Chapter Text
Thomas Lawrence left his role at the Vatican behind a while ago, it was turning him grey too fast. Now he’s still going grey but he’s considerably less stressed than he was half a decade ago. The Pope had understood, and had granted Thomas a peaceful retirement from the Curia, letting him settle in as the priest of a small town in Norfolk, near where his family used to holiday when he was a child. The role was a big step down from what he had handled as Dean of the College of Cardinals, but he found his work felt no less important. It was a tiny parish, hardly five hundred people, with one little shop that also housed the post office, and a pub that saw every social gathering in the village. The parish council (as small and make-do as everything else was) seemed buried by the work of governing these few hundred residents, so much so that Thomas had found himself volunteering for them on top of his duties of running a church that seemed to service eighty percent of the town. Kerry, one of his parishioners and the land lady of the Cock at Arms, had told him that it was because there wasn’t much else to do in the town other than go to church, and that church happened to be a Catholic one. One that Thomas just happened to run. And run it he did.
For half a decade Father Lawrence had held mass, took confessionals, baptised babies, read last rites, hosted funerals, married people, celebrated every holiday on the calendar. He’d stayed on the parish council, opened the church hall up for the girl guiding group every Thursday, organised a make-shift food bank in the foyer, entertained the children of the after-school club at the local primary. To the complete joy of everyone in the village he reinstated May Day, let his two deacons teach people to morris dance, hosted the Easter egg hunt, the Halloween costume competition, the Christmas Nativity. In half a decade he had helped transform the town from a backwater collection of buildings with little social infrastructure besides a pub, into the kind of town they filmed episodes of Countryfile from. It was the poster boy for ideal English Christian living. It was almost a cult, something Thomas had realised when he had watched Hot Fuzz for the first time at Aldo’s insistence, the one time he had come to stay for Christmas, and had seen Thomas’ work up close.
“This is good for you.” He’d said when he’d left.
And then the Pope died. And Thomas lost the discreet stream of income the late Holy Father had been bestowing upon him to keep up his little Catholic fantasy of being the darling preacher of the village. Before the conclave could even begin it all began to fall apart. Thomas had been the youngest person on the parish council when he’d joined, now a combination of death and retirement had left him in charge of an array of younger, mostly clueless volunteers. He had wanted to retire from it that year, because balancing the church and the council had been getting a bit much now that fifty had come and gone. Now there’s no choice but to stay and head the council until the newer members get a handle on it. Alongside this, a tragic fire burns down the church in a neighbouring village, which had been shared between three denominations, and this prompts the Catholic priest to retire, meaning Thomas has an extra hundred parishioners coming to his church each week. His church is not a large one, and now he holds Mass almost every day to compensate.
He takes to praying excessively during the long days of the conclave, pulling rosary beads rhythmically through his fingers to find some source of strength to carry on. Reflecting on the guilt he’s held for taking the late Pope’s generosity quietly, feeling deep down as though nothing he’s built these past few years has been hard earned. He battles with this thought for many hours, considering what he might do if Bellini, his good friend Bellini who he often calls in times of doubt, who he could not call now because he was sequestered, was elected. If he would ask for help, if Bellini would give it, if he would ask for Thomas to return to Rome. He can not leave his parish, his church, but he also can’t continue on alone like this. No matter how much he prays on the matter God does not give him an answer, and so like his brothers and sisters across the world he waits for the conclave to end. One step at a time.
He’s in a council meeting when it happens, taking notes on his laptop and only half paying attention to what Kerry is telling the group about budgeting and finances. The BBC live stream of the Vatican is playing in the bottom corner of his screen, camera scanning lazily over the crowds gathered in the streets for the thousandth time, nothing else interesting to focus on apart from a toddler standing on her father’s shoulders. She almost falls to the ground when the crowd erupts in celebration, and Thomas, having spent the last few months implementing a Messy Church group, feels a rush of panic and moves, subconsciously, to catch the child. The council members all look at him.
“I didn’t know you had such a role in the finances of the council Father,” Kerry jokes, shuffling the papers in her hands. “The church always seems to have plenty, but we can allocate you more if needed.”
“No. No, not that. The conclave, it's finished.”
The afternoon vote. Thomas has been fretting for hours, since the news about the bomb that morning. Worried sick that the blasted thing would go on forever as tensions kept rising in Rome. But no, it’s over. And later, an agonising amount of time later, who should step out onto the balcony overlooking the masses gathered before the basilica but Cardinal Tedesco. Pope Anicetus II. Unconquerable.
This makes Thomas laugh because Anicetus I was the first Syrian pope and he knows how bluntly racist Tedesco can get, and was present for the time he’d gone on a rather exclusivist rant after the late Holy Father had announced his views on religious inclusivism. Secondly, Anicetus was a martyr, he was ultimately conquered, and the last thing, the thing that makes Thomas really properly laugh for the first time in a month, Anicetus’ one known, confirmed, decree, that Holy men may not have long hair. Thomas watches as Anicetus II attempts to take what he believes to be a subtle hit of his vape hidden away in the sleeve of his cassock, under the guise that he is brushing his hair out of his face. Thomas thinks it’s grown rather long since he last saw him.
*
Two weeks later and nothing much has changed for Thomas in the way of funds. He dares not ask Tedesco for anything, especially not since he doesn’t think he can restrain himself from bringing up the hair, although surely Aldo has said something by now. He’s resigned himself to bake sales, relying on donations for the food bank, and, when he’s plucked up the courage, he’ll ask Stephanie about charging her for use of the church hall for her girl guides. He’s seriously considering pulling out of heading the May Day celebrations in a few months when someone knocks on the front door.
Thomas lives in the priest’s house, old and charming as it is, built sometime after 1800, but now with central heating and plumbing, which was still being installed when he first arrived, and only worked when the planets aligned correctly. It sits next to similar cottages on the opposite side of the village green to the church, with front windows that look out onto the duck pond and the great bending willow. He likes to watch people play cricket there in the summer, and if he knows them, and he often does, they’ll beckon for him to join them.
He isn’t expecting guests but it’s not uncommon for someone to swing by to ask him something if they can’t find him in the church. It could be Dotty he muses, bearing cake from her tea room to try, or Darren, Kerry’s husband, asking for his help with the pub quiz. He deposits the kettle back on the base, leaves it to boil so he has an excuse to invite whoever it is in, and walks to the door. He’s shocked to find a shivering Latino man cowering on his doorstep, clutching the handle of one tiny suitcase in his shaking hand.
“May I help you?” Thomas is a priest after all, he helps first, asks his many many questions later.
“I am Vincent Benítez, the man Cardinal Bellini called about.” Benítez looks up at him, as though expecting him to know what to do next. As though he has been briefed on this.
In the exact moment before Thomas’ long silence becomes awkward his phone rings. It’s Aldo.
“Aldo,” he answers curtly.
“Thomas, Thomas I have made a rather large mistake, I have completely forgotten to tell you something very important and you might want to sit down for this. Make yourself some tea, you probably only have a few hours until he-”
“Aldo,” he sighs, long and suffering. “There seems to be a man on my doorstep. A man who assures me that you have called me about him. Shall I let him in before he freezes to death? It is February after all.”
“Yes. Please. I can’t believe this. I’ve been underwater with Tedesco, I swear he’s punishing me by keeping me on as Secretary of State.”
Thomas ushers the man inside with a gesture, seats him at the kitchen table and sets about making tea with the phone lodged between his shoulder and his ear. “Perhaps he simply acknowledges how good you are at your job, although I must say Aldo.”
“I’ll let him explain. I’m sorry, just do this one thing for me.”
“You know I am currently running not only a church but also a small township right? You cannot ask too much of me here Aldo, I am up to my neck in duties.”
“And I am suffering in the Curia whilst you sit around planning summer fetes. You’re a manager, Thomas. Manage.”
He hangs up, sighs, then turns around. “How do you take your tea?”
“Black, one sugar.”
He seems awkward. Anyone would be Thomas supposes, suddenly thrust in front of one side of a private argument between friends, five minutes into a stay with an unexpecting host. It's the spitting image of himself five years ago, on his first day in the village, walking into a fight between Kerry and Darren, asking gently to stay in one of their rooms whilst he waited for the priest’s house to be ready for him. We are all new once, Thomas thinks, and tries to apply this teaching to the stranger occupying his kitchen, to make him feel welcomed.
“Would you like to fill me in?” Thomas asks, setting two mugs on the table with a plate of biscuits.
“Yes, I think that would be best.” He’s scared, uncertain in his place, and still evidently cold. “Cardinal Bellini said- you. You quit the Curia?”
“Yes. Five years ago. Too much stress with running the College of Cardinals. Although I find that I have retired to a busier place.”
“I was also a cardinal. In pectore.”
“You were?”
“Yes. Archbishop of Baghdad. It was an unwanted surprise at the conclave.”
“I remember him changing that, the rule of dismissal for in pectore cardinals. So that was for you.”
“Yes. I suppose it was.” Here Benítez smiles but then remembers himself, his situation. “Cardinal Tedesco, Anicetus II, did not like this at all. After the bomb we argued, publicly, he does not agree with my views at all, nor I with his. I was dismissed at the end of the conclave. Cardinal Bellini, kind as he is, I begged him for help. I could not leave my people, even less could I leave behind the church. He proposed to send me to you, as a priest. He said you had been… struggling, since the Pope died. Anicetus was happy to exile me here.”
“So Tedesco has sent a man born in the tropics to suffer here with me in miserable England.”
It’s meant to be a joke but neither of them laugh.
“I will not see a good man taken from his church. I welcome you Father Benítez into my parish, I will not lie and say that I do not need the help. I also will not lie and say that I am good at delegating my work.”
“I am willing Father Lawrence, in any way you need. Thank you.”