It was neater than every other room in the house by miles, but it was still not as immaculate as she’d expected from the smug, pedantic P. Héloury.
As they left the study, the floor groaned deafeningly under them, and Effy lurched for the nearest wall. Momentarily she was certain the wood was going to collapse under her, just like the rock had on the cliffs.
Ianto gave her a sympathetic grimace, and she righted herself, cheeks hot. Her mother’s voice thrummed in her mind. Bad decision after bad decision.
They came to a door at the end of the hallway, and Ianto said, “I would show you the bedrooms, but my mother doesn’t want to be disturbed.”
Myrddin’s widow. Effy didn’t even know her name; didn’t know a single thing about her other than that she’d ordered Ianto to have her stay in the guest cottage. But she’d allowed Preston inside the house. Effy couldn’t help but think the widow did not want her here.
She could feel the beginnings of panic buzzing in the tips of her fingers and toes, her vision whitening at the edges. She wished she had her pink pills, but in her rush she’d left them behind on the nightstand. Preston’s fault, she decided, but she couldn’t even imbue the thought with the malice she wanted.
“That’s all right,” she said. “I’ve seen enough.”
All three of them went downstairs again, Effy gripping the moist, slippery banister all the way. She wanted nothing more than to leave this terrible house and its thick, briny air. But as Ianto led her back toward the kitchen, insisting upon scones and kippers, Effy’s eyes landed on something she hadn’t noticed before: a small door, its frame badly slanted and the wood at its base speckled with tiny white barnacles. Looking at it, she swore she could hear the waves more clearly, like an enormous pulse of blood from the heart of the house itself.
“Where does that door lead?” she asked.
Ianto didn’t reply, but reached below the collar of his black sweater and produced a key, strung around his neck on a thin piece of leather. He fitted the key into the lock and the door swung open.
“Be careful,” he said. He moved aside so Effy could see through the opening “Don’t fall down.”
The door opened onto a set of stairs, half submerged in murky water. Only the first few steps were visible. Salt smell curled into her nose, along with the peculiar scents of old leather and wet paper.
“Those were my father’s archives, in the basement,” Ianto said. “But several years ago, the sea level rose too high and flooded the whole floor. We haven’t managed to get anyone to come all the way down here and try to drain it.”
“Aren’t there very valuable documents in there?” Effy was surprised at herself for asking such a question. It sounded prying, opportunistic, like something Preston might say. Maybe he already had.
“Of course,” said Ianto. “My father was very protective of his personal and professional affairs. Whatever papers are down there, I’m sure they’re properly sealed away, but they’re impossible to reach, unless you fancy a very cold, very dark swim.”
Effy watched the water ripple, bunching and then flattening like black silk. “Shouldn’t the water have drained on its own? When the tide went down?”
Ianto gave her the same pitying look that Wetherell had given her in the car. “The cliffside here is sinking. The very foundation of the house is waterlogged. The whole Bay of Nine Bells, in fact. We are closer to drowning every year.”
Effy hadn’t realized how literal talk of the second Drowning was, more than mere Southern superstition. She felt ashamed for dismissing it now.
Above the stairs was another archway. The stone was wet and draped with moss, words etched on its surface between carvings of waves.
She read the engraving aloud, her voice tipping up at the end to make it a question. “‘The only enemy is the sea’?”
And then, to her complete surprise, it was Preston who spoke.
“Everything ancient must decay,” he said, and it had the cadence of a song. “A wise man once said thus to me. But a sailor was I—and on my head no fleck of gray—so with all the boldness of my youth, I said: The only enemy is the sea.”
Effy just stared at him while he recited the lines, his gaze steady behind his glasses, his tone hushed and reverent. She recognized the words now.
“‘The Mariner’s Demise,’” she said softly. “From Myrddin’s book of poems.”
“Yes,” he said, sounding taken aback. “I didn’t realize you knew it.”
“Literature students aren’t the only ones who can read,” she snapped, and then instantly regretted the razor edge to her voice. She’d shown her bitterness and envy too plainly. Perhaps Preston could already guess why she loathed him so much.
But all he said was, “Right.”
His voice was short, his gaze cold and aloof again. Effy shook her head, as if trying to dispel the hazy vestiges of a dream. She wanted to evict from her mind that one fragile moment she and Preston had shared.
Ianto cleared his throat. “My father was always his own greatest admirer,” he said. He waited for Effy to step aside and then shut the door, returning the key to his collar. “Let’s all go eat some breakfast. I won’t have you making a churlish host of me.”
But Effy excused herself, insisting that she needed air. It wasn’t a lie. She could scarcely breathe in that ruin of a house.
She clambered up the moss-laden steps and through the path onto the cliffside. This time she was careful not to stand too close to the edge. The crumbling white stone looked like the slabs of ice that floated down the river Naer in the winter: churning and fickle, nothing you could trust to hold beneath you. Effy squeezed her eyes shut against the biting wind.
Perhaps there had been no other applicants to the project at all. Perhaps she was the only student who had looked at the poster and seen a fantasy, while the others had seen the dreadful reality.
At last Effy understood: this was why Ianto had sought out a student. No seasoned architect would try to build a house on the edge of a sinking cliff, on a half-drowned foundation. Not even in reverence to Emrys Myrddin.
It’s beyond you, Master Corbenic had said, and he was right. He was like a splinter she couldn’t get out from under her nail. The memory of him stung at the oddest times, when she’d done as little as curl her fingers to reach for a coffee mug.
Far below, the waves gnawed at the cliffside. Effy could no longer see it as anything but consumption, dark water eating away at the pale stone. Her knees buckled beneath her and she sank hopelessly down onto the rippling grass.
The truth was, she had seen many fine and beautiful things underneath all the damp and rot, like chests of treasure waiting to be dredged up from a shipwreck. Plush carpets that must have cost a fortune, candelabras made of solid gold. But none of it could be salvaged from the rot and the rising sea.
It was the task of a fairy tale, the sort of hopeless, futile challenge the Fairy King himself might have set. In her mind, she saw that creature from the road. It turned toward her, opened its devouring mouth, and spoke: Sew me a shirt with no seam or needlework. Plant an acre of land with one ear of corn. Build a house on a sinking cliff and win your freedom.
She had never thought Myrddin would set a task so cruel. But she did not know this man, the one who had kept his own family trapped in a sinking, fetid house, the one who had let everything around him fall to ruin. The man she had spent her whole life idolizing had been strange and reclusive, but he had not been coldhearted. It all felt so terribly wrong. Like a dream she wanted desperately to wake up from.
It was Preston’s voice in her ear now, his hushed recitation. The only enemy is the sea.
Five