Effy cut him off. “‘The only enemy is the sea.’”
“Precisely. But Myrddin’s father was a fisherman, and his grandfather, too. Master Gosse was the first to bring up that apparent contradiction. Myrddin’s family depended on the sea for their livelihood, yet it’s only ever painted as a cruel and vicious force of evil in his work.”
“That’s not true,” said Effy. “In Angharad, the Fairy King takes her out to see the ocean, and she says it’s beautiful and free. ‘Lovely and dangerous and vast beyond mortal comprehension, the sea makes dreamers of us all.’”
Preston gave her an odd look. It was the first time she’d seen him look bemused, quizzical. “Finish the quote.”
“Hm.” Effy racked her brain to remember the passage. “‘I looked to the Fairy King behind me, and the ocean before, the two most beautiful things I had ever seen. They were both creatures of rage and salt and foam. Both could strip me to the bone. I wanted nothing more than to tempt their wrath, because if I were brave enough, I might earn their love instead.’”
“You really do know it cover to cover,” Preston said, and this time, Effy was certain—there was admiration in his voice. “But I don’t think that paints the sea in a very charitable way, either. The Fairy King is Angharad’s captor. Myrddin portrays the sea as a trickster god, luring Angharad with its beauty, but always with the potential to destroy her utterly.”
“He loved her,” Effy said. She was surprised at the vehemence of her tone. “The Fairy King. He loved Angharad more than anything. She was the one to betray him.”
She’d never had the chance to speak about Angharad like this, to defend her position, to present her own theories. There was something exhilarating about it, and Effy expected Preston to challenge her. Instead he stared at her for a long moment, lips pursed, and then said, “Let’s move on. The metaphoric resonance of one particular passage doesn’t matter right now.”
“Fine,” Effy said. But she felt let down.
“So anyway, Gosse published a paper discussing the irony of it, but he didn’t make any specific claims about Myrddin’s authorship. That was a few months ago, when Myrddin was freshly dead. Since then, scholars have really begun to dig into his background. Gosse wants first crack at it, but he didn’t want to spook Ianto by coming himself—the intimidating effect of being the preeminent Myrddin scholar and all that. So he sent me instead.” Preston frowned at this, as if expecting her to berate him again. “There’s no schoolhouse in Saltney, as you saw. Myrddin had some informal schooling from the nuns, but that stopped definitively at age twelve. His parents weren’t literate. We have several documents from the Myrddins—including the lease from their house—and they’re all signed with a mark.”
“Where is their house?” Effy asked. She thought of the shepherd retreating toward the green hills. “I didn’t see very many homes down there.”
“Oh, it’s gone now,” Preston said. “Several of the older homes in Saltney, the ones closer to the water, have already fallen into the sea. I almost don’t blame the locals for their superstitions about the second Drowning.”
She felt a thud of vague, confused grief. The house where Myrddin had grown up, where his mother had tucked him into bed at night, where his father had rested his scarred fisherman’s hands—swallowed up and eroded, lost to the ages. Effy had listened for the bells under the water that morning, but she hadn’t heard a sound.
Would she be responsible for further eroding Myrddin’s legacy? Her stomach twisted at the thought.
“That still doesn’t prove anything,” Effy said. “Look at all of Myrddin’s letters here. Clearly he could read and write.”
“But look at them,” Preston emphasized. He picked up the nearest one, its edges curled, paper turned yellow with time. “This is dated a year before the publication of Angharad. It’s addressed to his publisher, Greenebough Books. Look how he signs his name.”
Effy squinted at the page. Myrddin’s script was quite careless, difficult to comprehend.
“‘Yours sincerely, Emrys Myrddin,’” she read aloud. “What’s wrong with that?”
“Pay attention to the surname,” Preston said. “He spells it Myrthin, with a th. That’s the Northern spelling.”
Effy took the paper from him and ran her finger over the signature. The ink was old and faded, smudged in places, but the th was clear.