Chapter Text
An old man walks into a church, goes almost every version of the joke Vincent knows. They're all the same joke, whatever the specifics of the punchline, but this one was told to him by his dear friend Ahmad, a Hanafi scholar in Kabul who took him in during an unexpected Taliban sweep. He can still see Ahmad's round face creasing into well-worn laugh lines as he began the joke, the twinkle in his eye making it clear he knew Vincent must have heard it many times before.
An old man walks into a church. "Father," he says to the priest, "I am eighty-one years old, and until today I had known no woman but my late, beloved wife."
The old man's age is reckoned by the joke teller. For lively, laughing Ahmad, seventy if he was a day, the happy confessor was eighty-one. For a young woman at the turn of the millennium trying to shock the equally young priest sharing her train carriage, the old man was fifty.
"But last night I met a beautiful young woman who took me to her bed and showed me wonders I'd never dreamt of. Father, the things she did with her tongue..."
In the safety of his home, Ahmad had waggled his big, bushy eyebrows, Vincent remembers, already laughing at the punchline he hadn't yet reached.
His home is a blurred memory in Vincent's mind's eye: beautiful, carefully-maintained carpets; bookshelves floor to ceiling; calligraphic art exquisitely rendered by one of his daughters in happier times. Every inch of it the home of a respectable Islamic legal scholar who was glad - glad! - to be freed of pernicious Western influences. Vincent had hidden in the crawl space behind one of those bookshelves on and off for three days.
"And how long has it been since your last confession?" the priest says, though often those words are wrong, a parody of absolution from someone whose only knowledge of the confessional comes secondhand.
"Last confession?" says the old man. "I'm Muslim." Or Jewish, or Protestant, or Hindu, or an atheist - and those are only the versions Vincent has been told personally.
"Then why are you telling me this?"
"Telling you? I'm telling everyone!"
He heard Ahmad fell out of favour with a local Taliban official not long after the last time he blessed Vincent with his sanctuary, his company and his big, belly-shaking laugh. Vincent doesn't know what happened to him after that. He keeps Ahmad in his prayers.
("You pray for me and I'll pray for you," Ahmad had said. "That way we can hedge our bets, yes?")
Ahmad was a devout Muslim in spite, not because, of the Taliban's best efforts. Vincent was one of many who benefited from his steadfast compassion. They never publicly associated, so if Ahmad has survived this far, it is possible Vincent's sudden rise to fame has not condemned him.
A year and a half later, in another country that might as well be another world, Thomas graces Vincent with a sensible chuckle when Vincent begins the joke one quiet evening. The two of them are in Vincent's rooms, drinking mint tea and watching the last pink-gold glimmers of autumn sun finally disappear over the ornate domes and spires of the Basilica.
Over the first ten months of Vincent's papacy, he has learned how to carve time out for himself in a dozen different ways, but he was surprised and delighted to learn that his evenings were already his by tradition. Of his recent predecessors, John Paul had been fond of evening debates with old friends, Benedict had preferred to play classical piano music, and Clement had his chess and novels. Vincent is still testing out what works best for him, but this - a quiet, unhurried evening with a dear friend - is indispensable.
"Don't," Thomas says, not really a protest, cutting Vincent off before the joke's protagonist has done more than greet the priest. "I think the first time I heard that, the 'old man' in question was ten years younger than I am now."
It's a close enough echo of Vincent's own thoughts that he can feel his smile widen. "He was fifty in one version I heard."
Thomas gives the smallest of theatrical shudders. "Ancient."
Since leaving seminary, Vincent has lived a life absent of any stillness but that which can be cultivated from within. To him, life in the Vatican seems almost the opposite - men who live in stillness, who must generate all their sound and fury themselves. Thomas, at least, does not seem to feel the need to take up space, to make big expansive gestures simply to fill the room.
"I always liked that joke," Vincent says. Then he finishes a thought he had not realised he had started: "I like to imagine joy in the confessional."
Thomas gives him such a look as only Thomas can, reverential and amused and open all at once. Sometimes Vincent feels flayed apart by those eyes. Their trust cuts deep.
"The joy of God's forgiveness?" Thomas ventures. He will follow Vincent's thought wherever it leads, as willing to play the scholar to Vincent's insight as he is to play the straight man to Vincent's whimsy.
"The joy of joy," Vincent says, unsure if this is insight or whimsy or some terribly irreverent combination of both. "If it is a space to share our secrets with God, why only the grimiest, most shameful ones? Why not also our happiest ones?" The secrets, he thinks, that bubble up inside a person like champagne, effervescing through the soul.
Thomas thinks for a moment. He turns his gaze back to the Basilica, where the sunset is nothing more than a final smear of grey in the darkness.
"I can't tell if you're serious or joking," he says to the Basilica.
"Nor can I," Vincent says, honest as he can be. He is rewarded with a smile from Thomas that fizzes and pops against his heart.
#
Vincent's work to date has required a certain kind of constitution. Vincent is made for service - he does not know how much of that came naturally and how much he built himself, but he knows who he is. All people are infinitely precious to God, but those who are willing to work for the common good are particularly precious to Vincent.
So. Vincent serves. He gathers around him those of God's children who are most inclined to work, and they find ways to work together.
It sets him against all factions of the Curia, with Thomas by his side as overt peacemaker, covert fire-starter.
Today they are discussing the ongoing flash floods in Brazil.
"I suppose," Thomas sighs, looking pained, "if the relief money comes from the central fund, it is not strictly a matter for the Dicastery." He speaks so naturally that even Vincent barely notices that's not actually the question Vincent asked his assembled colleagues. It is instead a solution. "But Your Holiness, the logistics become extremely tricky without them, so perhaps this is best left for now?"
"The Dicastery may meet about it at their leisure," Vincent says, following the dance that Thomas leads. "I will meet about it tomorrow, with those best placed to do something immediately."
Thomas's hand goes to pinch the bridge of his nose, stalls halfway, and dangles, useless, until he can bring it down to smooth his crease-free fascia. It is a virtuoso performance.
"Your Holiness," he says, signalling acquiescence and mild rebuke in one. His tone leaves no room for further argument from any of their assembled colleagues, closing the matter neatly in Vincent's favour.
If the matter were less serious or Vincent were less tired, he might applaud. This is Thomas the diplomat, Thomas the politician, moving so lightly on his feet the steps are all-but invisible.
But the matter is serious and Vincent is tired.
Normally, he would number the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development - whose work includes funding and coordinating humanitarian responses - among his more productive colleagues. Over the last ten months, he has been more pleased than not with its speed and flexibility where disaster relief is needed. He suspects this is because it is an outward-facing body, more concerned with doing than with seeming.
He does not understand why relief for the ongoing flash floods in Brazil is a different story. It is frustrating twice over - both that they wish to delay, and that he had not predicted it.
The Church should be a force for good, not an impediment to it.
They are nearly done with the agenda for tomorrow's meeting when Bellini's eyes widen and he flicks a look between Thomas and Vincent. Fortunately he is more loyal than outraged, so he turns his eyes back to their work.
"Aldo was not amused," Thomas says that evening over mint tea and the tiny sweet rigoli the sisters have discovered Vincent's weakness for. "He said -" Thomas switches from Spanish to English, indicating a direct quote, or near enough. "- while it was nice to see me having fun, he'd rather it wasn't at his expense."
Thomas does not sound particularly remorseful.
"Forgive me," Vincent says. "You-"
"Didn't apologise? No. He was right, after all. It was fun." Thomas smiles into his delicate china cup.
Vincent still worries about breaking the cups - he is more used to a tin mug or a battered steel thermos - but they do look natural in Thomas's hands.
(Vincent's mind, exhausted from the day's work, wanders to his mother's much-loved mosaic and brass cups. He can still see them now as they were in his childhood: displayed proudly on a high shelf, the red-yellow-green lions grinning down over the neatly kept single room that served as kitchen, living space, and children's bedroom. He left home long before he was old enough to be trusted to drink from them. He hopes one of his brothers has them now.)
"Before you, it had been so long since I enjoyed any of this - not that it isn't a blessing, of course, to do God's work, but-" Thomas stops himself. "I told him if he didn't want us to have fun at his expense, next time he should join in."
Then Thomas gives him a sideways glance, unreadable. Vincent wonders how Thomas's hands would look holding one of his mother's cups - whether he would treat the unfamiliar design with the same careful reverence he gives to every other piece of Vincent's heart.
"I know this must all seem terribly self-indulgent compared to your missions," he continues. "But it has been a relief to remember that I can still serve in my own small way."
Vincent looks at the Dean of the College of Cardinals, His Eminence Cardinal Lawrence, former diplomat of the Holy See, whose steady hand, spiritual depth and quiet courage Vincent still believes would make him a better pope than Vincent. There is no irony in his tone.
There is a lesson in this. Vincent admires Thomas deeply, but he will not emulate him in all things.
So: Systems take time to learn. Vincent was in DR Congo for three years before he could truly navigate the local politics of aid work, another two before he could bend it to his needs. He has made mistakes that others have paid for dearly by acting without context. He will not now chastise himself for needing an expert steer nearly a year into his papacy, but instead give thanks that he has such an expert to steer him.
"My friend," Vincent says. If they were younger men - Vincent and Thomas, two priests of no particular significance - he would perhaps tease Thomas into accepting a compliment. But he is old enough now, and the crown heavy enough, that he instead tells the simple, unadorned truth. "I would be lost without you."
Thomas, in turn, is relaxed enough that he waves his hand as if batting away the compliment. Vincent would rather he let it land, but this casual gesture is its own kind of gift.
#
Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than himself. Let each of you look out not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others.
The first few months of Pope Innocent XIV's papacy had been among the more surprising of Thomas's career.
Thomas had tried to explain to Vincent - even then, he had rebuffed Thomas's attempts to address him more formally - that Dean of the College of Cardinals was truly a nothing role in the normal scheme of things, well out of the politics of the Curia or the daily business of the Pope. Like the pilot of a Boeing 747, he'd said. With luck, one can serve out one's whole term doing very little but enjoying the view.
Stepping down from Secretary of State to Dean had not just been a demotion, but a retirement - as clear a signal as any from his late Holiness that the old guard were no longer relevant.
Vincent had not listened. In those first few months he regarded Thomas's role as some amalgamation of fixer, confidante, advisor and Curia-wrangler. He was new to the Holy See as no pope in living memory had been - even the previous "outsider" popes had participated in the political or doctrinal life of the Church before their election - and he had no compunction about using this to draw Thomas into his work.
Ah, he would say, smiling politely but implacably. I will need my Dean to explain that to me before I decide. I'm sure you understand.
Thomas, could you-? he would ask, steering him by the elbow into a meeting he had not been invited to. Just until I find my feet, of course.
And a copy to Thomas, became as routine a phrase as, Bless you, my child.
Thomas, of course, could deny him nothing.
Such behaviour may have been troubling at first - was their new Pope really that naive? that helpless? - but it quickly became apparent that Vincent has a political shrewdness honed in circumstances far more challenging than the Holy See. He is engaged, clear-sighted, careful without being over-cautious. He has a sense for the currents of politics and affinity that runs deep beneath the surface, and is adept at ignoring or acknowledging them as serves him best.
In those first few months, Thomas was brought back again and again to the fact that he has allowed his own career - seminary, academia, diplomacy, politics - to shape him as precisely and ruthlessly as any hot house flower. Even at his best, he has been nourished and cultivated to survive only in the rarified climate of the Vatican. He would have made a disappointing pope.
Sometime in the third, perhaps fourth, month of Vincent's papacy, there was a shift in his approach. Thomas was put in mind of a handsome swordsman in a black and white swashbuckler film who, after carefully taking the measure of his opponent, finally went on the attack.
"One more item, if I may?" Vincent said with a careful firmness many in the Curia would learn to fear. As Thomas remembers it, they were coming to the end of a routine meeting with the Institutions of Justice leadership and the Dicastery of the Doctrine of the Faith, a monthly affair in which Thomas had no official role. He can't remember the items they'd covered, but he remembers the politely bored faces of his colleagues, the sense in the air that while of course they would never rush His Holiness, they did have pressing work to attend to.
"The backlog in sexual abuse cases," Vincent said. "I understand it is growing."
Thomas's heart had sunk. It was an important issue, an injustice that had to be corrected, but it was also a quagmire, more properly dealt with through the Commission for the Protection of Minors. He hadn't known Vincent was going to raise it.
"Your Holiness," someone replied. He can't remember who - probably Dobrogost, a soft-spoken Polish archbishop who then held the prefecture of the Apostolic Signatura. "As of course you understand, there are complexities to the matter that cannot be measured in simple numbers."
It was the wrong approach. As Vincent drew breath to reply, Thomas was struck by the thought that if he had been in Dobrogost's position, he might well have said the same thing. It made shame prickle over his skin like a rash - even now, looking back, he can still feel the sour heat of it, unwelcome but necessary.
"Indeed," Vincent agreed without agreeing. "We must not forget that each number is an individual who has been wronged by the Universal Church, wronged by those entrusted to love, protect and guide them. We must keep in mind the complexities of their need and our duty to them."
"That is beautifully said, Your Holiness," someone else replied. Was that Dobrogost, maybe? And had the first speaker perhaps been Marco, the Major Penitentiary? Thomas can no longer remember. What he remembers most clearly from that day is his own shame at how easily their words could have come from his own mouth. Whoever it was, Marco or Dobrogost or Pietro, they continued: "You are quite right, of course. We are moving at pace, but there is always more to be done. Shall we schedule a meeting to discuss this in more depth? Perhaps with our colleagues from the Commission? We should give it the time it deserves."
Thomas may not remember who said what, but he does remember Vincent glancing at his watch, looking up at Thomas, and then saying, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, "An excellent point, my child. Thomas, could you give Cardinal Bellini my apologies? I think we will be here for some time."
That evening, Thomas sat alone in his vast apartment. Since seeing its dimensions on his late Holiness's list of cardinals' residences (Apartment no. 2. Palace of the Holy Office. 445 square metres!!), he had lost the quiet pleasure he used to take in its loveliness. The art on the walls seemed indulgent, the grand piano an indictment of his own moral inadequacy.
He was thinking about his words to Ray during the Conclave about those who had turned a blind eye to sexual abuse. I doubt I would have acted any more firmly, he'd said. And then, with the smug complacency of a man who would not be so tested: Now we know differently. But did he? Had he? Or would he have been content to let justice continue to move at its slow, ponderous pace, another Dobrogost or Marco or Pietro standing in the way of Vincent's moral clarity.
There was a knock on the door. He remembers recognising it, even back then, as Vincent's.
Vincent did not come to his apartment often. If they spent time together in the evening, it was in Vincent's rooms at the Apostolic Palace - far less abstemious than the late Holy Father's 50 square metres at Casa Santa Maria, but nothing so grand as Thomas's apartment. Thomas had expected Vincent to dig his heels in about staying at the Casa Santa Maria himself - Vincent was not a man who required luxury - but he had easily been persuaded by the security concerns. Even now, Thomas has not really discussed this decision with Vincent. He supposes though that a man who has lived in war zones and slums may view where he lives through a very different lens to either Thomas or his late Holiness.
Then, he had offered Vincent some tea, opened a new pack of chocolate digestives his sister-in-law sent him, and tried to put his own self-recrimination to the back of his mind to be present for whatever Vincent needed.
"I think our brothers were not expecting my approach today," Vincent said after accepting a herbal tea from Thomas's growing supply and trying one of the biscuits with obvious pleasure. "You would tell me if I were causing problems you considered counterproductive?"
The lilt in his voice made it a question, but not one that doubted the answer. Here was a man far more certain than Thomas that he would not be disappointed. Thomas wanted nothing more than for this to be true.
"I think these problems have every chance of being extremely productive," he said, hoping to convey his approval without suggesting that Vincent needed it.
"I hope so." Vincent contemplated his tea. "I think when we met, I shocked you with my views on the Universal Church."
"Shocked is a strong word." Shamed might be more accurate.
"I have always held the Church lightly in my heart," Vincent said. "Not God, never God, but the Church itself has never been to me what it is to you." He held up a hand to forestall Thomas's reaction. "I do not mean this as a criticism. We need good people serving the Church in order that we may serve God and all His children. But I always saw myself as one of God's worker bees, buzzing about serving Him in my small way, never thinking too much about the hive or its queen."
Whatever Thomas felt at the incongruent parallel between the Pope and a queen bee, he pushed it down.
"God has seen fit to bring me here and to make the Church mine," Vincent continued. "Not mine alone, not mine to possess with jealousy or pride, but my responsibility. Mine to love. Mine to shepherd. Mine to care for."
He spoke as if this were not the first time he had thought this, but perhaps was the first time he had said it aloud.
"I must do what I know to be right, Thomas." This last part came almost as a plea.
"You must," Thomas agreed. Remembering it now, he still feels the rightness of it, the true spiritual clarity of Vincent's path. "You are."
#
A handful of days after Vincent told Thomas a joke about an old man's first confession, they manage to find themselves a shared few minutes to spend at the turtle pond. They stand side by side, watching their little friends bask in the thin sunlight. It will not be long before duty calls - neither man's schedule is forgiving - but for now they may contemplate the turtles and the turtles may contemplate them.
"I always liked the one about the priest and the rabbi in the train carriage," Thomas says apropos of nothing in particular.
Vincent thinks he knows this one, but he would very much like to hear Thomas tell it anyway. "Oh?" he says, not quite a lie.
Thomas shoots him a look that says quite clearly he knows what Vincent is doing. Still, blessedly, that is not enough to stop Thomas from indulging him.
"They're making polite conversation, the way it was told to me," Thomas says. "And after half an hour or so, the priest says to the rabbi, 'This is terribly rude of me, but I must know: Between you and me, have you ever tried pork?'"
It is indeed the joke Vincent thought it was. What an unlooked-for delight to hear it now, just a few days after Vincent shared one of his own favourites. It is surely just that the thought has only now struck Thomas, but it tickles Vincent to think that maybe Thomas has been mulling this over, applying his brilliant mind to the question of what old chestnut to share in return.
"'I must admit that I have,' the rabbi says. 'And you? Just between you and me, have you ever consorted with loose women?'"
The way Thomas says loose women will stay in Vincent's smile for the rest of the day. He seems embarrassed in both directions - both by the concept of a sexually available woman, and by the archaically disrespectful language he's using to describe her. A very Thomas sentiment.
"'I must admit that I have,' the priest says.
"The rabbi leans forward and slaps him on the knee," Thomas continues. "'Much more fun than a ham sandwich, eh?'"
Vincent laughs harder than the joke deserves. Thomas is not a natural joke teller, for all that his dry humour is a joy. That is perhaps what makes the delivery so charming, the determination of a man who knows this is not his forte but will still do his best.
In front of them, one of the turtles slides from its sunny rock into the water.
"It's hardly great art," Thomas says, laughter dappled through his words. "But I'm fond of it."
"Perhaps I should lead with it for my next encyclical." On religious tolerance and the dangers of factionalism.
Thomas gives another of those sensible chuckles Vincent treasures. "Perhaps you should."
If there is one thing Vincent has learned about human connection in his many years of forging them - some brief, some lifelong, all valuable - is that each one must be unique. To be forever chasing Ahmad's hearty laughter, or his mother's unguarded smile, or the giggles of his dear friend Maisha, is to be closed off to knowing the joy of whoever he meets next.
(Another of the luxuries of this new stage of his life is the ability to reconnect with old friends and colleagues. Not only does he have a reliable internet connection and unlimited electricity, but he now has Ray O'Malley to tell him - less than a day after he asked! - that Maisha has safely found her way to Morocco, where she teaches at the prestigious Mohammed V University, and what her current email address is. He and Maisha had worked closely together in DR Congo setting up St Josephine's Hospital, and he has missed her badly in the intervening years. Between their schedules and the time difference they have only managed a handful of calls so far, but each has run long with laughter.)
"If you really want to set the cat among the pigeons" - Thomas translates the English idiom literally into Spanish, a multilingual whimsy he only commits with those he is closest to - "start with one of those dreadful internecine jokes Aldo likes. A Dominican, a Franciscan and a Jesuit walk into a bar, that sort of thing."
"Not to your taste?" Vincent asks. If he were to take his tiny secret joys to the confessional, one would be: Thomas hates inter-order squabbling with an unapologetically petty hatred.
I suppose I should give you some lofty reason about unity and shared purpose, Thomas said when Vincent first noticed this unexpected delight. But, Your Holiness, I cannot lie to the Pope himself. It just annoys me.
"I shall have to dredge my memory for one," Vincent says, indulging the mischief he knows is playing at the corners of his smile. "Or ask His Eminence Cardinal Bellini to send me a list of options with his next briefing."
Thomas shakes his head reproachfully. "A terrible abuse of power."
Gabriel, a quiet, sweet young member of Vincent's Swiss Guard who has the misfortune of being timekeeper today, begins to stir behind them. In a minute he will cough politely, and a minute after that he will gently remind them of Vincent's next meeting.
Vincent has no wish to make Gabriel's life any harder than it has to be. His mother is ill and his brother resents playing nursemaid. There is no need to add an unpunctual Pope to his worries.
Vincent takes a deep breath, allowing himself a single moment longer of peace and companionship, then summons a smile. "My dear Thomas, I fear I have taken up too much of your time already."
Thomas, who is not aware of Gabriel's troubles, but is very aware of Vincent's fondness for his guards, turns with him to head back even as he begins his protest: "You could never -"
"Will I see you at dinner tonight?" Vincent asks. He suspects the answer is no - Thomas has the pinched look of a man who plans to work through his meals - but it never hurts to ask.
Thomas doesn't speak immediately, perhaps running through his schedule in his mind. "Yes," he says at last, sudden and decisive. "There's nothing that won't keep."
What a lovely gift from a busy man. "Then I'll look forward to it," Vincent says, as a thank you would only embarrass Thomas.
#
Climate change - or the ongoing climate emergency, as they now refer to it - is His Holiness's least contested cause within the Church, and his most contested outside it. The radical message that God has entrusted the world to humanity for safekeeping, not destruction, does not go down well with those who profit from the latter.
In a perfect world, this would mean that Thomas was not needed for the climate justice summit planning meetings. His role by Vincent's side has settled back to internal matters, though with a broader remit than is traditional for a Dean.
And so in a perfect world, he could deputise one of his extremely competent colleagues - Matteo, perhaps, who in his mid-40s is still very much a bright young thing in Curia terms - to say, I think this would be an excellent fit for some of our more traditional brothers, and, We will of course need to give notice of any upcoming remarks, at random intervals in each discussion.
But only God is perfect, and in this world of sinners and wretches, Thomas must continue on. It is Vincent's first major summit, and despite the operational nature of the task in front of them, apparently the Curia leadership must all take turns to weigh in.
Vincent is in attendance at this meeting, smiling serenely as he says in a patient, even tone, "Of course, women and girls make up 80% of climate refugees."
Also seated round the table are Aldo, his three section heads, and two of the four lay members of the press office, one of whom is grinning broadly as she takes minutes.
It could be worse: all the dicasteries could be in attendance. Henri - Prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development - is still smarting from Vincent's choice to bypass him over the Brazil floods last week, despite the fact it was entirely predictable. Honestly, Thomas understands Henri does a hard job very well indeed, but it does not take a political genius to see that delaying aid without an exceptionally good reason was not going to go well for him. He hopes that Henri's Secretary, Sister Francesca, is prepared for an abrupt promotion when Vincent is ready to make his new tranche of appointments.
Here and now, though, Thomas thinks that - with the exception of Vincent - his colleagues are enjoying themselves in reverse order of seniority.
Miss Carlotta Bianchi, the minute taker, is grinning a Cheshire Cat grin that transforms her plump, middle-aged face into something almost impish. Dr Mary Dainton, senior in the press office but junior in this room, hides her smile behind one elegantly manicured hand. Leonardo (General Affairs), Ettore (Relations with States) and Pavel (Diplomatic Staff) are technically of equal standing, but their seniority is clear in the way that Pavel is quietly pleased, Ettore is reserving judgement, and Leonardo is at best stoic. Aldo does not have his head in his hands, but that is due to an excess of self-discipline, not a lack of feeling.
Thomas should be of a mind with Aldo - this is supposed to be the cause that doesn't ruffle internal feathers - but instead he feels much as he always does these days: Vincent brings a spiritual clarity to their work that matters far more than politics. It would not be the approach Thomas would take, but that's very much the point. He is a tired old man who drapes himself like a musty velvet curtain over the bricks and mortar of the Church; Vincent, His Holiness, is the window through which the light shines in.
"Perhaps we could consider a separate event?" Leonardo tries. Leonardo - Archbishop Leonardo Giuseppe Varalli, Substitute for General Affairs to the Secretary of State, an Italian moderate who has been trying Vincent's patience for much of the last year - began this process with a certain vision of this summit in mind, and has not yet been parted from it.
"Which one would I attend?" Vincent asks, politely but implacably.
Miss Bianchi's fingers clatter like laughter on her keyboard. Thomas cannot disagree.
Like Thomas and Aldo, Leonardo and his peers are temporary appointments, retained from the previous structure for a transition year. It had been a point of contention between Vincent and Thomas to start with - Vincent had asked him point blank to appoint a new Curia - but Thomas had won out. Such a move would have made things harder, not easier, for Vincent to set his own agenda; this way no one can claim his eventual appointments do not have a mandate.
"I suppose, politically speaking," Thomas says as if he has only just thought of this, "it would damage our credibility not to centre the voices of those most affected by clim- by the ongoing climate emergency."
Aldo pointedly does not roll his eyes. "Oh, you suppose that?"
Thomas borrows a leaf from Vincent's book and just smiles serenely. He is too far away for Aldo to kick him under the table.
"Thank you, Thomas," Vincent says. His voice is as warm as ever, and Thomas cannot help but smile back, however witless it makes him look.
"We will of course need to give notice of any upcoming remarks," Thomas says for form's sake. Across the table from him, Miss Bianchi nods in approval.
"Our next item is the hybrid hub-and-spoke networking event," Aldo says incomprehensibly. Thomas recognises all the words individually - much to Ray's credit - but he is genuinely unsure how they fit together here.
"Ah!" Vincent lights up. "I've been thinking about this!"
Thomas allows the next few minutes to wash over him, blissfully unable to follow more than the very basics: To avoid unnecessary air travel, the summit will convene in "hubs" across the world. However, this may naturally lead to a hierarchy of venues, hence the networking. Past that, Thomas clings to his ignorance. If they wanted representation on this issue from his office, they should have let him deputise Matteo.
"Xiye told me about a twenty-four hour human rights discussion that ran across the globe following the path of the sun," Vincent says, cutting through whatever Leonardo and Aldo are arguing about. Ms Xiye Bastida is one of a number of climate activists Vincent is in regular contact with. "How wonderful to focus our attention where God's light takes us."
"This one's for you, Galileo?" Aldo mutters, clearly unable to help himself.
Vincent laughs, bright and clear, and turns the full force of his smile onto Aldo. "Is that not the perfect lesson? Even the Church must change to be made whole."
#
Vincent receives an average of thirty sacks of mail a week. The extremely competent Msgr Adolfo Blass and his team sort and respond to the vast majority, with a small number making their way to Vincent.
Msgr Blass is a cheerful, fey man perhaps twenty years Vincent's senior. He and his team of eight - four Church, four lay - can between them read well over fifty languages, and work very closely with both Church and secular translation services to ensure that letters are read, understood, and replied to appropriately.
The letters that make it to Vincent are a combination of the most serious and the most charming. Msgr Blass is kind enough to separate them, and this evening Vincent is taking some time to appreciate God's infinite love and wisdom by looking at children's drawings of him.
He traces a finger reverently over the lines of a floating purple rectangle with a (purple) halo. By the picture are large, unsteady Cyrillic letters in the same purple crayon - beneath them someone else has written a similar set of letters in neat pen, instantly recognisable as an adult's helpful gloss of a child's attempt at spelling and grammar. I do not have a white crayon, the Spanish translation from Msgr Blass's team reads. My favourite colour is purple. What is your favourite colour?
Perhaps he will ask one of Msgr Blass's team to frame this one. The young artist - Gheorghi, aged 6 - is right, purple is an excellent colour.
A braying laugh from the courtyard interrupts his artistic contemplation.
Ah. Yes. Cardinal Tedesco has once again blessed the Vatican with his presence.
Vincent can see him through the window now. Tedesco is standing below the window, holding forth to a small group of like-minded men, an island of black and red in a pool of laughter and sweet-scented vapour. He is telling a joke about a woman who gets mugged. The punchline, boomed in Italian too loud and too crude for the setting, floats through the open window: "Keep frisking me like that and I'll send you a bank transfer."
It makes him think of his dear friend Maisha, who made a hobby of lecturing him in brusque, no-nonsense French about the priesthood's fucked up relationship with male desire.
After Ray O'Malley found her contact details, Vincent emailed her immediately from his personal address. His written French has never been particularly good, even when he used it regularly, but he managed a short, sincere message that received a long, sincere reply.
You will deal with the rapists, she told him in the first call, not an instruction but an implacable certainty.
My dear Maisha, he said. They will find no shelter with me.
And you will remember that they are not all rapists, she continued.
That is in many ways the harder part of his duty to her. She did not give him the full lecture again, but he remembers the thesis clearly: she believes that his work has shown him only the harm done by sex, and his vows keep him from the joy. He can't say that she is wrong.
The Vatican has not helped with this. In Veracruz and DR Congo, Vincent used the structure of the Church, the power he drew from its resources and its status, to support the survivors of sexual abuse. Thirty years of his life, every mission before Kabul, using the Church as both sword and shield. And now, he must fight against the Church to get justice for survivors, to force the accountability that is needed for true change. It disgusts him. It exhausts him.
Tedesco's harsh laughter cuts through his thoughts again. The Patriarch of Venice is not implicated directly in the crimes or their cover-ups, but he has made it clear he thinks the Church's ongoing reckoning is a distraction and a weakness. I do not condone these terrible crimes, Your Holiness, but we must draw a line. We must attend to the very real dangers in this modern world with strength and courage, not weaken ourselves deliberately in abasement for our sins.
Tedesco may not be implicated directly, but that does not mean he is not part of the culture that allowed it. There are young Muslim men in Roma Termini whose only clients are Catholic priests. Tedesco will almost certainly visit one - or have one visit him, a grotesque kind of room service - while he is here. It does not endear him to Vincent.
In the courtyard below, Thomas walks by, pausing to greet Tedesco with his customary politeness.
"There is a man who would not mind being frisked," Tedesco says loudly, welcoming tone at odds with the words.
Thomas gives him the smile of a diplomat. His response is not audible from where Vincent watches, nor Tedesco's in turn, but there is a moment where Thomas's body language freezes, as close to a flinch as he allows himself in public, before he renews his smile and bids Tedesco goodbye.
A few minutes later, a composed and half-smiling Thomas appears at Vincent's door, papers in one hand and a pair of his reading glasses in the other. He will put them down on one of the many surfaces of Vincent's offices and almost certainly leave them there, unaware of the circuit Ray O'Malley does every evening to collect them all up and replace them in his desk. Vincent approves of this greatly, and does his best to make sure any left in his offices are set neatly by the door at the end of the day.
"I saw you and Cardinal Tedesco outside," Vincent says. He keeps his voice neutral.
"Ah, yes." Thomas does not seem particularly troubled. "We are once again blessed with his presence."
"I confess the sound carries," Vincent continues. "I hope he did not upset you?"
Vincent cannot read Thomas's expression. He thinks perhaps embarrassment, or simply a wry acknowledgement of human weakness. Well. If Thomas wishes to share, he will. If he doesn't, it is not actually Vincent's right to pry.
"Oh, Geoffredo never met a bear he didn't want to poke," Thomas says, his tone dismissive enough that Vincent might think he'd imagined the flinch he saw outside. "No one thinks it reflects poorly on you, I assure you. You are very much the injured party."
Thinks what reflects poorly on me? Vincent wants to ask. Perhaps as a younger man he would have. But he has learned patience along his journey of a life, and he will not waste it here.
There is, however, an omission in Thomas's words that must be addressed, whatever the unknowns. "And how do our brothers think it reflects on you?"
Thomas gives a small shake of the head, more acknowledgment than negation. "Some may think me a little, uh, foolish, let us say. A little too old for such things. But then, I have been thought of much worse by much better people- No. Forgive me, that is not a collegiate sentiment."
It is so like Thomas to apologise for such a mild comment, Vincent cannot help the warmth that floods through him.
"If what they say troubles you, you will come to me?" Vincent asks. "I would not have you burdened so."
He is not expecting Thomas's quick, brilliant smile, nor the helpless little shrug he offers alongside it. "It could never be a burden."
Tedesco's grating laughter cuts through the air. God loves all His children, Vincent reminds himself, only half-convinced.
"Let's talk of other things," Thomas says, brisk in a way Vincent can only find reassuring. "My peccadillos are hardly the most interesting thing your day can hold. Ray mentioned some progress has been made on the next meeting with Ms Thunberg--?"
Ray O'Malley was not in the room for that discussion. Perhaps he was in the walls? No matter. Vincent needs very little encouragement to share his frustrations on the upcoming climate justice summit - and if he happens to close the window as he talks and paces, well, perhaps the evening breeze was getting a little chilly.
#
It is the next day, fifty percent of his attention on talking to Janusz as they walk from lunch to his first meeting of the afternoon, that Vincent realises Thomas desires him. That is the foolishness he was alluding to yesterday, the thing that does not reflect badly on Vincent, only on Thomas.
The thought is so startling, so incongruous, that Vincent wants to stop in the middle of the cloistered walkway and simply wait for his mind to catch up with itself.
Thomas. Proper, careful, ever-righteous Thomas, desires the Pope. The concept is as absurd as it is obscene. Thomas is not Tedesco, to play the homophobe in the day and the pederast at night, nor Aldo, with his open liberalism and his discreet friendships. He's Thomas. He doesn't do that.
Well. It is good to be reminded of one's own shortsightedness, Vincent supposes. What does he really know of Thomas and his life now, let alone of the many decades before they met?
Janusz senses he does not have Vincent's full attention, and with undeserved grace makes his excuses. "Perhaps we can discuss this later today, Holiness?" He does not even wait for an answer before slipping away.
"Are you all right, Your Holiness?" Luca asks. Of Vincent's guards this afternoon, Luca is both the youngest and the chattiest. Vincent normally enjoys this.
"Yes, I-" For a brief, terrible moment Vincent thinks he's going to say, I have much to pray on. Fortunately he catches the words before they can leave his mouth. "All is well."
All is not well, and Vincent's duties today do not lend themselves to the quiet contemplation he aches for. In his old life, he knew how to manage this, how to swim forward through the work until his outstretched hand met the next island of rest and prayer, but the work here is not like that, and he cannot say he brings the whole of his spiritual attention to his meeting with the Vice President of France.
The rest of the afternoon is better - he meets with a local migrant education group, shares stories of learning Italian with a young woman from Tunisia and a man Thomas's age from Syria. It is easy to be present, good to focus on his purpose here. It is worth doing.
Then evening prayer; then dinner with Sisters Agnes, Francesca and Bernadette; then with the subtlest of gestures he is left alone, no shared tea or late evening conversation, and he can finally think.
He is being unkind, he suspects. Thomas has not asked him for anything, nor done anything untoward. Within the norms of the Vatican, abstemious Thomas is already a rarity.
It is just that he had seemed so good.
Vincent had woken up to the care of a kind man who clothed him and fed him without any motive but what was right. He had listened to this kind man speak honestly, vulnerably, from the heart, and watched him act without ambition to shepherd his brothers through great challenges and uncertainty.
He still thinks Thomas would make a better pope, for all that he does not doubt God's will.
This image’s head was of fine gold, he reminds himself, not without irony. Its chest and arms of silver, its belly and thighs of bronze, its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of clay.
Vincent should not be shaken by this. He loves Thomas with the same deep, abiding love he has shared with other dear friends over his life. Love and connection are gifts from God, and the form they take is part of that gift.
And yet. And yet.
Deep into the night, Vincent prays.