A Study in Drowning(93)

“Thirty-four.” Angharad looked into the fire. “When I was young, I believed I had invited all that came to pass. I believed that I wanted it.”

Effy’s stomach lurched. “The letters we saw . . . your father wasn’t happy that you and Myrddin, um . . .”

“Had an affair,” Angharad said, her voice clear. “That’s what we all called it then. An illicit thing, all parties equally to blame. Myrddin was unwed, but it was still terribly scandalous, to have relations with a young girl, your best friend’s daughter. That was another thing no one believed—that it had all begun so innocently. I was a young girl and my father had no time for me. I wanted him to look at some of my poems, but he waved me off. He said that girls’ minds were not fit for storytelling; we were too capricious and inconstant. Those were his words exactly—banal and redundant, if you ask me. That’s why the only enduring work of Colin Blackmar is a dull poem children read in primary school.”

It was such a shock to hear her deride her own father that Effy let out an inappropriate and too-loud laugh. “‘The Dreams of a Sleeping King’ really is terrible, isn’t it? Why did Greenebough Books pick it up?”

“Oh, I’m sure he saw a gap in the market for rote poetry that can teach nine-year-olds about metaphor and simile. The elder Marlowe was very shrewd. I’ve heard no similar praises sung of his son.”

“No, I expect not,” Preston said. “We met him, at one of your father’s parties. He was a lecherous sot.”

“Well, so was my father,” said Angharad, still staring into the flames. “He’s too old now, I think, to be much of a philanderer, and my mother is dead, so I suppose it’s not technically philandering, but he is vile. I’m sorry you had to meet him.”

She raised her head and looked directly at Effy when she said this, green eyes hard and bright. Effy felt herself caught in that gaze, like flotsam in a sea net. Angharad’s eyes were so clear, they were like twin mirrors—nothing like the murky green sea glass that the tide left strewn across the sand. Effy saw her own wavering, miniaturized reflection staring back from them. Her blond hair was a mess and her pale cheeks were splotchy with heat.

“He’s not yours to apologize for,” Effy said, tearing her gaze away from her own face. It had been so long, she realized, since she had seen it.

Angharad gave her a small smile. “Well. Regardless. There are three men in this story, and none of them ever said they were sorry for anything. They never expressed as much as a twinge of guilt.”

“Guilt,” Preston repeated. “Guilt over what?”

The fire crackled. Thunder rolled like waves against the shore. Angharad’s eyes held the firelight.

“Our affair began slowly,” she said. “At first it was nothing more than elbows brushing. The touch of a knee. Then a kiss, apologetic and rueful. Another kiss, penitent. Then another, heady and stolen and not regretted at all. Emrys feared my father’s wrath, but nothing more.”

Effy felt a phantom hand brush against her skull, raking its fingers through her hair. The whispers of her classmates hummed in the back of her mind, her surname scratched out on the college roster and replaced with whore. “Can you really call something an affair if the man is nearly twice your age and you’re just, well . . .”

“A girl?” Angharad arched her brow.

“Yes.” The word felt heavy in Effy’s mouth.

“I was eighteen,” said Angharad again. “That meant I was a woman, in some people’s eyes. Well—I was a woman when it was convenient to blame me, and a girl when they wanted to use me. Everyone thought that I wanted it. I convinced myself that I wanted it, too. Emrys was always kind to me. At least, before the Fairy King took him over entirely. I suppose it was a bit of youthful rebellion on my part, too. I hated my father and wanted to spite him.”

At first Effy had imagined Master Corbenic’s hand, with all its rough black hair, palming her skull. Now, with a roil of nausea that made her want to retch, she imagined it was Myrddin’s hand instead, grasping the back of her head and holding it like a fish he expected to try to wriggle free.

“Emrys read my poetry,” Angharad went on, “and he told me what was good and what was rubbish. He encouraged me to write more; he said I had a talent. I wanted to be published, too.” She gave a dry, humorless laugh. “I suppose my dream did come true, in a way.”

Effy’s stomach knotted with grief. Preston said, gently, “The book—your book—it’s the most famous book in Llyrian history. Perhaps that’s cold comfort. I’m sorry.”

Angharad shook her head. “For a long time, I stopped even thinking of it as my book. It’s very hard to believe something when it feels like the whole world is trying to convince you otherwise.”

I know, Effy thought. And then, because she could, she said it out loud: “I know.”

“My father despaired of me,” Angharad said with a small smile. “My sisters all hated to read. They played harp and baked tarts and were eager to find husbands who worked at banks. I was the sort of girl who, in the old stories, caught the eye of the Fairy King.”

Effy drew a shaking breath as Angharad said this. Even though she had seen him crumble into dust, the fear of him had not yet faded. Her body remembered what it felt like to be afraid so well that it would take time, a long time, to teach it something new.