All Men of Genius

XXIII.



THE New Year came and went quickly, and then it was time to drive back to London. Fiona left them there, with her payment, a promise to play the part again come Easter, and a kiss on the cheek for Violet. She had, in the end, enjoyed her Christmas, and Violet had never once asked her to pick up her clothes, or treated her like a maid in any way.

The next day, Violet trimmed her hair, bound her breasts, and dressed in men’s clothing once more. She had forgotten how uncomfortable it was, and gasped as she pulled the cloth tighter and tighter around her bosom. Then, with an odd feeling in her stomach, a mix of excitement and dread, she and Jack walked back into Illyria and returned to their room.

Little had changed. The gears still cranked on in their spots, and the bronze halls were still filled with the sound of them. Violet was surprised by how easily she slipped back into her routine of lying. She made up elaborate stories about her trip to her aunt’s for Cecily, who now often worked statements about following one’s “natural goodness” into conversation. She went out drinking with Toby, Drew, and Miriam, and they all talked of their various holidays. Classes proceeded as they usually did, though now the work was harder and faster, and sometimes even Violet had to work on Bunburry’s assignments during her independent time.

About three weeks into the new trimester, Cecily came rushing into the mechanical lab, so excited that Miriam had to run to keep up with her. Panting, Cecily placed a shining white gear in front of Violet. “It works,” Cecily said. Violet stared at the gear a second or two before it sank in, then she picked it up. It was smooth, light, and felt like glass. She slammed the gear down on the table. It didn’t break. It didn’t dent. It was completely undamaged.

“Brilliant!” she said, forgetting to lower her pitch for a moment, which probably made Ashton seem manic with excitement. “Can you make the rest of the pieces?”

“I have already begun creating the molds for them.”

“This is quite amazing, Cecily. You should go show your cousin. I’m sure he’ll be very proud.”

Violet had received one letter from the duke, sent to the house in London, then sent back to Illyria by Ashton. It was an oddly dry letter, filled with scientific argument, almost cold. Violet had responded in kind.

“I will show him, but I wanted you to see it first. Now you can create your engine.”

Violet was so excited she nearly jumped. “Thank you so much, Cecily! Together, we will outshine everyone at the faire.”

“You will outshine them, Ashton. And then, when the world sees how brilliant you are, you can truly become the man you were meant to be: one of noble mind and noble spirit.”

“Perhaps,” Violet said, “but I must do my part, now that you have done yours.” Violet turned to the metal on the table before her as she said this. She was barely halfway finished with creating the actual machine.

“I trust you shall, Ashton,” Cecily said, laying her hand on Violet’s briefly. “Now I am going to tell my cousin of my achievement.”

“Thank you again, Cecily,” Violet said as she walked away.

Cecily looked back over her shoulder coyly. “No need to thank me, Ashton. It is indeed a pleasure to work with you.”

And then she left. Violet picked up the gear again and dropped it on the floor. It clanged, but didn’t break. Violet was impressed. And now she was all the more aware that she had to work harder.

* * *



THAT evening, she was going over plans in her room, figuring out how best to proceed with her work, when Jack came in, holding a larger-than-average cage. In it was a nervous-looking mottled gray-and-white bunny with floppy ears and a twitching nose. Violet dropped to her knees to look more closely at the rabbit, which was adorable, with large black eyes and soft fur.

It looked back at her and twitched its nose curiously. “F*ck off,” said the rabbit in a squawking voice.

“This is Oscar,” Jack said as Violet backed away, frowning. “Valentine said I couldn’t keep him in the lab because his language is undignified.”

“Oh, bugger,” said Oscar.

“I transplanted the voice box of a parrot into him. But the parrot was brought to England by sailors, and apparently picked up a few things.”

“Oh, bugger,” repeated Oscar. The voice was definitely parrotlike.

“The parrot, meanwhile, can no longer talk, but seems to sniff a lot, and has shown a sudden fondness for carrots.”

“So the foul-mouthed rabbit stays with us?” Violet asked.

“I hope it won’t offend your delicate sensibilities too much,” Jack said.

“Shite,” said Oscar, wiggling his nose. Jack set the cage down and opened it. Oscar nervously stepped out, sniffing the room, then bounded under Violet’s bed.

“F*ck off,” came the muffled voice from underneath.

“Well,” Violet said, looking at her bed, “that’s going to make sleeping a little more difficult.”

“I find it soothing,” Jack said.

Violet shook her head in exasperation and turned back to her plans. They were for the engine itself. Cecily had finished the pieces, and it was now up to Violet to assemble them.

* * *



WHICH she did, a few days later. Violet and Cecily stood over the finished engine and stared down at it, breathless with anticipation. The final product was not very impressive to look at: just a bronze orb, about the size of a head. Out of one end came a stem-winding key, and out of the other, a rod with a gear on it. Cecily had a pocket watch out and was looking at it. With a nod, Violet turned the key three times and then stood back. The engine started to tick and rattle slightly, but did not roll off its stand.

Cecily laid her hand on it for a moment. “It produces vibrations,” she said dreamily.

“Of course it does,” Violet said. “It works like clockwork: all the pieces turning together, while a pendulum swings back and forth and back and forth.”

They stared at it awhile longer. After twenty minutes, it showed no signs of slowing down, and Violet took out more gears to assemble for the rest of the machine. Cecily continued to time the engine. When the period was over, Violet took it to bed with her. It was still going in the morning, so the next night, Cecily took it. It ran for nearly three days.

“One turn will keep it running for a day,” Cecily said, amazed.

“It can keep any machine going, as well,” Violet said. “Imagine the possibilities of it.”

“You have to keep it a secret until the faire,” Cecily whispered. “Otherwise people will tamper with it and steal it. Reveal it at the faire in front of everyone, so no one can doubt it is your invention.”

“I plan to,” Violet said.

“Where will you hide it until then?” Cecily asked. “Would you like me to keep it?”

“I can store it in my room,” Violet said. “Jack is trustworthy.”

“Perhaps you could keep it in one of the storerooms in the basement,” Cecily said.

“Oh no,” Violet said. “I have been in the basement, and it is entirely too mysterious to keep anything safe. I’ll put it in my room.”

“What do you mean, ‘mysterious’?”

Violet smiled and took out more pieces of her machine. As she assembled them, she told Cecily the story of their initiation the first night. Having once encountered Cecily while a woman, Violet now found it harder to remember that she was supposed to be a man when interacting with her, and sometimes found her voice slipping, or her mannerisms getting sloppy. But she also found herself thinking more and more of Cecily as a close friend. It was only after Cecily was gone that she would remember that she was not a close friend of hers, but a close friend and admirer of Ashton’s. And then there was the matter of Violet’s growing admiration for the duke, admiration she hoped was reciprocal, although she couldn’t be sure. After all, it was Ashton who had kissed the duke, and now the duke avoided him. But the duke didn’t avoid Violet. He wrote her letters, and instead of fluff about flowers, these letters were now filled with real scientific argument: it was a correspondence between two great minds. The duke wrote Violet that he was building a prototype of an æthership, and asked for her opinions on how things should work. She sent him sketches of parts, and he sent her back his corrections to them, some of which she accepted. But he made no romantic overtures in his letters. Violet wondered if perhaps he was an invert like the real Ashton, and was writing Violet only in the hopes of winning the fake Ashton’s favor. She told herself that such things didn’t matter in an intellectual relationship, but sometimes, during his lectures, Violet found herself staring at the duke’s lips and remembering the softness of them, and imagining his hands around her waist.

Violet kept the engine in her room, and Oscar grew particularly fond of it, often rubbing up against it and murmuring affectionate obscenities. Jack didn’t seem to mind, but Jack had grown oddly distant. Not unfriendly, just very involved in his work, staying in the lab until late to perform odd experiments on his menagerie.

Which is why, about five weeks into the new trimester, when Toby suggested they all go out to a show, Violet agreed, and demanded that Jack go as well. Violet didn’t ask what sort of show it was, just piled into the coach with Toby, Drew, Miriam, and Jack, and let Toby tell the driver where to go. She sat across from Miriam, who had seemed a little nervous lately. Violet knew that she and Toby had spent the break together in France, and wondered if perhaps Miriam was pregnant and hadn’t yet told Toby, which would account for her anxiousness. But that anxiousness, Violet saw, dwindled the farther and farther they drove from Illyria, so Violet supposed it was probably only Miriam’s fear of being caught. She patted Miriam on the back and said, “Don’t worry, no one will recognize us where we’re going.”

Miriam gave her an odd look, but smiled. “I’m sure,” she said.

The theater, if it could be called that, was a ramshackle old building with one poster outside advertising Mr. Pip’s Prancing Ponies. It showed a circus ringmaster with a whip circled by beautiful young women clad in very little besides saddles, but with the heads of horses. Violet paused, unsure of what she had gotten herself into.

“Oh, come now,” Toby said. “Or are your sensibilities more sensitive than Miriam’s?”

Drew, Jack, and Miriam snickered at this, so Violet followed them in, her chin held high and her swagger as masculine as she could make it.

The inside of the theater was as broken down as the outside, with an unsteady-looking balcony and a small stage with a tattered purple curtain. It was lit with old gas lamps that smelled of kerosene and smoke. The seats were just chairs set up around small tables. The whole place smelled of ale, and the wood floors were stained and sticky. As they sat down, a barmaid collected their tickets and gave them each a mug of ale.

“Free drink with your seat,” Toby said, raising his glass in a toast. He drank deeply from it. “More drinks cost extra.”

Their seat was close to the stage, which Violet was happy about, because it meant that when the balcony fell—which could clearly happen at any moment—it would not fall on them.

After a few minutes of drinking, one of the barmaids went around dimming the houselights by hand, and the stage lights came up. A man in a top hat came out from behind the curtain, and the audience applauded. It was a large audience, and a rowdy one. The man onstage, who Violet supposed might once have looked like the man on the poster outside, about twenty years and sixty pounds ago, introduced himself as Mr. Pip, and said that he was pleased to present to the audience his precious prancing ponies. And with that, the curtain was pulled back, and the ponies were revealed.

They were not ponies, of course, but girls. They were dressed most scandalously, in very short skirts that showed their knees and thighs, brown leather corsets, and each with a unique array of tassels, bells, and feathers. Mr. Pip cracked his whip and they pranced in a circle around him in a convincingly horselike manner, their feet making the sound of hoofbeats. Violet watched, her stomach churning with disgust, though Drew, Toby, and Jack seemed to be enjoying it, as they were cheering. Miriam looked more amused than anything else. Violet thought the whole thing perverse. An obscene show, clearly, and one in which women were made into animals. She felt herself flushing, and she was about to walk out when she made eye contact with one of the ponies onstage, and all the color drained from her face.

It was Fiona. She was dressed in costume, of course—her hair pulled back into a tail, feathers tied into it with a chain of bells, tassels around her neck and ankles, a saddle on her back, and a bit in her mouth—but it was definitely Fiona. And just as Violet saw Fiona through her costume, she could tell that, even galloping onstage, Fiona had seen Violet, and recognized her through hers.

Violet swallowed, realized her throat had gone dry, and quickly downed her ale. A barmaid came by and gave her another. For the next hour or so, Violet watched as the “ponies” jumped through hoops, stood on one leg, and even let various men from the audience ride them. Fiona, it turned out, was a very talented pony, and she let Mr. Pip brush her hair and slap her bottom in front of everyone as she nibbled happily and with great enthusiasm on a carrot. Drew particularly liked this part.

When the curtain closed and the lights were turned back up, Violet didn’t know what to do. She leaned in toward Jack and hissed in his ear. “It was Fiona!”

“I know,” Jack said happily. “We know a real talented actress.”

“She recognized me,” Violet said.

“Oh, don’t be silly. She might ’av recognized me. But that’s ’cause I’m a lot handsomer than you.” His breath had the distinct odor of alcohol.

Onstage, a piano was rolled out, and an old man to play it. Men and women of questionable repute began to dance together. Toby and Miriam joined them.

“Well, well, well,” said a Scottish accent from behind Violet. Violet felt a hand rest on the back of her chair and willed herself not to turn around. “Did you lads enjoy the show?” Fiona asked, sitting in Miriam’s empty chair. She had changed out of her costume, but was still revealing more skin than Violet had ever seen on another woman before the pony show.

“Oh yes,” Drew said. “I love horses.”

Fiona laughed. “How about you?” she said, looking right at Violet, who stared at the table.

“It was somewhat … that is … not quite to my tastes,” Violet stammered.

“No?” Fiona asked. “Well, that’s a pity. Come and dance with me, tell me what ye didn’ like about it, and maybe I can get Mr. Pip to make some changes. I have a bit of pull with the old man. Got a hold on his reins, you might say.” Violet swallowed.

Fiona stood and held her hand out to her. “Aw,” said Fiona when Violet wouldn’t rise. “Come on now and dance with me, else I might become a wee bit upset, and who knows what I might say then?”

Violet finished the rest of her ale in one gulp and stood unsteadily. Fiona took her hand and led her to where the couples were dancing. “Now, put your arm here,” Fiona said, placing Violet’s hand on her waist, “and do try to lead a little.” The dancing was awkward. Violet knew little of dancing and less of dancing as a man, and so Fiona was often adjusting her hands or moving her feet quickly out of the way to keep Violet from stepping on them.

“What do you want?” Violet asked after a moment.

“Oh, don’t mind him,” Fiona said to a couple they bumped into. “He’s just had a mite too much to drink.” She turned back to Violet. “So this is why your hair was so short.”

“Yes,” Violet said, “I’m masquerading as a man. But it’s not what you think.”

“I dunna think it’s anything just yet, except the sort of thing ye’d like to keep secret from your mates.” Fiona nodded at Drew and Toby, who were seated again. “And from dear Mrs. Wilks. Did you know she asked me to write her? I dinnae think I’d have much to say, but now—”

“It’s for the good of women everywhere,” Violet said desperately. “Really. See, I’ve enrolled myself in Illyria—it’s an all-male college of science—and I’m going to reveal myself at the end of the year, and then they’ll be forced to let women in. And that’s good for you, see?”

Fiona raised her eyebrows. “Well, that certainly isn’t what I thought was going on. And I’m not unsympathetic to your situation. But…” She let her sentence trail off as they danced a bit more.

“What do you want? Money?” Violet asked.

Fiona tilted her head, considering, then focused on the table Drew, Toby, Jack, and Miriam were at. “Tell me, which of those men is richest?”

“Richest?” Violet asked, looking back at the table. Toby waved at them.

“Well, Toby is a baron, but I think Drew’s family probably has more money. His family is the Pale family. Of Pale Perfumes.”

“You dinnae say!” Fiona exclaimed. “I use their soap. With the lavender in it. I love the smell of lavender, don’t you? So feminine.”

“I suppose,” Violet said.

“Well, as I am a woman, and you seem to feel you are doing a great deed for all womankind, I won’t ask you for money to keep your little secret. I’ll ask you for information.”

“Information?”

“On how to win the affections of Mr. Pale, over there. He’s handsome, and apparently rich. If you answer all my questions about him, I won’t ask you for any money, and you can keep your scheme going until the very end, when you win a victory for rich girls who finished school and want to go on to college, and through them, all womankind.”

Violet paused. She didn’t quite understand. “So you want me to tell you what Drew likes?” she asked.

Fiona nodded. “I think he’s attractive,” Fiona said, “and it would be nice if he could fund a show for me in which I didn’t play a horse.”

Violet nodded slowly, then said, “He falls asleep unless he’s constantly excited. He likes bright shiny objects and strange smells. He’s a chemist, and is trying to work on a perfume that will increase the intensity of its scent as the wearer sweats. He may be looking for test subjects.” Violet stared at Fiona to see if any of this was odd to her, but Fiona just smiled a little, apparently unfazed.

“Good start,” Fiona said. “I can work with that. And where do you and your mates usually go drinking?”

“The Well-Seasoned Pig,” Violet said with a sigh. “Usually about nine o’clock, but it varies which nights we’re there.”

“Oh, I’m sure I’ll find you if I stop by every day for a week. And if I don’t, well, I suppose I should write dear Mrs. Wilks back. It’s rude not to keep up one’s correspondences, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Violet said through locked teeth.

Fiona stepped away and bowed. Then she and Violet headed back to the table. Fiona rested her hand on Drew’s shoulder and asked him if he’d like to dance. Drew nodded happily and they headed for the dance floor. Violet wondered if she had just betrayed her friend, giving a woman of questionable morality the tools to seduce him. But he seemed quite happy on the dance floor.

Jack patted Violet on the back. “There’s too much blackmail going on around here,” Violet whispered to him. He gave her a sad look, one filled with his sorrow at not being able to help, and also with the several mugs of ale he’d drunk. Leaning back in her chair, Violet sighed and looked out at Fiona and Drew, who were still dancing.