The Nest of Nessies (Penny White Book 6)

by Chrys Cymri

  The meeting split into smaller discussions. I wandered over to the bar and poured myself another double. Peter drifted over to my side, and my hand tightened on the glass. ‘Reverend White,’ he said calmly, ‘a quick word?’

  ‘Certainly, Inspector Jarvis,’ I replied. ‘May I offer you some whisky?’

  ‘Regrettably, I’m driving.’ We moved to a corner of the room, then he continued, ‘Flattered as I am to be invited to this gathering, it’s more important that you’re here than me. I’ll arrange for someone else to come to future meetings.’

  ‘No need,’ I said. ‘It’s okay. I’m okay seeing you.’

  His mouth twitched. ‘I’m not. Sorry. I’ll ask Sue if Ray Pike can come instead. He’s seen some action.’

  I swallowed my protests. ‘Right. Understood. But before you go, have you read his report about the merwoman at Midlands WaterWorld?’

  Peter frowned. ‘Yes. We’ve heard nothing from Lloegyr. Have you?’

  ‘I sent a rat to Bishop Aeron, but she couldn’t tell me anything.’

  ‘WaterWorld is the sort of place I avoid. For the same reasons you do. I can’t stand to see whales in captivity.’

  ‘Mundo, the orca, had that shimmer surrounding him that I see around weres.’ I bit my lower lip. ‘Do you think--could he be a were?’

  ‘Well, if he is, it’s not like he could be kept in the usual detention centres. Maybe the Home Office thought he’d be better off in WaterWorld.’

  ‘Detention centres?’ I repeated. ‘What detention centres?’

  ‘A secret part of the Home Office deals with Lloegyr migrants,’ Peter explained. ‘They’re kept in special sections at Stillbrook and Morton Hall. Mostly weres, of course, some elves and dwarves.’

  ‘Because dragons and gryphons can fly away,’ I said bitterly. ‘And vampires, if they’re on a blood diet.’

  ‘It’s for their own safety, Reverend White.’ Peter sighed. ‘They cross through with little more than the clothes on their backs, if even that. Some of the weres manage to make lives for themselves in the countryside. But a lot of them end up sleeping rough on the streets. When we bring them in, many of them say that they want to claim asylum. It’s impossible to check out whether they’re telling the truth about being persecuted in Lloegyr. What’re we supposed to do with them? Ship them back against their will?’

  I lowered my voice. ‘Isn’t that what the government does with all unwanted refugees?’

  ‘It’s harder with those who can change into wolves or bears. They can fight back.’

  People were starting to leave. Mark caught my eye, and I gave him a nod. ‘I don’t like the sound of all that. Detention centres. It doesn’t sound right, Pet--Inspector Jarvis.’

  ‘It’s what we’re stuck with, for now.’ Peter stepped back. ‘I’ll pass on my notes on this meeting to Sergeant Pike. He’ll be a great asset to this group.’

  ‘I’m certain he will.’ And then I forced myself to turn and walk away.

  Mark waited until we were down the corridor before he asked, softly, ‘I hope that bloke wasn’t bothering you.’

  ‘He’s my ex,’ I said, too tired to think of a believable lie. ‘This was the first time we’ve seen each other since we broke off our engagement.’

  ‘Oh. Awkward.’

  ‘Definitely.’

  Mark called out a thanks to the receptionist as we walked through the lobby. I only relaxed when I’d slid into the passenger seat. ‘I think,’ Mark said as he started the car, ‘that you’re entitled to a drink when we get back to the Abbey. I’m buying.’

  ‘That’s not necessary.’ I rubbed my eyes. ‘But very kind.’

  ‘How long ago was it?’ he asked softly. ‘The break-up?’

  ‘Stop it.’ I glared at him. ‘Don’t do “nice vicar” on me.’

  ‘So quite recently.’ He coughed. ‘You know, if you want to talk to someone, well, I’m free this evening. I can even slip on a dog collar if it helps.’

  ‘Just the drink will do, thanks.’ I leaned back against the head rest and shut my eyes. ‘Let’s get back to talking about our Associates.’

  <><><><><><>

  I had a double of Talisker, and Mark a half of bitter. We talked about Lloegyr and shared funeral anecdotes. Then I puffed my way up the stairs to my bedroom.

  Morey was stretched out on the exact middle of the double bed. I ignored his squawked protests as I picked him up and dumped him on the orange sofa. ‘I thought we’d agreed,’ he grumbled. ‘I’m on the bed, you’re on the settee.’

  ‘I’m pulling rank. You deacon, me priest.’ I sat down on the bed and pulled off my shoes.

  ‘We could share.’

  ‘No. I know what happens when we do.’ My left foot ached, and I rubbed at the heel. ‘You stretch out, and I find myself perched on the edge.’

  Morey snorted. ‘That's your fault. Why do you move over?’

  ‘I haven’t a clue.’ I rose to rummage in my case for my pyjamas. ‘Besides, you might be used to sharing a bed. I’m not. And it looks like I won’t be sharing again anytime soon.’

  The admission almost undid me. I took a deep breath, fighting back the tears. Morey’s voice was a welcome distraction. ‘Tell me about the meeting.’

  ‘Ten of us, from different walks of life.’ I walked into the bathroom, found some toilet paper to dab at my eyes, and then returned to the bedroom. ‘Hosted by Sue Harkness, of course.’

  ‘That woman.’

  ‘I know, but we have to work with her.’ I sat down on the sofa. ‘Morey, people from Lloegyr are being held in detention centres. Here in England. It seems they want to claim asylum, and the UK government is holding them because, well, what can we do with them?’

  Morey moved to my side. ‘This isn’t your battle, Penny. You have enough on your plate. Don’t try to take this on as well.’

  ‘I know. I just don’t like the idea of people being held against their will. It doesn’t seem right. That’s what I told Peter.’

  The gryphon froze. ‘Peter was there?’

  ‘Oh, yes, forgot to mention that.’ I sighed. ‘But he won’t be at any future meetings. He’s going to arrange for Ray Pike to take his place.’

  ‘A very capable man. Not quite up to Peter’s standard, but he’ll do.’ Morey rubbed his head against my arm. ‘Must have been hard, to see Peter again.’

  ‘We survived,’ I said wearily. ‘Now I need to get some sleep. We can share, Morey, if you promise to stay at the bottom of the bed.’

  ‘I’ll take the settee.’ He tapped his beak against my leg. ‘Go. Do all that strange stuff you humans do before you can go to bed. I’ll see you in the morning.’

  Chapter Six

  I woke when I nearly fell off the end of the bed. Early morning light was pushing past the yellow curtains, and as I sat up, I saw that Morey was stretched out across the duvet. Grumbling under my breath, I checked the time and decided I might as well rise and shine.

  By the time Morey woke and rose to his feet, I’d had my shower and made myself a cup of coffee. ‘What happened?’ I asked. ‘Sofa too hard for you?’

  The gryphon chuckled. ‘To be honest, I didn’t even realise I’d climbed onto the bed. Must be habit.’

  ‘Must be,’ I agreed drily. ‘Coffee?’

  ‘Powdered muck? No, thank you.’

  ‘Morey.’ I felt insulted. ‘I’ve brought coffee bags with me. Real coffee.’

  ‘Then that’ll do.’

  We still had about a half an hour before Morning Prayer and breakfast. I pulled out the conference timetable. ‘There’s a selection of workshops this morning. Have you decided which one you’re attending?’

  ‘I was thinking of “What they say is not what they mean--but sometimes it is.” You humans really confuse me at times.’

  ‘I like this one.’ I pointed at the title. ‘“Rhyme forms to use with messenger bats’.”

  ‘No, you need to go on that one.’ Morey stabbed his beak at the paper. ‘“Going Na
tive--how to work against fantastical attractions”.’

  I felt my cheeks flush. ‘Why do I need that?’

  ‘Black, you know full well why,’ Morey growled. ‘Now that Peter’s off the scene, I’m worried about you and a particularly persistent search dragon.’

  ‘Well, don’t.’

  ‘I would still like you to go to that workshop.’

  I studied him for a moment. ‘Only if you absolutely stay off the bed tonight. And go to this one, “Bats in the belfry--making accommodations with settlers”. It could be useful with the vampire colony in St Wulfram’s.’

  ‘All right. Deal.’ He extended his right talons, and we formally shook on it.

  Morey rode on my shoulder to Morning Prayer, which was led by Bishop Terwyn. I ended up sitting next to him at breakfast. A thick cushion on his chair helped him to reach his bacon and eggs. ‘So, you’re the famous Father Penny,’ he said as he buttered a slice of toast. ‘Bishop Aeron speaks very highly of you.’

  ‘That’s very kind of her.’ I found myself admiring his sideburns. The dark length reminded me of the Tenth Doctor, although the Bishop’s thinning hair was nothing like David Tennant’s.

  ‘Says you did good work in Caer-grawnt,’ he continued. ‘Made me wonder if I should take on a human for one of my parishes.’

  ‘Only with care, Bishop Terwyn,’ Morey said. He was seated on the table across from me, tucking into his own plateful of bacon. ‘Humans don’t always understand the realities of life in Lloegyr.’

  ‘I had a falling out with the churchwardens of Saint George’s,’ I admitted. ‘I preached against some of the labour practices in the town’s factories.’

  ‘You should have been better briefed,’ the Bishop said calmly. ‘The Church doesn’t involve herself with politics. We exist to bring souls to Christ. The governance of a town, or the country, isn’t ours to criticise.’

  ‘That’s done it,’ Morey muttered.

  I shook my head. ‘But why shouldn’t the Church be able to criticise? Archbishop Desmond Tutu once said that when people say the Bible and politics don’t mix, he wonders what Bible they’re reading. Shouldn’t we speak out against injustice?’

  ‘That might be the case here in England.’ Bishop Terwyn patted my hand. ‘But not in Lloegyr. Separation of Church and State.’

  ‘What State?’ I asked. ‘Lloegyr doesn’t really have a government.’

  ‘Our country is governed.’ A sharper note had crept into his tone. ‘Just not in a way which your people recognise. That does not make our system inferior.’

  Morey’s feathers were slick against his head, and he was flicking his ears at me. But I ignored his warning. ‘There’s so much more your government could be doing. Think of the conditions in which so many people work. And the refugees. What about them?’

  ‘What about them?’ Bishop Terwyn asked, calm again. ‘It’s about time Britain took more responsibility for the migrants crowding French shores.’

  ‘I was thinking of your vampires.’

  ‘And I was thinking of how little you seem to care about your own species.’ My hand was patted for a second time. ‘Not you personally, Father Penny. Your own race seems determined to kill each other. Every time I read the news, I’m appalled about the use to which you’ve put your technology. God forbid that my country ever goes down the same path.’

  ‘The news?’ I blinked. ‘How do you get our news?’

  The Bishop pointed at the mobile phone resting near his plate. ‘I read it on my Samsung, of course.’

  ‘There’s no signal in Lloegyr.’

  He laughed. ‘No, there isn’t. So once a week, my office sends a rat through with the phone. The news is downloaded, the rat flies back, and I read it off-line.’

  ‘Clever,’ Morey commented.

  ‘So I know full well what happens in your world,’ Bishop Terwyn continued. ‘We have our problems. You have yours. Perhaps we should be talking about ways to solve those problems, rather than pretend that we have the answers already?’

  I lifted my cup of coffee, hoping to hide my burning cheeks behind the white porcelain. To my relief, the Bishop was asked a question by the elf at his left, and his attention shifted. Morey’s eyes were narrowed as he looked at me. No doubt I was in for a lecture later.

  But first there was a workshop to attend. I looked up the location on my leaflet and made my way down the corridor to the old library. Most of the thirty seats in the oak-panelled room were already filled, so I had to find a place on the first row. Even vicars in the Church of England came early to get a seat at the back.

  ‘Good morning, everyone.’ The tall man bounded into the room, coffee spilling from his mug at every stride. ‘I’m Ian Masterson, Archdeacon of Northampton, and I'm really looking forward to this session.’

  I grinned at him. Ian was my archdeacon, and one of the nicest people I knew. He smiled back at me. ‘And it’s wonderful to see some familiar faces. Maybe we could go around the room and say who we all are?’

  Names and positions were offered. Most, like me, were only part time Vicars General and also had at least one parish to look after. Although most of the attendees were human, a were-fox, a vampire, and two gryphons had also come to the workshop.

  ‘Great, folks, that’s very helpful.’ Ian gulped down his coffee and placed the mug on a bookshelf. ‘So, let’s talk about attraction. In particular, attraction towards those oh-so-beautiful people of Lloegyr. Because so many of them are, aren’t they?’

  He paused and scanned the room. ‘Do you have favourites? Because I do. What’s yours? Anyone?’

  ‘Were-wolves,’ one offered. ‘Vampires,’ said another. ‘Unicorns.’ ‘Gryphons.’ ‘Harpies.’ This admission was met with some disbelieving grunts. ‘Dragons. I blame Game of Thrones.’ ‘Elves.’ ‘I’ve never met a were-hedgehog I didn’t like.’

  ‘I’m glad someone said “unicorns”,’ Ian continued. ‘You see, I first came across Lloegyr about five years ago, when I became an archdeacon. My bishop, Bishop Nigel Blake, introduced me to our marvellous sister country soon after I took up my post. I made a couple of visits to Llanbedr, met my counterparts, and that was all fine. Until my wife suddenly died.’

  The room stilled into a supportive silence. There was nothing like sudden death to bring out the pastoral instincts of clergy.

  ‘It was hard.’ Ian dropped into an armchair, which creaked at the sudden weight. ‘Thirty-five years married. It’s like losing a limb. Me and the children buried her, and we carried on. Because that’s what she would’ve wanted.’

  ‘Our sorrow for your sorrow,’ the were-fox said.

  ‘Thank you, Alun,’ Ian replied gravely. ‘But I can’t help but wonder if that’s why it hit me. The next time I met a unicorn, I was bowled over. I’m not going to say it was love, because it wasn’t. And it certainly wasn’t a physical attraction. But there was something, a pull at the very heart of me. I was absolutely smitten.’

  ‘We’ve seen this,’ the vampire said. ‘And it also happens with some from Lloegyr, who find humans attractive.’

  ‘It’s when the attraction becomes an obsession that things become difficult.’ Ian bounced up from his chair. ‘For me, it was very distracting. I had to work with this unicorn, and in meetings, I would find myself just drifting away because she was so beautiful. I caught myself trying to find reasons why I’d need to see her. I took photos of unicorns during my visits to Lloegyr, and I put them up in my office.’

  ‘What did people think they were seeing?’ asked a young woman. ‘When they saw the photos?’

  ‘Landscapes, Cheryl.’ Ian shrugged. ‘Actually, it helped us to identify some people who had the Sight. But I came to realise that my obsession wasn’t helping me to serve God or the Church. Or to move past my grief. Because I think that can be the starting point for such an obsession. Recent grief.’

  A flip chart stood at one side of the room. Ian took the cap off a black marker and wrote, with a dramatic flourish, �
��Recent grief’ on the sheet of paper. Then he turned back to the room. ‘What else, do you think, might have caused my fixation?’

  ‘Were your daughters living with you,’ the vampire asked, ‘or were you living on your own?’

  ‘On my own, Gavan. Good spot.’ Ian wrote ‘Lack of daily interaction’ on the flipchart. ‘My kids are great, but they left home years ago and are busy with their own lives. All I had in the house was a rather disgruntled cat. Not much to distract me from my grief.’

  ‘And picking up the household chores your wife used to do?’ Alun asked, his face shifting between human and fox. ‘That meant you were missing your spouse all the more. I speak from sad experience. My loss led me to fixate on a human.’

  ‘Was she pretty?’ one older man asked.

  Alun’s ears twitched. ‘What made you think I’d be attracted to a woman?’

  ‘And moving swiftly on,’ Ian said, cutting through a sudden hubbub of voices. ‘Any other factors might have had an influence? Penny?’

  I’d been slowly sliding lower and lower down my chair, thoroughly regretting my agreement with Morey. The sudden attention made me straighten. ‘Well, you’re a priest. There’s a certain amount of isolation in the role. It’s probably worse for an archdeacon. You don’t even have a congregation, a community, around you. I mean, parishioners can drive you nuts, but they can also be very supportive when there’s been a tragedy in your life. I had a lot of casseroles left on my doorstep after Alan died.’

  ‘Precisely.’ Ian lifted the pen and wrote, ‘Lack of community.’ Then he looked around the room. ‘Anything else?’

  ‘At the risk of sounding personal…’ The speaker, a middle-aged woman, coughed before continuing. ‘When we get to a certain time in our lives, we can wonder what else is out there for us.’

  Ian chuckled. ‘So, Mary, perhaps it was also driven by a mid-life crisis? Rather than buying a sports car or having an affair? Yes, I can see that.’ And he added ‘Stage of life’ to the list. ‘Any more?’ After a moment of silence, Ian threw himself back into the chair. ‘So, what could I do about it?’