Buckley’s head spun, and not just with uninterrupted sleep and lingering concussion. “The pope? What are you—”
Ducos was behind him, and slapped him across the head. “Silence!” The Frenchman hissed the word. There was no trace of the earlier humor now. “Of course you know nothing! Imbecile. Seigneur le Comte only gave me the orders last night.”
Buckley fought down the question. The last two he’d asked had earned him blows. He stared at a knothole in the floorboard between his feet, and concentrated very hard on not being there.
Another little chuckle. “Ah, the manner in which I have played my would-be master! D’Avaux, the fool, has never—not once!—considered the risks of taking a Huguenot so closely into his confidence. Smug, noble fool!” The voice changed, became a baritone snarl. “As if Saint Bartholomew’s Day could have been forgotten. Or La Rochelle. Or the Languedoc.”
So Ducos really was a traitor to France after all, Buckley realized. He was working for the count in name only. And he had reason to be pissed about his country, if he was a Huguenot. The Saint Bartholomew’s Day massacre of the Huguenots, although it was now over six decades in the past, was still a byword among Protestants for Catholic tyranny and butchery. La Rochelle had seen Protestants similarly slaughtered, starved and penned under siege to die of disease. Buckley hadn’t heard much about the suppression of the Huguenots in the Languedoc, but that was probably only because the savagery had had to compete with barbarisms in the Germanies. La Rochelle and Languedoc were recent, too, within the last five years. The wounds were still fresh.
“Liars, the Catholics, all of them,” Ducos continued. “Did they think I would not read their stolen histories? Did they think I would not learn about the revocation of the Edict of Nantes?”
Joe’s brain was still a little muzzy from the effects of the blows. He tried to remember what he could about the Edict of Nantes. Not much. It had been decreed by an earlier French king—Henry the Something-or-other, and given some rights to the Protestants. But what . . .
Oh, hell. He remembered now. He’d read about it. Fifty years or so in the future—the future of another universe—King Louis XIV would declare it null and void.
“Look, Michel,” he said urgently, “that’s still a long ways off. By then all kinds of things will be different. Just calm down and we can talk—”
Ducos raised his hand and Joe choked off the rest. The Frenchman was obviously in no mood to discuss the matter. And, for the first time, as Ducos raised his hand—his left hand, this time—Joe spotted the hilt of the dagger in the sleeve. Oh, shit.
“Ah, France!” Ducos sighed the name of his country, pacing in circles around Buckley, lost in some reflection of his own. “At least the cretin d’Avaux seeks the advantage of France, even while he mires her in the Roman heresy. He knows I am a patriot also, which is why he trusts me in what I do.”
Another long silence. Three, four, five more circuits around the room. Buckley stole a glance out of the corner of his eye, and realized with a chill that Ducos was toying with the handle of the knife in his sleeve. Then, he pulled it out. A short, thin, and very wicked-looking blade.
“Saint Bartholomew’s Day.” Ducos sighed the words, almost in the same tone as he had spoken the name of France. “It has not been forgotten, Monsieur Buckley.” A long pause. “And certainly not forgiven. Finally, after long years of biding my time, I have my chance to strike all France’s enemies with a single blow.”
The chuckle was becoming more like a cackle, now, as it returned. Ducos squatted in front of Buckley, and grabbed his chin roughly to lift it up. “Several blows, rather, the one riding on top of another.” Back to a soft chuckle. Buckley was horrified to see that Ducos’ face hardly moved at all as he laughed. “You American heretics—and you will receive one of those blows—even have a name for it. ‘Piggyback.’ Seigneur le Comte wanted me to mount a piggyback operation on top of Marcoli’s ridiculous scheme to liberate Galileo. Make it seem as if the imbecile intended to assassinate the pope as well.”