“Or,” Preston said, his face darkening, “there’s something in it he didn’t want anyone to know.”
They read on.
30 January 189
The Youthful Knight will be published. Greenebough appears cautiously optimistic, but I do not expect much success. The youths themselves may read it, but I think it is too dry a tome. What do youths these days care for chivalry and modesty? Not very much, as far as I can tell. When I visited Penrhos I saw Blackmar’s daughters again. The eldest is very fair, and took an interest in my work. But a woman’s mind is too frivolous, and though she was an unusually sober example of her sex, I could tell she was more preoccupied with dance halls and boys. She has written a few poems of her own.
Effy stared and stared at the line a woman’s mind is too frivolous. It stung her like a snakebite, a sudden whiplash of pain. Angharad was anything but frivolous. She was shrewd and daring, her mind always scheming, imagining, conjuring new worlds. She was strong. She had defeated the Fairy King.
If Myrddin really thought so little of women, why had he written Angharad at all?
“The Youthful Knight was Myrddin’s first effort,” Preston said, “but it was released to relative silence. Emrys Myrddin wasn’t a household name until—”
“Until Angharad,” Effy finished. Her chest hurt.
“Let’s see what Myrddin had to say about that.”
They flipped forward to 191, the year of Angharad’s publication.
18 August 191
Blackmar delivered Angharad to me in the dead of night. The rain and humidity this time of year is unbearable. I don’t take much stock in the fretting of the naturalists, but these summer storms are enough to make me mind their warnings about a second Drowning. Blackmar was happy to be free of her; she has been vexing him terribly of late.
Publication is set for midwinter. Mr. Marlowe is greatly excited for the reinvention of Emrys Myrddin.
Preston let out a soft breath. His brown eyes were shining. “Effy, I can’t believe this.”
It did seem damning. But even though the words a woman’s mind is too frivolous still gnawed at her, Effy wasn’t willing to relent. “Who is Blackmar?”
Preston blinked, as if to banish the awestruck look from his face. “Colin Blackmar,” he said. “Another one of Greenebough’s authors. You probably know his most famous work, ‘The Dreams of a Sleeping King.’”
“Oh. Yes,” Effy said. “That awful, tediously long poem we all had to memorize bits of in primary school.”
The corner of Preston’s mouth lifted. “Do you remember any of it now?”
“‘The slumbering King dreams of sword-fights and slaughter,’” Effy recited. “‘He feels the steaming blood of his enemies through his mail, and his dream-self dreams of cool river water. He sees the dragon’s long body uncoil, the flash of scales, the bright blades of its teeth, and oh, the sleeping King is foiled!—for he is both the knight and the dragon in the battlefield of his Dream-world.’”
She tried to make her recitation sound suitably dramatic, even though her head was spinning and her knees felt weak.
“You really do have the best memory of anyone I’ve ever met,” Preston said. There was no denying the admiration in his tone. “Your schoolteachers must have all been very impressed.”
“It’s drivel,” Effy said. “Surely you can’t think there’s any merit to it.”
“Blackmar has always been a more commercial author. He was never a critical darling like Myrddin. No one in the literature college is studying ‘The Dreams of a Sleeping King,’ that’s for certain.” When Effy gave him a dour look, he went on: “And no, I’ve never personally been a fan. I find his work to be . . . well, tedious.”
Finally, something they could agree on. “Did you know Myrddin and Blackmar were friends? Why was Blackmar bringing Angharad to him in August of 191?”
“I have a few ideas,” Preston said. “But this is something big, Effy. Even if you’re right and Myrddin was exactly who he said he was—an upstart provincial genius—there’s so much else this diary could prove. So many things other Myrddin scholars have only been able to speculate on. Gosse is going to choke on his mustache.”
“If it turns out Myrddin isn’t a fraud,” said Effy. But she was unable to imbue her words with the confidence she wanted. Her gaze kept darting back to the green chaise in the corner. She could imagine the girl there, robe flayed open like an oyster shell. “This proves that Myrddin was at least literate, but . . . it doesn’t quite read like the thoughts of a once-in-a-lifetime genius.”
Preston blinked rapidly at her, raising a brow. “Did I hear that correctly? Are you actually starting to come around?”
“No!” Effy burst out, face heating. “I mean, not entirely. It’s just . . . the things he said about women. I don’t see how you could write a book like Angharad if you really believed women were empty-headed and frivolous.”
She tried to sound coolly rational like Preston always did, removed from emotion. But her throat was thick with a knot of unshed tears. The Myrddin from the photograph on the jacket of Angharad and the Myrddin of this diary were like two yoked oxen pulling in opposite directions, and as much as Effy tried, she could not hold them together.
“Cognitive dissonance,” Preston said. When Effy glowered at him, he quickly added, “But you’re right. Angharad isn’t something your common misogynist would write.”
To call Myrddin a common misogynist was strong language. It was probably the boldest, most unequivocal statement she’d ever heard Preston make. It made the lump in her throat rise.
“You can’t write him off on just one line in a diary entry, though,” she tried weakly. “Maybe he was just, I don’t know—having a bad day.”
The argument was pitiful; she knew it. Preston drew a breath as if about to argue, but then snapped his mouth shut. Perhaps he saw the look of misery on her face. They both stood there for a moment in silence, and Effy felt the pull of the chaise longue in the back of her mind. As if she might turn around and find the girl lying there, a corpse now, blue white and maggot ridden, buzzing with flies. The image made her want to retch.
“I like to hedge my bets,” Preston said at last, and Effy was grateful to him for breaking the silence, the spell those photographs had cast over her. “But seeing all this, if I had to make a gamble . . . I would bet on us, Effy.”
Behind his glasses, his eyes were clear. The determination in his gaze made Effy’s chest swell. She had never thought she’d feel anything close to camaraderie with Preston Héloury—loathsome literature scholar, untrustworthy Argantian. Yet even camaraderie did not feel quite like the right word.
Meeting his stare, she realized what she felt was closer to affection. Even—maybe—passion. And Effy couldn’t help but wonder if he felt the same.
“There’s something here that someone has gone to great lengths to keep hidden,” Preston said. His gaze never left her. “It’s something others would—if I know my colleagues well enough—kill for. But if we’re careful, we can—”
He was interrupted by the door banging open. Effy hadn’t even heard any footsteps in the hall. But Ianto stood in the threshold, his clothes soaked, his black hair plastered to his scalp.
Preston’s reflexes were impressively quick. He thrust the diary behind his back and under a pile of scattered papers on his desk.
Effy let out a soft, choked gasp, but no one else heard it over the sound of water sluicing onto the floor. It was dripping off Ianto’s clothing and the barrel of the musket he held over his shoulder.
She was almost relieved to see him standing there, perfectly mortal even in his anger. Half of her had expected to see the Fairy King appear in the doorway.