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.”