The Beating of His Wings Read Free

wrath and destined to wipe his greatest mistake (you and me, for the avoidance of doubt) off the face of the earth. I have treated shopkeepers who thought they were great generals and men who could barely write who thought they were poets of unparalleled genius but I have never encountered an inflation of such magnitude before – let alone in a child. When I asked him how long he’d had such feelings of importance he began to backtrack and – with very bad temper – said that this was what Bosco thought, not what he, Thomas Cale, thought. More circumspectly, I asked him if he believed Redeemer Bosco was mad and he replied he had never met a Redeemer who wasn’t and that in his experience agreat many people who seemed to be right in the head, once you got to see them ‘put under grief’, were ‘completely barking’ – an expression I have not encountered before though its meaning was clear enough.
     
He is clever, then, at avoiding the implications of his delusions of grandeur: in the opinion of great and powerful men he is mighty enough to destroy all the world but this delusion is not his but theirs. When I asked him if he
would
do such a thing his reply was extremely foul-mouthed but to the effect that he would not. When I asked whether he had the
ability
to
do such a thing he smiled – not pleasantly – and said he had been responsible for the deaths of ten thousand men killed in a single day, so it was only a question of how many thousands and how many days.
     
After his recapture by the Redeemer Bosco, his role of Angel of Death to the world was explained to him in detail and he was put to work by his former mentor. This ‘Bosco’ (the new Pope is called Bosco but Thomas Cale clearly likes a big lie) is much hated by Cale although, since buying him for sixpence, training him and then elevating him to the power almost of a god, Bosco is paradoxically the source of all his excellence. When I pointed this out he claimed to know this already, though I could see I had scored a hit to his vanity (which is very great).
     
He then detailed an endless series of battles, which all sounded the same to me, and in which he was, of course, always victorious. When I asked if, during all these successes, he had not suffered even a few setbacks he looked at me as if he would like to cut my throat and then laughed – but very oddly, more like a single bark, as if he could not contain something very far from high spirits or even mockery.
     
These numerous triumphs led in turn to his being less watched over by Bosco than formerly. And after yet another great battle, in which he overcame the greatest of all opponents, he slipped away in the resulting chaos and ended up in Spanish Leeds, where he suffered the first of the brain attacks that brought him here. I witnessed one of these seizures and they are alarming to watch and clearly distressing to endure – his entire body is wracked by convulsions, as if he is trying to vomit but is unable to do so. He insists he has been sent here by friends of some power and influence in Spanish Leeds. Needless to say, of these important benefactors there is no sign. When I asked why they had not been to see him he explained – as if I were an idiot – that he had only just arrived in Cyprus and that the distance was too great for them to travel to see him regularly. This great distance was a deliberate choice in order to keep him safe. ‘From what?’ I asked. ‘From all those who want me dead,’ he replied.
     
He told me that he had arrived with an attendant doctor and a letter for Mother Superior Allbright. Pressed, he told me that the doctor had returned to Spanish Leeds the next day but that he had spent several hours with the Mother Superior before his departure. Clearly Thomas Cale must have come from somewhere, and there might indeed have been some sort of attendant who arrived with him bearing a letter and who spoke with the Mother Superior prior to her stroke. The loss,