And yet, a vigorous and thorough investigation into the matter would almost certainly lead to the incrimination of many of those within the queen’s inner circle on whom she relied for protection. If she gave these people up to prosecution, she would be left defenseless against her enemies. Moreover, once she admitted the possibility of a larger conspiracy, her adversaries could use the acknowledgment as a means of eliminating their political opposition. The innocent would be accused along with the guilty, and Joanna would not be able to separate those who should be punished from those who were blameless. There were no forensics in the Middle Ages: no DNA, no wiretaps, no listening devices. Guilt was established through confession, almost always torture-induced confession, a method that could be relied upon to produce a culprit, albeit not always a genuine one. Many of the people who would be named in a general conspiracy were dear to Joanna and might be innocent, or perhaps they simply looked the other way because they believed it to be in her best interest.
But the assassination of her husband could hardly have been more detrimental to the queen. There must have been many occasions when Joanna wished she could have rid herself of Andrew, but not this way. She was almost certainly aware that she would be held accountable for, and very likely accused of, his murder.
In the wake of the slaying, the distasteful task of informing the outside world of the tragedy fell to the queen. Joanna first dispatched messengers to the pope and the Hungarians, notifying each court of Andrew’s slaying and registering her shock and horror at what had occurred at Aversa. She then communicated the news to other diplomatic partners and governments. Of the many missives she must have sent in those first few days after Andrew’s murder, only one letter survives to give a clue to her state of mind. Dated September 22, it is addressed to “the nobles, statesmen, and Governing Council of the Republic of Florence,” the kingdom’s nearest ally:
An unutterable crime, a prodigious iniquity, a sin inexpiable, hateful to God and horrifying to mortality, perpetrated with inhuman ferocity and the shedding of innocent blood, by the hands of miscreants, has been committed on the person of our hitherto lord and husband.
On the 18th of this month, our lord and husband, late at the hour of retiring, would have gone down to a certain garden adjoining the gallery of our palace at Aversa, unwisely and unsuspecting, boy-like rather (as often, both there and elsewhere, at doubtful hours, he was wont to do), taking no advice, merely following the rash impulse of youth, not permitting a companion, but closing the door after him. We had been awaiting him, and owing to his too long delay, had been some time overtaken by sleep. His nurse, a good and respected woman, took a light to search anxiously [for him], and at length discovered him close to the wall of the said garden, strangled. It is impossible for us to describe our tribulation. And albeit from the vile perpetrator of this unheard-of crime is sought by stern justice done [already] whatever can be extracted or ascertained; nevertheless, viewing the atrocity of his deed, the severity must be considered mild… He carried out his outlandish crime with the aid of a menial who is not yet caught. The villain adduced for motive of his setting on [Andrew], that he had brought upon himself the punishment of death by designing against our former lord and husband… When, therefore, we find ourselves, in consequence of such a disaster, environed by perplexities, it is our trust, relying on God, Holy Church, and our faithful subjects and allies, that the guidance of divine mercy and the grace of God’s pity will not be lacking to us.
Dated at Aversa, on September 22, under our secret seal.
This was a diplomatic document, not a personal one, and must be interpreted as such. Joanna’s job was to prevent panic and present the picture of a government in control of the situation. Only four days had passed since her husband’s murder, but she was already able to reassure her principal trading partner that Andrew’s assassin had been caught and put to death, not before implicating a low-level accomplice for whom investigators were still searching. It is possible that, having been briefed by Charles of Artois, Joanna believed—or more likely, wanted to believe—that this was actually what had transpired, since it took a special papal investigation before a more accurate description of the events of that evening were made known. Still, she left a loophole—“environed by perplexities”—should the inquiry lead to further accusations. The one key to her emotional response, aside from her repugnance over what had occurred, was her evident frustration that Andrew and the Hungarian guards assigned to protect him, who had been warned repeatedly of the existence of plots against him, had not exercised more caution. Domenico da Gravina, who otherwise took the part of the Hungarians against the queen, admitted as much when he wrote: “They [Andrew and his guards] had supped gaily, which, in sooth, was the cause of the profound grief of this realm.” “Supped gaily” is medieval for “got drunk.”
Joanna’s communications to her in-laws and the papacy are no longer extant, but Clement’s reply to her, written on October 10, 1345, would indicate that her notes to him took much the same form as the one she sent to the Florentines. “We have received your Majesty’s letters containing expression of your intense grief at this terrible occurrence, the diabolical death of King Andrew, your husband, and to some extent describing the manner of it,” the pope wrote. “Not without great bitterness of heart, while condoling with you, dearest daughter, we prepare to reply. Truly, we do not wonder that you bewail such a deplorable event, outrageous to God and shocking to the whole world.” No doubt anticipating the Hungarian reaction to these tidings, Clement made sure to enunciate what a distinguished prince Andrew had been, “so inoffensive, so God-pleasing and agreeable to mankind.” He then laid the blame squarely on the Neapolitan members of Andrew’s household, perhaps a reference to Tommaso, but more likely a sweeping accusation fueled by Aimeric’s intimate knowledge of Joanna’s court: “Moreover, shall not reflection as to time, place, and manner of this awful crime excite amazement in the hearers, considering that where most safety might be relied on, the snare of death awaited him—even at the bloodthirsty hands of those by whom he was hoping to be protected from the plots of others.
“Nevertheless,” Clement continued, “we do not write thus in order to re-picture the awful incident so as to re-arouse in you affliction which has not lightly distressed you, and which we believe still distresses; but rather we enlarge upon these things because of the regard borne by us to the said Prince; the enormity of the crime to be expiated, and the dread of disturbance in your dominion (which of necessity would agitate us), do not permit us to keep our grief within bounds. We further write to counsel you to take proper precautions regarding yourself and the one yet unborn (of whom you have made mention, and in consequence of whom we derive joy and consolation, even as you similarly should feel consoled). Also, be sedulously on your guard as to whom you trust, and whom you ought to avoid,” the pope warned in conclusion.
This last admonition is telling. The viciousness of the crime, coupled with the understandable wrath of the victim’s powerful relatives, demanded that justice be done and those responsible for the murder exposed and punished to the full extent of the law. Neapolitan antagonism to Andrew’s rule, particularly among the aristocracy, was too well established to allow retribution to be limited to the prosecution of an underling like Tommaso. The pope was painfully aware that his own ambivalence toward Andrew’s reign might well be interpreted harshly by the dead man’s relatives, and rushed to defend himself. “Your envoys will confirm that we had dispatched the bishop of Chartres to the kingdom to see to his [Andrew’s] coronation well before we received the current unfortunate rumors about your brother,” Clement wrote to the king of Hungary on October 9, neglecting to mention that, along with the bishop, the pope had also dispatched letters limiting Andrew’s role in the government and forbidding him to challenge Joanna’s rule.
Still, the Curia was resolved that Hungarian bitterness not be allowed to trespass into the realm of territorial ambition. There was far too much military posturin
g in Europe already, with Edward III of England raising men, arms, and allies for the obvious purpose of invading France, a cataclysm Clement was desperate to avoid. Hungary already leaned toward England in the conflict. To ensure a searching and impartial result, and therefore deprive King Louis and his mother of an excuse for armed intervention (as well as make up for any lingering suspicions that the church had been somehow lax in pursuing the dead man’s coronation, and therefore tangentially responsible for his death), Clement announced to all the parties concerned that the Curia would bear the responsibility for the investigation of Andrew’s assassination. On October 27, the consistory made good on this promise by naming two cardinals as special emissaries to Naples and by charging them with ferreting out all the conspirators, whoever they might be.
Joanna did not protest Clement’s decision to assume control of the inquiry into Andrew’s death, even though it meant the injection of skeptical outsiders into the confidential circle around her at court. In a sign that the queen was perhaps not quite sure of the loyalty or intentions of those close to her, and that the pope’s warning—“be sedulously on your guard as to whom you trust, and whom you ought to avoid”—had resonated with her, at the beginning of November she suddenly made a strange request. Faced with her coming seclusion (the baby was due in late December), the nineteen-year-old begged Clement to send her maternal grandmother, Mahaut, countess of Valois (third wife of Charles of Valois), to be with her during her confinement. That Joanna sought out the company of a complete stranger—she had never met her mother’s mother—at a time when she would most need comfort, and when she and her child would also, coincidentally, be most vulnerable (women very frequently died in childbirth during the Middle Ages), says something about her state of mind. When Mahaut was unable to make the journey to Naples, Joanna instead placed herself and her baby in the hands of Andrew’s nurse, Isabelle the Hungarian, when her time came.
In fact, in those first few months after her husband’s death, the queen gave every indication of a woman casting about for allies. As early as the beginning of November, she expressed her desire to marry again in her correspondence with the pope. Her request was in no way unusual for the period. Joanna was a beautiful young woman, with many years of childbearing ahead of her, who was also in sole possession of one of the most prestigious kingdoms in Europe. It was unthinkable that she would remain single, and Clement recognized this. If nothing else, she needed a partner who could act as commander-in-chief should Naples face a military threat from abroad. “[If] after the loss of such a consort, you feel your loneliness, and for the security of the realm you should desire to re-marry, be careful that the partner chosen be a personage suitable for the governance of the realm and devoted to the Church,” the pope warned her in a letter dated November 13, 1345. The next month, an official petition arrived from the queen, formally requesting that the Curia provide a dispensation for her to marry her cousin Robert of Taranto, Catherine’s eldest son. The pope received similar notification from Robert.
But Joanna’s document was a sham. She loathed Robert, who had forced her to send the petition. She would later disavow it through emissaries. But her cousin had knights, and weapons, and men-at-arms, and she did not; owing to her condition, she could not even stir from the castle. Her petition is an indication of how little power the queen exercised in the final weeks of her pregnancy, as she wavered over whom she could trust. She must have known that she did not have much time to come to a decision. Robert’s threats and aggressive claim to her hand only highlighted her weakness and taught her that she must remarry, and soon, if she wished to make her own choice.
Joanna was saved by the elephantine pace of papal administration; before Clement could act on her request, the queen went into labor. Early on the morning of December 25, 1345, in the presence of all the great officers and ladies of the court, Joanna delivered her firstborn, a healthy son, the one bright spot in an otherwise wretched year. The promise of stability, finally, lay ahead. The line of succession had been established; even better, the heir to the throne was male. To underscore that this was Andrew’s child and appease her Hungarian in-laws for the loss of her husband, the next day, Joanna had the infant baptized Charles Martel by the bishop of Cavaillon, the chancellor of the realm. This deliberate reference to Robert the Wise’s eldest brother was intended to heal the rift created not only by Andrew’s murder, but also by the original Hungarian grievance that the kingdom had been stripped illegally from Carobert by Joanna’s family. In a further gesture of good will, Joanna gave her son to Isabelle the Hungarian to raise and assigned a large staff at the Castel dell’Ovo for her use. The queen also appointed a high-ranking Neapolitan nobleman as Charles Martel’s protector and convinced the pope to accept the office of godfather to her child.
As Andrew’s son would one day rule Naples, the queen considered that she had upheld and satisfied the condition of her marriage contract. Accordingly, she sent emissaries to King Louis and the dowager queen Elizabeth charged with communicating the happy news of the birth of the child and negotiating for her release from certain remaining clauses in the nuptial treaty of 1333, so that she would be free to remarry.
The arrival of this embassy in Hungary had much the same effect on Louis and Elizabeth as if a siege-ball had been hurled across the Adriatic and landed on the family castle at Visegrád. For the first time, the Hungarians awoke to the possibility that they might have been outmaneuvered, and that if they did not act quickly, their hold on Naples, which only a few short months before had seemed assured, was in danger of slipping away. Knowing that Charles Martel would one day rule in Andrew’s place was little consolation; to have their claims to the kingdom resolved by the next generation had never been satisfactory. In fury, the crown of Hungary recognized that, although the papacy had undertaken to investigate Andrew’s death, no Neapolitan of rank had been charged with the murder for the simple reason that, owing to unforeseen delays, neither of the two cardinals assigned to the case had yet set foot in the kingdom. Justice had not been done; the conspirators against their kinsman were still at large; and now the queen of Naples was angling to marry a cousin from the house of Taranto, thus effectively cutting out Hungarian influence altogether.
A great howl of rage rose up out of Hungary and directed itself at the Holy See in Avignon in the form of a high-ranking delegation that included a duke and two counts. “My brother’s infamous death occurred while Your Holiness was cradling us with hope,” King Louis bitterly accused the pope in letters dated January 15, 1346, and entrusted to his emissaries, who did not arrive until March. “Turning to you, most Holy and most Clement [a sarcastic play on the pope’s name], who are by divine clemency the vicar of Christ most high; I beg of you, as your humble and devoted son, in your forgiving clemency, to call on all your heart, all your soul and all your thoughts so as to ensure revenge for this crime of lese-majesty; and so the felons covered in my brother’s blood are deprived of all their rights to the kingdom of Sicily [this is what the Hungarians called Naples] and its dependencies.” Since the Curia had yet to indict a single suspect, Louis and his mother helpfully supplied the pope with their own list of conspirators: “And these murderers are the aforementioned Joanna, husband-killer and widow of my brother; Madame Maria, her sister; Robert, prince of Taranto and his brothers; Charles, duke of Durazzo and his brothers; and all who aspire to and covertly aspire to the crown of the kingdom of Sicily,” Louis wrote as a prelude to accusing some two hundred other supposed perpetrators, among whom Cardinal Talleyrand of Périgord’s name was prominent. The dowager queen seconded her son’s accusations, labeling Joanna as a “viricide,” or man-killer, and demanding that the queen of Naples be stripped of her kingdom. Elizabeth also insisted that her grandson, Charles Martel, be torn from his mother and brought to Visegrád for his own safety and raised by his Hungarian relations before returning to rule Naples.
As to who would rule Naples while the kingdom waited for Charles Martel to come of age,
King Louis, in the same letter, proposed his own solution: “Your Holiness knows it is established that I am the first born of the first born of the ancestral king of Sicily; and I once again call upon your Most Clement and Most Sublime Holiness and beg you, as your most humble and pious son, to show pitiful clemency and restore life to my embittered soul and warmth to my troubled heart, by deigning, in your kindliness and apostolic magnanimity, to entrust to me in full (along with my brother Stephen) and under the conditions set for the kings who preceded me, the kingdom of Sicily… as well as its estates.” Then, knowing how business was transacted in Avignon, Louis added: “So that I can commit to our Most Holy Mother, the Roman Catholic Church [a reference to taking Clement’s side, or at least remaining neutral, in the pope’s struggles to resist the territorial ambitions of Edward III and the Holy Roman Emperor]; so that I can pay its dues [the annual tribute of seven thousand ounces of gold which Joanna had not paid the year before, owing to the legate’s having taking over the administration of the kingdom]; and so that I may settle the same obligations as the previous kings [a commitment to ensure the payment of the tribute in the future], and even some larger ones [the expected bribe],” the king of Hungary hinted significantly.
The Lady Queen Page 15
