His agent Ducos, awaiting the subtle signal, stepped forward from where he had been warming himself beside the fire against the last chill of a Venetian winter. D’Avaux noted that he had done so by standing on the shadowed side of the chimney-hood where, between the light of the window, the glow of the fire, a natural catlike immobility and the Huguenot severity of his somber suit, Ducos was all but invisible.
D’Avaux found it amusing, from time to time, to chide Ducos for his religious prejudices. Ducos took it largely in good part, for d’Avaux was careful never to press the matter to the point of a serious effort at conversion. There was a use for the hard core of French Protestants whom no edict or religious war would extirpate. There were tasks that had to be undertaken, things that had to be done that the moral flexibility of a theology that denied the value of good behavior could allow where a Catholic, bound to good works for the salvation of his soul, could not in good conscience tread. It would not do to send someone who was not already damned to do such things.
And so Ducos was a heretic servant of His Most Christian Majesty. And a useful one, too. Behind the scenes, in darkened rooms and in places where the likes of Monsieur le Comte d’Avaux could not go, Ducos would go and do and learn things the doing and learning of which were sanctified by the law of necessity and that law alone.
Watching him step forward into the light, d’Avaux was put in mind of some sleek, gray-finned creature of the deep, rising into the sunlit upper waters where men navigated. Woe betide the hapless mariner who found himself in the water when such a one came up from his accustomed darkness.
“Monsieur le Comte.” Ducos gave him the little nod of the head that did him the duty served other men by extravagant bows.
“I believe,” said d’Avaux, “that we have in place appropriate receptions for the Americans?”
“Yes, Monsieur le Comte. All that could conveniently be laid in advance has been. I have disbursed some three hundred scudi so far.”
D’Avaux raised an eyebrow. Not at the sum, which would hire the exclusive services of one of the better class of physicians for a year, but at Ducos’ choice of words. “Conveniently?” he repeated. Perhaps he was oversensitive to nuances, but it paid to check. Besides, Ducos was nothing if not precise.
“Conveniently.” Ducos nodded.
“I shall leave to your judgment how much I should know, of course.”
Ducos paused a moment before replying. “There is another American newly arrived in town,” he said at some length.
“Not connected to the embassy?”
“I do not believe so, Monsieur le Comte. A rogue American, I think. He calls himself Buckley. Joe Buckley.”
D’Avaux found that intriguing. Joe Buckley was a well-known demagogue and rabble-rouser, for all that his career was a recent one. His vernacular was English but he had a damnable knack of getting translated and passed around Europe by who knew what means. Yet, all the cardinal’s spies reported that he was in ill-favor with the Americans themselves, despite being one of their number. “What is that silly term he favors for himself?”
” ‘Investigative reporter.’ ” Ducos made a small shrug. “Which is to say, a spy.”
“And who to know better than you?” The small witticism was hard for d’Avaux to resist.
“Just so, Monsieur le Comte. Just so. I have a number of schemes, in outline, for dealing with the Americans. I will add this ‘Buckley’ to the mix. Some depend on contingencies, but under pressure I will be able to—”
D’Avaux held up a hand. “Enough, Ducos. It suffices that, what? He has taken steps against you?”
“Not yet, since he’s just arrived. But he will, be sure of it. He will certainly make himself familiar with the staff at the embassy. That will make it more difficult to safely place my own agents there.”
D’Avaux waited a moment after Ducos stopped talking. The starveling-looking Huguenot could sometimes be hard to read. He would pause to marshal words, sometimes for remarkably long times. At other times, he would simply stop talking, without verbal punctuation, when in his opinion his master’s conscience was sufficiently informed. D’Avaux admired that. Ducos had the casuistry of a Jesuit—but ten times the moral flexibility that had earned d’Avaux himself the ill name of comforter of heretics among the devots at home.