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Vincent doesn’t generally worry too much about his health. He’s gotten used to the aches and pains that are the result of having lived a long life, and he doesn’t mind them too much. The festival of minor health complaints, he calls it. He just takes a handful of painkillers, and keeps going. On occasion, something more serious would happen to him: there was his asthma that had been with him since childhood, and he’d had to be braced for his scoliosis as a teenager. And of course, in his adult life, his appendicitis and the ensuing revelations. He’s gone through a lot, and it’s out of character for him to be as concerned as he is, but given the present circumstances? It’s very hard not to be concerned.
The circumstances in question: two growths, straight out of his shoulder blades. Symmetrical, fleshy things, a little pinker than his own skin. He could feel them rubbing against his shirt, against the back of his chair when he sat down. They didn't hurt, not really. Sometimes, they were sore, but only in the benign, familiar way in which all things were sore. The worst thing about the whole situation was how normal it all was. If the stars aligned just right, he swore he could flex the small stumps. The first time that had happened, he had seriously doubted his sanity.
It’s now been six weeks since he first noticed the things. If anything, they seem to be getting larger, wider and longer, over time. He figures that if they haven’t killed him by now, it’s unlikely they ever will. Still—he worries. This week, it’s come to a point where he’s debating whether or not he should tell his medical staff. The strange protrusions don’t look like anything he’s ever seen, though, and he hesitates to become a case study for enterprising doctors, or a spectacle in the media.
No, he thinks. First, I’ll tell the Dean. Then I’ll decide.
He invites Lawrence to his residence; ‘at your first convenience’ are the words he uses. Sure enough, there is a knock at his door the next time he is back in his apartment, just in time for lunch. He springs out of his seat and goes to open the door—it is Cardinal Thomas Lawrence standing at the threshold, as he expected.
He opens his mouth to speak, but Lawrence gets the first word in. “I hope I’m not intruding? I wasn’t quite sure when to come see you, Your Holiness.”
I must put a stop to that, he thinks. “I thought I told you already. It’s Vincent, when it’s just us. And please, don't worry about it. You’re just in time.” He steps back, waves Thomas inside.
They make their way together to the main living space, and sit next to each other on the couch. Vincent, finally freed from the expectations of his public image, braces his elbows on his knees and places his head in his hands. He sighs, softly.
Thomas saves him from the task of having to figure out how to start the conversation. “Vincent. You seem… rather perturbed, as of late. I’ve been wondering how to approach the subject, and I’m sorry if that’s not what—”
Vincent cuts off this equivocation. “Yes. That is, in fact, what I've been meaning to speak to you about. I don't know exactly how you figured it out. But there is…” He considers his phrasing. “There is, in fact, something wrong with me. I believe.”
Thomas takes him by the hand. "Is this about your disclosure to me? On the first day of your papacy?”
“No, I am fine. In that area, at least. It is something else. And I’m not even sure how I would explain it, to be completely honest.” He has a thought, then. “I could show it to you, I suppose.” His hands go to the first few buttons of his cassock, undoing them.
Thomas reacts violently to this. “No! No! You don’t need to show me. I will believe whatever it is you tell me. I promise.”
This is when Vincent realizes it is possible his actions could have been misconstrued. “Oh. No, I didn't mean—Just hold on.”
Frustrated with the whole ridiculous situation, he simply stops trying to explain. Instead, in a frenzy, he rips off his pellegrina, unbuttons the top half of his cassock, pulls his arms out of the heavy sleeves, and strips his underlying shirt off.
His companion’s face has been taking on ever-brightening shades of red throughout the whole ordeal. Finally, he says, “Look. Just look.”
Vincent turns his back towards Thomas, pushing his shoulders out to the back to put the strange, acquired growths on display. He stands there for a good sixty seconds, his joints extended uncomfortably, without any response or acknowledgement from Thomas.
He gets tired of waiting, and relaxes his muscles, leaning on the couch to let it take his body weight (although his odd new appendages are still exposed). Still no response from the good Dean.
Vincent has just made the decision to break the silence, and has his mouth open to speak, when he feels fingers against his back, gently touching. Swiftly, he places a hand over his open mouth, to prevent himself from making noises he shouldn’t. This is unsuccessful—a small embarrassing vocalization escapes him, despite his best efforts.
“I’m very sorry,” Thomas says. “I never asked. May I touch you?”
He profoundly wishes to be somewhere else instead, to save himself from this humiliation. He nods yes, even so.
“Vincent, have you had a good look at these?” Thomas’s voice is colored with awe.
“‘A good look’? Not really, no. Or—not in a couple weeks, I’d guess?” His mind is racing now. “Is there an issue?” (He, of course, knows there is, to some extent; he wouldn’t have let Thomas look otherwise.)
“Holy Mother of God!” he exclaims, far too loudly. “Yes, there’s an issue. Vincent! These are—They’re wings.”
The tone of his voice leads Vincent to the uncomfortable conclusion that he is telling the truth. “They can’t be. Wings?”
Thomas runs a hand up one of the ‘wings’, and Vincent jumps involuntarily. “Our family kept chickens, when I was young. This looks exactly like a wing without its feathers. Why there aren’t any feathers, I have no idea,” he says, as he continues stroking the thing. Vincent shudders. “But that is an honest-to-God wing. I don’t know what else it could be.”
Vincent can’t say he’s retained most of the information Thomas just gave him. One point does seem prudent to follow up on, though: “No feathers? Is that what you said?”
“That’s right. No feathers.”
“Why wouldn’t there be any feathers?”
“You said that it grows, right? That it had changed, in the course of a few weeks?” Thomas reaches out, taking the tip of it in his fingers.
Vincent rotates himself, placing his back firmly against the couch. He cannot have higher-order thoughts with Thomas Lawrence touching him in that way. “Yes. I think so.” He looks over, meets Lawrence’s gaze. “So—So you’re saying I’ll grow feathers? Is that what you’re saying?”
“Well, I don’t mean to imply I have any experience with this sort of thing. But that seems to me to be the obvious conclusion.”
He feels like he’s losing his grip on reality with every second that this bizarre tableau goes unquestioned. “By ‘this sort of thing,’ what do you mean?”
“That’s a fair question to ask. Miracles, if I had to say.”
Vincent feels his blood run cold. “Miracles?” His voice audibly cracks.
“Our friend William of Ockham says so.”
He stands up from his seat, and begins to pace around the room. He doesn’t have an intelligent response to this. Sometimes, it really is better to say nothing. The age-old wisdom is passed around for a reason. His heart is beating fast and hard in his chest; he can feel it pulsing as he walks. He’s started to feel sick to his stomach.
He decides to sit back down, so as not to vomit on the carpet. “This can’t be happening,” he eventually manages.
Thomas lets out an audible breath. “Here is how I see it,” he says, measured as always. “Pray about it, firstly, before anything. Keep it under wraps for a while. I don’t know what the timescale of the growth looks like, so perhaps another few months. Not until the wings are fully… feathered. But, in the end, I think it will turn out to be a blessing.”
Vincent almost snorts in laughter, but stops himself at the last moment. He works in mysterious ways, indeed. “I don’t feel blessed.” It’s a petty, mean, childish thing to say—to the extent that he may need to bring it up to his confessor later. But it’s still the truth, as much as he tries to deny it. He doesn’t feel blessed. It is, after all, a sin to lie.
Thomas reaches out his hand, once again placing it on Vincent’s. “I know. I know,” he says, with the same intonation one would use to calm a wild animal. “I wouldn’t either, frankly.” A small laughing huff escapes him. “I’ve always thought the Lord has a sense of humor.”
A smile tugs at the corner of his lips. “No, I can’t deny that. My whole pontificate has felt like a joke He is trying to play on me. Why not add to that?”
Thomas seems to take some time to consider his next words. His forehead wrinkles, and his eyebrows draw together. “I wish you’d let me help,” he says. “Or, at least, don’t hide yourself from me in this way. This hurts you.”
This observation is entirely too astute; it troubles Vincent. He feels he has no workable choice but to lay himself bare. And inexplicably, he finds that he wants to. “I’m sorry. I’m just so… unanchored. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to it all. And then to add this?” He sighs. “I don’t know what I should do. I’m lost. If I may say so.”
Thomas pauses a moment, then replies. “I shall keep my word in all things and I shall make all things well. All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.” He squeezes Vincent’s hand in his own.
Genuinely touched, a surge of emotion goes through him, burning in his heart. His eyes start to water, even. “I know.” Thrown off kilter, he deflects from his show of feelings. “I should have known you to be one for the Revelations.”
“I am English, after all.” He gets up from his seat, stands up in front of Vincent, holds out a hand in invitation. “Come now. It’s a little early, but you ought to turn in anyway. Some extra sleep will do you good, I think.”
Acquiescing is tempting. He takes the proffered hand, and hauls himself up. “Alright,” he says, after thinking it over briefly. “But I need to talk with you more, later.”
“I will be there,” he says, shepherding Vincent to his bedroom. “Go to bed. I’ll see you here for breakfast tomorrow; I promise. We’ll cross all the bridges when we come to them. Don’t stir these things up until they’re ready.”
Vincent sits down on the side of his bed, still in a sort of shock. He watches as Thomas leaves, the sound of his footprints quietly moving away. “Goodnight, my Vincent,” he hears Thomas call from a few rooms over. “Have a good rest.”
And really, he feels too exhausted and spent to do anything but. In an unthinking fashion, he throws off his clothes, stripping down to his underthings. He nestles himself snugly in the blankets on his bed, and settles in, his eyes already drooping. He feels calm about his situation for the first time in weeks, somehow. His last thought as he drops off into unconsciousness: All manner of things shall be well.