by Eric Flint
"Fool," said Ducos, in English. "I have read your scribblings, reporter."
"Then you know—"
"Everything. Marcoli doesn't, of course." A small smile twisted that narrow blade of a face. "Another dupe. A shame. He may be the one honest man in this city. Such a shame, that he should be an imbecile also." Ducos shook his head, slowly and theatrically.
Buckley remained silent. Don't provoke him. He wished he knew more about hostage situations than he'd been able to gather from the movies. Sure as hell nobody's dialing 911 right now, he thought. He put his head down, to avoid catching Ducos' eye.
"You made my own spy most upset, Monsieur Buckley. He wanted to know, did I not trust him to maintain a watch on the building for him? Did I think he was too stupid to keep a proper watch? I had to pay him extra because of you. Pfui. No matter."
Ducos began to pace. "No, that is not the problem I must solve tonight, Monsieur Buckley." He pointed to Joe's article on the table. "No, the problem is that you know nothing about the plot to kill the pope. There is not a word in there about the matter."
He soundly deeply aggrieved, but Joe could sense that it was a pose. Underneath the sorrowful tone was just that hint of maniacal humor.
"What am I to do?" Ducos mused, pacing back and forth. Again, he pointed to the table. "That article must be found, of course. Crucial evidence, pointing the finger in the proper direction. But nothing about the pope!"
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."
Ducos rocked back on his heels, his mouth open in a rictus than might have served someone else for a grin. "Petits cochons!" he whooped. "All climbing on each others' backs. I clear the way for Marcoli and his children's crusade to go to Rome. I have evidence planted in the Marcoli house after they leave, saying they meant to kill the Antichrist of Rome. So much for d'Avaux's scheme. That, of course, clears the way to lay my own plans. You see, d'Avaux wants Marcoli to fail to kill the pope. Not even to try, in fact—simply to have looked as if he intended to try. Whereas I want him to succeed." Ducos hissed the last word.
Another long silence. "The cardinal is right about that, of course. The English stole the world. Better, though, that it be stolen by foreign Protestants, I think, than French heretics."
Joe was desperately trying to follow the way Michel's mind seemed to skitter from one subject to another. He was quite sure by now that Ducos was not really sane. "You work for Richelieu?" he asked, not really knowing why but simply hoping to divert the maniac. He tensed himself for a blow.
Which never came. "But of course, Monsieur Buckley. Why else would I send back a dispatch describing the foolish, insane, desperate venture that Seigneur le Comte has instructed me to carry out? Seigneur le Comte will be most lucky if he is merely broken and ruined. A traitor's death would suit him better, I think." A pause, and then another soft little chuckle. "Administered by the arch-traitor and heretic himself. Savor the irony, Monsieur Buckley. Savor it."
Ducos stood. "It is perfect, perfect in every detail. Your American abomination, this 'religious freedom' exposed as a cover for bloodshed and duplicity. The Roman Antichrist sent back to the Pit, to be chained by Christ for a thousand years. And the Beast's henchmen on earth, they all suspect France. All the further from Rome goes France. Ah, perfect."
Ducos stopped behind Buckley and laid a hand gently on either of the American's shoulders. Joe could see the edge of the blade protruding next to his cheek. The thing looked razor sharp.
"And there is more, oh, yes," Ducos said, purring. "Monsieur Gaston has his man here in Paris, too. And he has agreed to assist with the plot to discredit d'Avaux. And such a simple matter to show that he, too, compassed the death of the pope. Yes, all of it is perfect—except that one unfortunate detail. There is no mention of the plot to kill the pope in your writings."
Ducos began stroking Buckley's wet hair with his left hand, and in that moment Buckley realized he was going to die. He began to shudder, and felt warmth on his thighs as he lost bladder control.
"You tremble, Monsieur Buckley. You urinate from terror. Just so will France tremb
le and soil herself, as she is first-born into the Millennium. Just so. As Richelieu and Gaston squabble over the bleeding body of the Antichrist, the new world will come. Yes, the new world. Born of little pigs, climbing on each other's backs. Petits cochons."
He kept stroking Joe's hair. It felt like a vulture's caress. "And both these little pigs blaming the American pigs. I care not who wins, for by then there will be the reign of Christ. And France, reborn. The new Jerusalem, and I shall be the one to lay the first stone of that heavenly city. Mortared with the blood of the Antichrist, Monsieur Buckley, and of the little pigs who pollute France with their heresy."
Another soft little chuckle. "I meant to have an Inquisition guard come to murder you, Monsieur Buckley. What better sport than to set your Americans, and that Jew who is your spymaster, on the heels of the Inquisition? But I must now hurry, for you learned of Marcoli's plan. Alas, the real plan, not the one I require. So I am afraid—my apologies—that I must do my best to question you in the style of the Inquisition."
Torture! Buckley moaned, and began to shake again. The chair he was tied to had a short leg, and it drummed on the floorboards. "I'll talk!" he said, suddenly and oddly embarrassed that his voice was squeaking. "I'll talk!"
"Why? How? I don't mean to ask you any questions." Stroke, stroke. That hand on the top of his head, as Ducos murmured to him softly, almost intimately. Buckley cringed at every touch. Stroke. "I have read all your notes, Monsieur. I know all you know. And I shall send off your writing for you. In this way your death will not go unnoticed. Though for the moment, of course, it surely will. This building is empty, but for ourselves."
Buckley swallowed. He was dead, as dead as if he'd already stopped breathing. What to do? He was still shuddering; his testicles seemed to be burrowing into his belly. The piss on his thighs was cooling, making him shudder all the more.
Hurt him, said a still, quiet voice in his mind. He remembered a line of poetry he'd always liked a lot. From Bob Dylan—no, it was Dylan Thomas.
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
The hand holding the blade was next to his cheek. Joe snapped his head around like a snake or a snapping turtle and bit the hand. Hard.
Ducos roared with rage and pain. Buckley ignored everything except sinking his teeth into that hated hand. Ducos tried to pull the hand away but it was impossible. Then he grabbed Joe by the hair and lifted him, chair and all, and slammed his head against the edge of the table. The skinny madman's strength was incredible.
Joe was dazed by the impact. Finally, his jaws loosened enough and Michel ripped his hand away. Buckley saw the knife fall to the floor.
Get the knife! Get the knife!
The chair was off-balance anyway. He managed to tip it over and fall next to the knife. There came then the greatest sensation of triumph Joe had ever felt in his life. He managed to clamp the hilt of the knife in his teeth. Try cutting me now, you son of a bitch!
He never felt the slender cord sliding around his neck. Never felt it at all, even when the garrote tightened in the madman's grip. The knife was everything.
Chapter 31
Cardinal Antonio Barberini the Younger—that last an important distinction with his Uncle Antonio in the room—felt mildly out of his depth, and completely out of place. The most he could find to think of himself in this company was that he knew more of art than all of them put together. And that, alas, most of the people in the chamber would be fascinating company if they weren't all concentrating so hard on the business at hand.
Could there be anything in world so tedious as this affair with the miserable creature Galileo Galilei? Not for the first time, Antonio found himself wishing that the nasty old man would simply have the good grace to drop dead. He was seventy years old, after all. It was not as if Antonio were asking for a miracle.
Alas, the terms good grace and Galileo Galilei of Pisa were not to be found in the same sentence. Restraining yet another sigh, the young cardinal's eyes moved across the chamber. The sight brought him no relief. It was a very well populated chamber.
There were his brother Francesco and his Uncle Antonio—for whom he was named—and Cardinal Zacchia. All were theological authorities and Inquisitors and well suited to the business of these interminable weekly meetings.
Fra Vincenzo da Maculano and the Jesuit Inchofer were also well suited to the task. An engineer and a classicist, each well learned in his field. Both of them were also experienced in Inquisition business. But the lead in that matter, among the members of the Commission of Inquiry who were not cardinals, was taken by Sinceri; who, during the rest of the week, was a prosecutor of the Holy Office.
Barberini half-listened to Sinceri's droning, dry-as-dust exposition of the laws of the Church pertaining to heresy. Picking his way, with difficulty, through Sinceri's salvos of hold-and-defends and teaching contrary to magisterium, and what-not else. Privately, Antonio thought that the Inquisition would be better feared for its tedium than its tortures. He prayed, silently, that his other uncle—Maffeo, now Pope Urban VIII—would unilaterally settle the issue with regard to the ranting Pisan so that Antonio would not have to take any decision in what was becoming a wholly vexed matter.
From the sound of the thing, Galileo had tried to weasel out of the charge. That was a joke, if one cared to laugh. After decades of sneering at everyone who dared to contradict him, of publishing viperous sallies against his opponents, he had finally stumbled against the one tribunal that could call him to account. Years of being the biggest bully in Italian natural philosophy had come to a halt when the bigger bullies of the Inquisition summoned him to Rome.
They had been gentle with him, though. They had told him to rest and get well before traveling, seen to it that he had an escort and a litter to ride in, bid him choose his own lodgings and requested, not ordered, that he not make public appearances while awaiting his trial. When they examined him—Antonio read between the lines, here, not having been present as Sinceri and da Maculano had been—Galileo had tried to pretend that the whole point of his book had been to refute the Copernican hypothesis, not to hold, defend or teach it. Had he not written Simplicius in as a character? Aristotle's great interpreter, who gave the philosopher's view and gave it ably and well? Surely, Galileo had asked, the Holy Office could see that he had defended Aristotle against Pythagoras?
The truth was, no one could see any such thing, which was why Inchofer had had to read the whole of the damned turgid book and write a review of it. Antonio felt sure that Inchofer had been more bothered by the tone of the text than anything it might say about the motion of the heavenly spheres. What was the phrase? He slights as mental dwarfs all who are not Copernican or Pythagorean. As well he might, in some cases, since the mental dwarfdom of some of his opponents was not wholly beyond doubt.
Which thought led Antonio, somewhat unfairly, across the room to the other three members of the Inquisi—not the Inquisition, Antonio reminded himself, never to call it that—the Commission of Inquiry.
Scheiner, whose presence was inexplicable since he was the prime complainant. Or, at least, had provoked all the complaints about Galileo—so rumor had it, with some evidence on its side—out of nothing more than desire for vengeance. Perhaps that was one of Uncle Maffeo's little jokes: to make the man who least wanted to be impartial, swear before God that he would judge without partiality. Scheiner would do it, too, out of his fourth vow as a Jesuit if nothing else. But it would take monstrous prejudice in Galileo's favor to acquit him.
Grassi was also an agitator against Galileo, and he again had had good personal reason. Over the years, Galileo had called him about seven sorts of idiot. Including, at one point, for advancing evidence in favor of the Copernican hypothesis that Galileo didn't agree with—which was some measure of the defendant in this trial. Grassi's presence was, if it was to be explained at all, part of the same game that had put his fellow Jesuit on the trial panel. Even if he
, too, was scrupulously fair, the only question was Galileo's penalty.
Finally, Cardinal Gaspar Borja y Velasco. Probably not even the direct intervention of God Himself would cause him to vote in Galileo's favor. Too many of the people around the pope, people who opposed the Spanish party in Rome, were Galileo partisans as well. The Spanish Inquisitor would not be in the least partial to Galileo, even if he had come before the Inquisition looking more Catholic than the pope.
The fact that His Holiness Urban VIII had violated every canon of Inquisition procedure with this Commission of Inquiry had almost certainly caused the Spaniards to smell a rat. Six of the regular Inquisition cardinals had been asked to step aside, and been replaced with a third Barberini—Antonio himself, whom nobody including Antonio thought was in the least bit qualified to judge such a matter—and five assorted lawyers, theologians and scientists. And yet His Holiness had not explicitly said that he wished to see an acquittal. The message seemed to be that the committee was to deal as gently with Galileo as it could. It would all be much easier if Uncle Maffeo and Father-General Vitelleschi would let anyone else see the papers that had come from Grantville. Then perhaps the game they were playing might be more obvious to the less exalted members of the hierarchy.
Putting Grassi, Scheiner and Borja on the Commission seemed to be a sop to the anti-Galilean opinion and, perhaps, to the Spanish. Even together, and even assuming Scheiner and Grassi went against their vows, they would not change the outcome. Unanimity was not required, from what Sinceri had said in an earlier meeting. The lawyer seemed to be enjoying his chance to be a judge and was now holding forth, from the one word in three Barberini was catching, on whether the evidence permitted a conviction as it stood or whether all they could find was vehement suspicion calling for a public abjuration.
Barberini half-turned in his chair to see what Inchofer would say to that, and was not disappointed.