The Dreeson Incident(7)

Duke Henri de Rohan did not care for assassinations. Or assassins. His father-in-law had been a close friend as well as a counselor of the late, most unfortunately assassinated, King Henri IV of France. Sully had been one of those who had advised the Huguenot Henri de Navarre that Paris was worth a mass, thus possibly contributing to the circumstances that had led the madman to storm the royal carriage with his knife. It bore on his conscience.



Although he had so advised his friend, Sully had never brought himself to make such a . . . transition . . . in the practice of his faith. At the king's wish, he had married his daughter to Rohan who, himself, like his mother, his brother, his wife, and his father-in-law, remained a Calvinist.



This time, perhaps, history would be different. At the parade, everyone in Grantville had been celebrating the overwhelming defeat of the forces of the League of Ostend. Jacques-Pierre smirked. Most of them didn't bother to think that they were celebrating the overwhelming defeat of the French regiments under the command of that idiot de Valois, with only the Huguenot Turenne coming out of the campaign with any glory at all. That would do a lot to undermine the position of Richelieu. Richelieu, the villain who had so strengthened the French crown at the expense of the Estates that in another half-century a French king had been able to revoke the Edict of Nantes.



That was the first and prime goal, Mauger had assured him—to undermine Richelieu. To prevent the centralization of all political power in France in the crown, to the point that the next king could revoke the Edict of Nantes. It didn't matter much how they did it, Mauger claimed. Even that idiot, the king's brother and heir presumptive, Monsieur Gaston, could be a tool. Getting the royal forces out of La Rochelle and returning the city to its pre-1628 status as a bastion of French Protestantism would be a triumph, if they could achieve it.



Mauger even argued that if the Huguenots, ordinary people, had some successes, it might encourage Henri de Rohan to return to a more active leadership role. It might at least allow him to return from his years of exile in Venice and the Swiss cantons.



Wouldn't the duke be surprised to hear that?



That had been months ago, long before Turenne's successful cavalry raid on the oil fields of the United States of Europe at Wietze. Now . . . Ah, if it should happen that the Protestant Turenne was the only effective military leader the king of France could rely upon, that would be superb.



But Mauger was only an agent. He admitted that himself, when Dumais pressed him on the subject. His own contact—rather, the mysterious employer of his own contact—needed information. Must have information. So Jacques-Pierre had agreed to go to Grantville.



Even more, Henri de Rohan needed information about Mauger's mysterious employer. So, in Grantville, Jacques-Pierre had become a garbage collector. In life, there were few free gifts.



Madame Haggerty—now she was a free gift. To have such a woman as the mother of one of his employers was far more than he could have reasonably hoped for, he reflected, as he jogged along next to the garbage wagon.





Later that day, Dumais collected his mail, regretting that Venice and the Swiss had not yet joined the new International Postal union     that made use of pre-paid stamps. If it had, Duke Henri would be paying the postage, not himself.



Ah, well. Even if Jacques-Pierre could rent a post office box, it wouldn't keep him from having to appear at the post office fairly regularly. That wasn't something ordinarily expected of a garbage collector. Luckily, the Grantvillers were, as a whole, so eccentric themselves that they did not find it notably unusual or peculiar for a trash man to receive letters with international postmarks.



Dumais could have tried to pass for a Walloon instead of a Frenchman, he supposed, but there were too many Walloons working at USE Steel down around Saalfeld and Kamsdorf. Some one of them might have tried to look him up. Bad idea. Simpler was better, particularly since so many of the Grantvillers were convinced that all Frenchmen were incompetent—aside from Richelieu, of course. In a pinch, he identified himself as Rochellais, which was perfectly true, too.



There was a letter from Henri de Rohan today. As soon as Dumais was outside the post office, he opened it and began reading.



The duke was worried about Ducos. He speculated that Ducos had, from Rome, headed for the south coast of France, gone up the Rhone, crossed over to the upper Rhine, taken it as far of the mouth of the Main, and would probably soon be meeting with his henchmen and cohorts in Frankfurt am Main. The duke would make arrangements in Frankfurt, through his contacts with the Huguenot colony there, to have people on the alert for Locquifier and the others.