“Fall of the House of Black”
1504 A.D. Venice, Italy. Earth-Kappa.
A blight had fallen on the house of Black, and all their enterprises were blasted. Beloved by their subjects, noble, and with every advantage of right on their side, except those the Church bestowed, they were defeated in every attempt to defend themselves against a foreigner and a tyrant, who ruled by force of arms, and those in the hands of a few only, over an extensive and warlike territory. The young and daring Sebastian Black was also fated to perish in this contest. Having overcome the troops of his adversary in Tuscany, he advanced towards his kingdom with the highest hopes. His arch-enemy, Pope Valentino IX, had shut himself up in Venice, and was guarded by a numerous garrison.
Sebastian passed in triumph and hope before the town, and proudly drew out his troops before it, to display to the Holy Father his forces, and humiliate him by this show of success. The cardinals, who beheld the lengthened line and good order of the army, hastened to the papal palace. Archer Corseau was in his oratory praying. The frightened monks, with pale looks, related how the excommunicated heretic dared to menace the town where the Holy Father himself resided; adding, that if the insult were carried to the pitch of an assault, it might prove dangerous warfare.
“Do not fear,” the Pope said, smiling contemptuously, “the projects of these men will dissipate in smoke.”
Corseau was sent by the Pope on the ramparts, and saw Sebastian and his brother Frederic of Venice, who defiled the line of knights in the plain below. He watched them for a time; then turning to his cardinals, he spoke:
“They are victims, who permit themselves to be led to sacrifice.”
His words were a prophecy. Notwithstanding the first successes of Sebastian, and the superior numbers of his army, he was defeated by the artifice of Corseau in a pitched battle. He escaped from the field, and, with a few friends, arrived at a tower called Astonte, which belonged to the family of Florentino of Rome. Here Sebastian hired a vessel, embarked, and put out to sea, directing his course for Sicily, which, having rebelled against Pope Valentino IX, would, he hoped, receive him with joy. They were already under weigh, when one of the family of the Florentino followed them in other vessels, and took them all prisoners. The person of Sebastian was a rich prey for him; Dante Florentino delivered him into the hands of his rival, the Pope, and was rewarded by the donation of a fief near Benevento.
The dastardly spirit of defeat instigated Sebastian to the basest revenge, but he did not have time to act upon it, being trapped in his enemy’s lair. He was tried. One of his judges alone, a Provençal, dared to condemn him, and he paid with his life the forfeit of his baseness. For scarcely had he, solitary among his fellows, pronounced the sentence of death against Sebastian than Robert of Flanders, the brother-in-law of Archer Corseau himself, struck him on the breast with a staff, crying,
“It behooves not thee, wretch, to condemn to death so noble and worthy a knight!”
The judge fell dead in the presence of the Pope, who dared not avenge his creature.
On the 26th of October 1504, Sebastian and his friends were led out to die in the market-place of Naples, by the seaside. The Pope and Corseau were present with all his court, and an immense multitude surrounded the triumphant king, and his more royal adversary, about to suffer an ignominious death.
As the funereal procession approached its destination, Sebastian became agitated, but upon controlling his anger he was drawn in an open car. After him came a close litter, hung with black, with no sign to tell who was within. The Duke of Austria and several other illustrious victims followed. The guard that conducted them to the scaffold was headed by Corseau himself. A malicious triumph laughed in his eyes, and he rode near the litter, looking from time to time first at it and then at Sebastian, with the dark look of a tormenting fiend.
“Soon you will be gone,” Corseau whispered. “The Pope will be pleased, and he will ascend me to the role of his aide. That is but the first step of a grander plan which you will never see to fruition.”
“Valentino may be my enemy,” Sebastian replied, “but never once did I find him to be stupid. Beware karma.”
The procession stopped at the foot of the scaffold, and Sebastian looked at the flashing light which every now and then arose from Vesuvius, and threw its reflection on the sea. The sun had not yet risen, but the halo of its approach illuminated the bay of Naples, its mountains, and its islands. The summits of the distant hills of Baiæ gleamed with its first beams.
“By the time those rays arrive here,” Sebastian muttered, “and shadows are cast from the persons of these men — both princes and peasants — around me, my living spirit will be shadowless.”
Then he turned his eyes on the companions of his fate, and for the first time he saw the silent and dark litter that accompanied them.
“It is my coffin,” Sebastian assumed at first.
But then he recollected the disappearance of his beloved Despina, and would have sprang towards it. His guards stopped him; Sebastian looked up, and his glance met that of Corseau, who smiled — a smile of dread — but the feeling of religion which had before calmed him again descended on him; he thought that his beloved’s sufferings, as well as his, would soon be over. And he had a son who would avenge him.
It, in fact, was already over; and the silence of the grave was upon those events which had occurred since he beheld her carried out of Florence, never to be seen again, until now that she was led by her fierce enemy to behold the death of Sebastian Black of Venice. She must have endured much; for when, as Sebastian advanced to the front of the scaffold, the litter being placed opposite to it, Corseau ordered the curtains to be withdrawn. The white hand that hung inanimate from the side was thin as a winter leaf, and her fair face, pillowed by the thick knots of her dark hair, was sunken and ashy pale, while you could see the deep blue of Despina’s eyes struggle through the closed eyelids. She was still in the attire in which she had presented herself at the House of Cincolo the night of her no-apparent abduction. Perhaps her tormentor thought that her appearance as a youth would attract less compassion than if a lovely woman were thus dragged to so unnatural a scene.
Sebastian was kneeling and praying when her form was thus exposed. He saw her, and saw that she was dead! It was a corpse Corseau was displaying, as a last memento of his scheming. Sebastian was about to die, about to die ignominiously, while his base conqueror, in pomp and glory, was spectator of his death. He did not pity those who were at peace; his compassion belonged to the living alone; and as he arose from his prayer he exclaimed,
“My beloved wife!” Sebastian exclaimed, after he arose from his prayer. “What profound sorrow will the news thou art about to hear cause thee!”
He looked upon the living multitude around him, and saw that the hard-visaged partisans of the usurper wept. He heard the sobs of the oppressed and conquered subjects, so he drew his glove from his hand and threw it among the crowd, in token that he still held his cause good, and then Sebastian Black submitted his head to the axe.
“At last,” Pope Valentino IX celebrated, his enemy taken from this earth. “You have done well, Father Corseau. You have done well, indeed.”
“I am glad you are so pleased, Your Excellency,” Corseau replied.
“You shall be rewarded for your work.”
“Thank you, Your Excellency.”
During many years after those events, Father Archer Corseau enjoyed wealth, rank, and power. When suddenly, while at the summit of glory and prosperity, he withdrew from the world.
Or, so it seemed.
Rather, he had been stripped and imprisoned within a dank, dirty cell built three hundred feet below the ground on the grounds of Black Manor. When Corseau demanded to see the face of his jailer, Count Anthony Black came to visit him.
“It cannot be,” Corseau uttered softly.
“And why is that, wretched one,” Count Black asked. “Surely you were aware of my existence? Ah, that’s right. My father hid me away to live a life elsewhere so no one would ever know of me. I was my father’s means of retribution should something ever befall him at the hands of his enemies. And thus, here I am. And there you are.”
The Count turned his back on him, as the guard locked the door.
“Perhaps you should ponder why it is I am keeping you alive, rather than sending you on your way,” Count Black suggested, taking the key. “I can assure you the Pope will not be facing the same fate. Him I plan to skewer and prop his head up on a lance for all to see.”
Two weeks later, Father Archer Corseau died of starvation, murmuring the names of Sebastian and Despina Black, cursing them one last time. His last thought put a smirk on his face:
He, too, had a son, and vengeance would eventually be his, even in the pits of Hell.
TO BE CONTINUED in the pages of SUNBURST SPOTLIGHT #128!
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