portrait he had just finished. Standing motio
nless before his easel, a paint
brush held horizontally between his teeth, he could not tear himself away from the contemplation of his picture upon which the fresh paint still shone with a liquid light. He was wondering whether a touch of some paler yellow, or perhaps of a yellow slightly more orange, would not have rendered better the brilliance of the golden hair, whether the forehead was pale enough, whether the eye, the exquisite, blue, rather round eye, was lifelike. The drawing was correct, most certainly, the drawing was perfect! But the expression? Upon what does expression depend? A mere white dot upon the iris? A heavier shadow at the corner of an eyelid? How could one ever, merely by placing ground colours in juxtaposition, capture the reality of a face and the strange variations of light upon the contours of forms? Perhaps after all it was not the eye but a matter of the proportions between the eye and the nose, perhaps not even a question of proportion, a translucence lacking at the nostril, or perhaps some relation that he had failed to establish between the sedate contour of the lips and the droop of the eyelids.

"Well, Signor
Oderisi, is it finished?" asked
the beautiful Princess who was his model.

For a week she had spent three hours a day sitting still in this room, while her portrait was being painted for the Court of France.

Through the huge ogival window, now wide open, could be seen the spars of ships of the orient trade rocking gently at their moorings, and beyond them the prospect of the Bay of Naples, an immense vista of sea, astonishingly blue under the glare of the sun and the eternal shape of Vesuvius. There, was a soft breeze and the day was gorgeously fine.

Oderisi took the paint-brush from between his teeth.

"Alas," he replied, "it is finished."

"Why alas?"

"Because I shall no
w be deprived of the happiness
of seeing Donna Clemenzia every morning, and it will be as if the sun has gone out."

This was merely a minor compliment, for to tell a Neapolitan woman, whether she be princess or merely serving-maid in a hotel, that one will fall gravely ill at not seeing her again is but the minimum obligation of courtesy.

"Besides, Madam, besides," he went on, "I say alas because this portrait is not a success. It does not reproduce the beauty of the reality."

One might have thought that he was in fact displeased with himself; and indeed, in criticising himself, he was sincere. He was suffering the despair of the artist before his finished work, when
he thinks, "There, I must leave my picture as it is, because I can do no better, yet it is inferior to my conception, to what I had dreamed of accomplishing! " This young man, no more than seventeen years old, had already the characteristics of a great painter.

"May I see it?" asked Clemence of Hungary.

"Of course, Madam, but don't criticise me too severely. Alas, it is my master Giotto who should have painted you."

Indeed, Giotto had been sent for
by a courier despatched across,
the length of Italy. But the Tuscan master, who was that year busy painting the fresco of the life of St. Francis of Assisi upon the walls of the choir of Santa Croce of Florence, had replied, from the summit of his scaffolding, that his young Neapolitan disciple sh
ould be offered the commission.
15

Clemence of Hungary rose to her feet and, with a susurration of the stiff folds of her silken dress, went to the easel. Tail, thin, lissom, she had more grandeur than grace, and perhaps more nobility in her demeanour than femininity. But the somewhat severe impression created by her demeanour was compensated by the purity of her features, by the tender wondering look in her eyes, and by a peculiar radiation which suffused and emanated from her.

"But Signor Oderisi," she c
ried, "you have painted me as more
beautiful than I am! "

"I have d
one no more than draw your features, Donna Clemenzia, though I have also tried to paint your soul."

"Well, I should wish to see myself as you see me, and that my looking-glass had as much talent as you."

They smiled at each other, mutually thanking each other for the compliments.

"Let us hope that this portrait of me will please the King of France. I mean my uncle, the Count of Valois," she added, somewhat confused.

She had blushed. At twenty-two she still blushed often and, knowing it, looked upon it as a weakness. How often had her grandmother, Queen Marie of Hungary, not said to her: "Clemence, when one is a princess and may become a qu
een, one really does not blush!
"

Good God, was it really conceivable that she might become a queen? With her eyes upon the sea, she dreamed of her distant cousin, of this unknown king who had asked her to be his wife, and of whom she had heard so much during the last fortnight, ever since an official ambassador had arrive
d from Paris at a time when he
was least expected.

The fat Bouville had managed to present the young Louis X as an unhappy prince, who had been betrayed and who had suffered, but who was endowed with a handsome face and every
good quality of mind and heart
; As for the Court of France, it was quite as pleasant as the Court of Naples, mingling as it did family happiness and the pomps of majesty. Nothing could have seemed more seductive to a young woman of Clemence of Hungary's nature than the thought of healing the mental wounds of a man who had suffered through the betrayal of an unworthy woman, and who was also hard hit by the premature death of a father
whom he had adored. As far as
Clemence was concerned, love was inseparable from fidelity. And, above all, she had the additional pride of having been chosen. For a fortnight she had lived in a state of beatitude and was overflowing with gratitude towards the Creator and the universe.

A wall-hanging, embroidered with emperors, lions and eagles, was pulled aside, and a slim young man with a thin nose, ardent, gay eyes, and very dark hair, entered bowing.

"Oh, there you are, Signor Baglioni," cried Clemence of Hungary in a happy voice.

She very much liked the young Siennese who appeared to serve Bouville as secretary, and seemed also to be one of the heralds of her happiness.

"Madam," said Guccio Baglioni, "Messire de Bouville has sent me to ask if he may have his daily audience with you?"

"Most certainly," replied Clemence; "you know that it is always a great pleasure to me to see Messire de Bouville. But come over here and tell me what you think of the picture which is now finished."

"I
say this, Madam," replied Guccio, having remained silent for a moment before the picture; "that this portrait is wonderfully
faithful and that it parades before the eye the most beautiful woman that I have ever admired."

Oderisi, his forearms stained with ochre and vermilion, drank in the praise.

"But are you not in love with some French woman, as I understood?" asked Clemence smiling.

"Certainly, I am in love," said Guccio rather surprised.

"Well, in that case, Messire Guccio, you
are either insincere
t
owards her or towards me, for 1
have always heard that for someone in love there is no more beautiful face in the world than the loved one's."

"The lady who has my love and who returns it," replied Guccio quickly, "is certainly the most beautiful woman in the world ... after you, Donna Clemenzia, and to state the truth is not to fail in love."

Clemence amused herself by teasing him a little. For since he had been in Naples, lived at Court, and found himself concerned in the preparations for a king's
marriage, the nephew of banker
Tolomei was inclined to adopt the airs of a hero of chivalry overcome with love for a distant beauty, and was prone, at times, to sigh in the most touching way. In fact, his passion was kept happily subordinate to the journey; his melancholy had disappeared after two days of travel and he had not lost thereby a single pleasure the mission could afford him.

Princess Clemence, already half-affianced, had suddenly become aware of curiosity about and sympathy for the love affairs of other people; she wanted every young man and every young girl on earth to be happy.

"
If God wills that I should go to France "-like everyone about her, sh
e spoke of
the proposal in elaborate circumlocutions-
"I shall have the greatest pleasure in meeting her of whom you
think
so much and whom you will, I think, marry."

"Oh, Madam, pray heaven that you come to France! You will, have no better servant than I and, I am sure, no more devoted servant than she."

And he bent his knee with the grandest air in th
e world, as if he were kneeling
before the ladies' box at a tournament. She
thanked him with a gesture of her hands; she had beautiful, tapering hands, a little too long perhaps, like those of saints in frescoes.

"Oh, what splendid subjects I shall have there, what charming people they are," she thought, fascinated by this little Italian who, in her eyes, had become the representative of the whole of France. She felt almost guilty in his presence; because of her, he had had to leave his love; because of her, a young girl in France must suffer separation.

"Will you tell me her name," she went on, "or is it a secret?"

"It can be no secret from you, if it please you to know it, Donna Clemenzia. Her name is Marie,
-
Marie de Cressay. She is of noble lineage; her father was a knight; she awaits me in her castle thirty miles from Paris. She is sixteen years old."

"Well, I wish you all happiness, Signor Guccio; be happy with your beautiful Marie de Cressay."

When he had left her, Guccio positively danced down the corridors. He already saw the Queen of France attending his wedding. It was, however, still necessary that Donna Clemenzia should become queen, and also that the Cressay family should agree to give him, a young Lombard
-
that is to say in the eve of public opinion rather more than a Jew but rather less than a true Christian-Marie's hand in marriage! He was suddenly aware, too, that for the first time he; was seriously
thinking
of marriage with the beautiful lady of the manor of Neauphle whom he had seen in fact but twice in his life. It is thus that imagination can in the end determine destiny, and it but needs o
ur future actions to be given
shape in speech so that we are obliged to give them the reality of accomplishment.

Guccio found Hugues de Bouville in the apartment he had been given as a lodging, surrounded by heavy furniture decorated with painted leather. The off
icial Ambassador of the King of
France was in process of turning himself about in search of a good light, looking-glass in hand, to tidy himself and smooth his greying locks. He was wondering whether he should have his hair dyed. Travel enriches the young; but is not always without disquiet for those in their sixth decade. The Italian air had completely intoxicated Bouvill
e. The austere man had betrayed
his wife in Florence
-
and had wept. But when he had betrayed her again in Sienna, where Guccio had found two childhood friends who had become prostitutes, fat Bouville had ceased to be afflicted with remorse. In Rome he had felt twenty years younger. Naples, prodigal of facile pleasures, provided one had a little gold in one's belt, had been an enchantment. What elsewhere would have been considered vice, here took on a disarmingly natural, an almost naive aspect. Young pimps of twelve years old, bronzed and ragged, boasted of the charms of their elder sisters with an antique eloquence, then sat like good little boys in the antechamber scratching their feet. Besides, one had the feeling of doing good when one paid for a whole family's food for a week. And then the pleasure of walking about without an overcoat in the month of January! Bouville had dressed himself in the latest fashion and now wore surcoats with the sleeves striped horizontally in two colours. Of course he had been robbed at every street corner! But how inexpen
sive were the pleasures of life
!