The Falcon of Palermo
Page 50
Frederick sighed. He took a deep rattling breath to give himself strength. “At least,” he said, “I’ve broken the papacy. Never again will the popes wield the unquestioned power they’ve abused for centuries.”
“Perhaps,” said Berard.
Frederick closed his eyes. His breath seemed to come more evenly. Berard’s lips moved in silent prayer. Despite the logs burning in the fireplace, the chamber was icy. The pallid rays of the December sun slanted onto the flagstones near the window, left open by Frederick’s orders. A smell of burning wood and winter filled the room. The winter of the soul, Berard thought, shivering suddenly despite his furred robe, the end of a full and glorious season.
Frederick’s eyes flew open again. “Will the storks return to Haguenau?”
So he hadn’t forgotten the old prophecy. Berard inclined his head. “The Hohenstaufen power remains unbroken.” Even as he said it, he asked himself if that was so. His eyes rose in supplication to the crucifix above the bed. Someone had affixed it there in this guardroom hastily converted into a makeshift bedchamber. How strange, and how fitting. Never before had the symbol of our Lord in his agony blessed Frederick’s chamber.
When he looked down again, Berard’s heart contracted. Frederick was staring at him, unseeing. A great stillness reigned in the chamber. It was cold. Outside, a falcon skimmed over the wooden watchtower. The bird circled once, then dipped its dark wings and soared into the sky.
Berard closed the lifeless eyes. He raised the hand to his lips. It was still warm. “Farewell, my son,” he whispered. He knew that he should get up and tell the others, yet he remained seated. He could not bring himself to leave him alone in that most desolate of all solitudes, death.
After what seemed like a very long time, a whole life, Berard rose. With bent shoulders, he shuffled to the door, to announce to those waiting outside that the Emperor Frederick was dead.
Epilogue
PALERMO 1296
The autumn sun slanted into the monastery’s cloister. Fragrant, late-blooming roses rambled up the pillars in pink and crimson and yellow. The old friar sat against a column, enjoying the warmth. A scrawny tortoise-shell cat leaped onto the wall and rubbed itself against his habit. The friar stroked the animal absently. He was a tall man, of broad shoulders, with strong brows that had remained black where his hair and beard had turned white with age. His name was Richard of Castacca.
“So what happened? Tell me, uncle,” the youth sitting beside him prodded.
Richard smiled. He, too, had been young once, and impatient, before God called him to the brotherhood of Saint Francis. He had been part of his uncle Berard’s household and had spent much time at the Emperor Frederick’s court, in the heyday of Hohenstaufen rule.
He remembered the emperor’s death as if it had happened yesterday. They wrapped his embalmed body in a linen tunic embroidered with verses from the Koran. A purple mantle lay upon his shoulders. Boots of soft crimson leather clad his feet, and on his head rested a crown of Byzantine design, with two long jeweled pendants. Beside him lay a golden orb filled with the soil of Sicily.
In his mind’s eye, Richard saw himself again as a young page, riding beside his uncle Berard’s litter. An immense procession followed the dead emperor as he was borne across Apulia. To the beat of black-muffled drums, sixteen turbaned Saracens carried the coffin in relays on their shoulders, escorted by cavalry on mounts caparisoned in black and gold. In the villages and market towns of Apulia the people lined the roads in their thousands, removing their caps, weeping or simply kneeling in silence as the coffin passed by. It rested for the last night in Bianca Lancia’s castle at Ghioa del Colle before proceeding by ship from Taranto to Palermo. There, in a sarcophagus of red Egyptian porphyry, the Emperor was laid to rest beside his last wife.
Richard marshaled his memories. So many upheavals had taken place since then, so much hardship for Sicily.
“Those were dark days indeed, my son,” he began. “After Frederick’s death, whom many said the pope had poisoned, one trouble followed another, both in Sicily and Germany. The emperor’s son by his English wife Isabella died three years after his father. At the pope’s instigation, a faction of German princes elected a new emperor to oust Conrad IV, Frederick’s son, from the imperial throne. After years of fighting, Conrad abandoned the Empire and came to Sicily. Within a year he, too, was dead.”
“And that’s when Manfred became king?” his nephew interrupted.
The old man nodded. “Yes, my boy. For sixteen years Manfred ruled Sicily as wisely as his father. But the enemies of the Hohenstaufen were gathering like locusts in a summer sky. The pope offered the crown of Sicily to Charles of Anjou, the French king’s brother. An evil man of ruthless ambition, Charles managed to raise the forces other pretenders of the pope’s choosing had been unable to muster. He invaded Sicily, burning and pillaging as he went.
“At Benevento, on a large plain, the prophecy of Manfred’s mother Bianca Lancia came to pass: The Sicilians faced the French. Manfred and his army fought valiantly all day, but in the end they were defeated by their enemies’ superior numbers. Manfred was slain. As he fell from his horse, the crown of Sicily tumbled into the grass, just as his mother had predicted. His wife and sons were imprisoned in Frederick’s most sublime castle, the Castel del Monte, where they starved to death.
“But that still was not the end. In the spring of 1268, a fair-haired boy of fourteen, Frederick’s grandson Conradin, left Germany and crossed the Alps with a handful of followers. With the same precocious ability as his grandfather, he rallied Ghibelline loyalists in Italy to his cause. Many thought that again a Hohenstaufen prince had risen to fulfill the promise of a great name. It was not to be. His supporters were too few and his experience too little.
“Charles of Anjou defeated him at the battle of Tagliacozzo. On that day, the Sicilian chivalry that had lived to fight another day after King Manfred’s defeat perished almost to a man. Conradin was captured. To the horror of Christendom and the everlasting shame of Charles of Anjou, the boy was beheaded like a common criminal in the market square of Naples.”
Richard wiped his rheumy eyes. “And thus, the Hohenstaufen were nearly extirpated.”
“Nearly, uncle? But they’re all dead.”
Richard smiled. “Almost, but not quite. You see, one of Manfred’s daughters, Constance, had married King Peter of Aragon and Catalonia. In March 1282, at the hour of vespers, the people of Palermo rose against their French oppressors in a massacre called the Sicilian Vespers. From Palermo, the revolt spread to the whole island. On a moonless night, a galley left a cove near Palermo. Aboard was a group of Sicilian noblemen. In Barcelona, they begged King Peter to assume the crown of Sicily in his wife’s right. Thirty-two years after the Emperor Frederick’s death, his and Bianca Lancia’s granddaughter Constance and her husband Peter of Aragon were crowned king and queen of Sicily in the cathedral of Palermo.”
“You mean King Peter’s son Frederick, our king, is a great-grandson of the Emperor Frederick?”
Richard chuckled. “Yes, but he’s also, by a fateful coincidence, a great-nephew of the Aragonese princess who was Frederick’s first wife. There’s a curious story told about the royal palace in Palermo. It’s said that at full moon, when the waters of the bay glitter like silver under the moonbeams, the ghost of a tall fair-haired lady walks the mosaic halls. The specter wears a crown just like the one with which Constance of Aragon was buried. A smile plays upon her lips.
“I wonder,” Richard said, tilting his head, “if it is a smile of satisfaction that, after all, God’s justice has prevailed?”
List of Characters
Historical:
CONSTANCE OF SICILY—Frederick’s mother
HENRY IV OF HOHENSTAUFEN—German emperor and Frederick’s father
WALTER OF PALEAR—First Chancellor of Sicily
POPE INNOCENT III
BERARD OF CASTACCA—Archbishop of Palermo
ALFONSO OF ARAG
ON—Count of Provence, Constance of Aragon’s brother
CONSTANCE OF ARAGON—Frederick’s first wife
JOLANDA OF JERUSALEM—Frederick’s second wife
ISABELLA OF ENGLAND—Frederick’s third wife
BIANCA LANCIA—Frederick’s morganatic fourth wife
ALAMAN DA COSTA—Genoese admiral
OTTO OF BRUNSWICK—German emperor
MANFRED LANCIA—Bianca Lancia’s brother
CONRAD VON SCHARFENBURG—German chancellor
ADELAIDE VON URSLINGEN—Frederick’s mistress and Enzo’s mother
HERMANN VON SALZA—Grandmaster of the Teutonic Order
DUKE HENRY OF BRABANT—Frederick’s erstwhile enemy and later friend
WALTER VON DER VOGELWEIDE—Frederick’s court poet and Henry’s tutor
POPE HONORIUS III
JEAN DE BRIENNE—Jolanda’s father
FAKHR-ED-DIN—Sultan of Egypt’s envoy and Frederick’s friend
AL-KAMIL—Sultan of Egypt, Fakhr-ed-Din’s cousin
SAINT FRANCIS OF ASSISI PIERO DELLA VIGNA—Second chancellor of Sicily
POPE GREGORY IX MICHAEL SCOT—Scottish scholar at Frederick’s court
THOMAS AQUINAS—Frederick’s courtier and father of saint
POPE INNOCENT IV
Frederick’s children:
HENRY—Constance’s son (L)
ENZO—Adelaide’s son (I)
CATHERINE—Adelaide’s daughter (I)
CONRAD—Jolanda’s son (L)
MARGARET—Isabella’s daughter (L)
CONSTANCE—Bianca’s daughter (I)
VIOLANTE—Bianca’s daughter (I)
MANFRED—Bianca’s son (I)
Fictional:
William—Frederick’s tutor
Leila—Saracen mistress
Fakir—Saracen falconer
Juana—Constance of Aragon’s maid
Mahmoud—Saracen servant
Ibn Tulun—Saracen physician
Catalina—Tavern dancer in Genoa
Von Falkstein—Governor of Trifels castle
Orbert—Frederick’s master mason
Sybil—Frederick’s last mistress
Matteo—Cistercian Abbot of Eufemia
Note: Very minor characters, both historical and fictional, have been omitted from the above list.