All Men of Genius

XXXV.



VIOLET liked Forney. By May, they had grown quite friendly, and Violet had even accepted a cigar from him on more than one occasion during her independent working time. His view on mechanics was different from Bunburry’s: more forceful, more about pulling as much energy as possible out of every gear, every piece of coal. He enjoyed embellishments on the outside of a device, and clever functions, but the core was how good an engine a machine had. Which is why he was so enamored with Violet’s engine, with its extreme functionality.

Cecily, though, did not seem to take to Forney, and started to avoid the mechanical lab, claiming the cigar smoke made her dizzy. The one time she came down to find Violet smoking, she grew quite upset, until Violet put the cigar out. Afterwards, Forney had come up to her and patted her firmly on the back. “Women, eh?” he said. “Can’t handle a little smoke, shouldn’t be living in London. But I guess we love ’em for being so sweet and dainty.” Then he got a faraway look in his eye for a moment. “Well, better get back to work,” he said, and clapped Violet on the back again.

Violet didn’t think she was ever going to be sweet and dainty, but then, Ada Byron smoked cigars, and her many affairs were well known in the scientific community. It wasn’t a cigar that was going to make the duke reject Violet. It wasn’t even how well she behaved like a lady. It was how well she behaved like a man and, more important, that she had claimed to be a man while doing so.

It was at night that the lie really began to wear on Violet. Lying in bed, not really dressed as a man anymore, but not really a woman, either, she felt unfixed, and guilty. She wanted to tell everyone the truth. She started having trouble sleeping, tossing back and forth in time to the gears.

The duke’s letters became kinder and more loving. He soon invited her to the faire at the Crystal Palace in less than two months, to see the model of the æthership that she had helped him create. Violet wrote back that she would be there. It wasn’t a lie, of course, but it was one more untruth she felt uneasy about. The duke had begun to pour out his heart to her, slowly, subtly, but she still hadn’t told him the one great secret that could drive them apart.

It was a Sunday when she and the duke next spoke in person. She had spent most of the day with Ashton and Jack, writing the false letter from Cecily for Miriam to give to Volio. They lunched together, but Violet had wanted to go back to Illyria to work, so she and Jack left a little early. When they got to the campus, Violet saw the duke standing in the garden, looking out at the river. Jack looked at her warily, then at the duke, and then headed inside without saying anything.

Violet walked to the garden and stood beside the duke. “I love the river,” he said. “I know it’s polluted, and if I were really up near it, it would smell quite bad, but I like the idea of it. Of ever-moving water. It strikes me as peaceful, even just the sound of it.”

“I find the sound of the gears in Illyria soothing,” Violet said.

“Do you?” The duke chuckled. “I’m sure your sister would, too. But you should take some time to consider the water, too. Brilliant in its own way. Forever moving, and very deep. Underneath it, I’m sure you wouldn’t hear anything.”

“Does that appeal to you, sir?” Violet asked.

“Well, yes, though not as morbidly as I said it, I suppose. I don’t mean the idea of death. I just find the idea of a life without expectations refreshing. Under the water, it would just be me. Not my father’s voice telling me to do better, or the scientific community saying I’m not good enough.” The duke sighed. “But this is more than you asked.”

“You wouldn’t want to hear my sister’s voice as well?” Violet asked awkwardly.

“Oh, no. Her voice is perfect,” the duke said, placing a hand on Violet’s shoulder. She shivered. “No, her voice I wouldn’t want to escape. It is encouraging, honest, argumentative, brilliant.”

“I think,” Violet said, looking down, “I think she feels similarly about you, sir. From what she’s said.”

“Thank you for that,” the duke said, and patted her on the back before heading into Illyria. She watched him walk back inside, glowing a pale orange in the fading light.

* * *



VOLIO did not see the fading light, though he probably wouldn’t have cared for it if he had. He had been working all evening in his own lab, and it was now past midnight, and he wanted to go to bed. But he had lost something, and it was important that he find it. The basement was as dark and clanging as it always was, and its sounds were giving him a headache. He held a gas lamp out in front of him, walking slowly down the halls, trying to be quiet, because a sound might cause what he sought to run away from him.

He groaned slightly, and rolled his neck, hearing it crack. He was tired. He’d been working all night, and he was in a foul mood. His eyes were dry from staring. He stopped walking to rub them.

Which is when the duke came around the corner at a very brisk walk. He saw Volio and stopped short. Volio lifted his lamp to see the duke better. His face was red, his eyes large and surprised. He wore a bronze jacket, and his hair was wet. “Sir?” Volio said.

“Volio?” the duke yelled. “What are you doing down here? Students are forbidden in the basement; you know that! And so late.”

Volio clenched his jaw. He was in a foul mood, and being scolded by this pretender to his throne was not helping. “I was just looking for something, sir.”

“In the basement?” The duke looked at him as if he were stupid.

Volio glared. “Yes, in the basement. Did you think I was confused about where I was?” Volio said with more venom than he intended.

The duke had been tapping his foot, as if irritated, but now he stopped. “Get out of here, Volio, before I expel you for violating the rules,” the duke snarled. He sounded angrier than Volio had ever heard him, which only made Volio madder.

“Expel me?” Volio said, and then uttered a harsh laugh. “You? Expel me?” The idea was outrageous, offensive to all Volio’s senses, and yet funny, too. As if the duke really had that power. As if his blood, weak and watered down, really gave him the rights to this school, which was so obviously Volio’s. He had the key, after all. He was the better scientist. He was part of The Society. The duke was nothing. Volio laughed again, and then spit at the duke’s feet.

In one fluid movement, the duke’s hand flew out and grabbed Volio by the neck, pinning him to the wall. “You’ve always been an arrogant prat, Volio. Perhaps you feel more entitled because of your father’s friendship with my father, or because your brother got away with breaking the rules. But, rest assured, you will not. I will expel you, regardless of your relations, and I will take a very great pleasure in doing it. Now, leave the basement.”

Volio felt his face turning red from anger and lack of air. “Or what? Or you’ll kiss me?” Volio asked in as nasty a voice as he could muster. The duke’s hand went slack, and Volio felt his body relax.

“What?” the duke asked.

“I saw you and Adams fighting. I saw you kiss, too. Is that the sort of thing you really want people to know about? The headmaster who snogs his male students. Wouldn’t go over very well, would it?”

The duke let his arm drop, color draining from his face, and Volio folded his arms in victory. The duke stared long and hard at him. “Leave now,” the duke said in a low, cold voice, “and I will do everything in my power to forget this entire night ever happened.” He stared at Volio in a way that made him feel as though he were shrinking.

“Fine,” Volio said, turning from the duke’s eyes. He stomped toward the lift, angry at the duke for thinking himself above him. He hated that no one knew—no one was allowed to know—how superior Volio was to all of them. He didn’t like waiting on his father and brother, on the society of slow-moving old men. He wanted to take Illyria now, and to take Cecily, too.

That thought made him angry at himself. If he had made an enemy of the duke tonight—and he had, unless the duke really could forget everything—then Cecily’s hand would be impossible. Perhaps he could bargain for it. When he ruled Illyria, he could let the duke keep his title, and his apartments, in exchange for Cecily. A marital truce, like royal families did to end wars. Certainly the duke wouldn’t be having heirs of his own, not if he was off buggering boys like Adams.

What was the duke even doing down in the basement? Volio felt a growl rising in his throat as he rode the lift up to the dormitories. It was unexpected. The duke had no right to be poking about where he didn’t belong, either.

He opened the door to his room and closed it with a slam. Freddy snorted in his sleep and mumbled the beginnings of the Hail Mary. Volio rolled his eyes and sat down in his bed, pulling off his shoes. He would have to continue his search tomorrow. Hopefully, his lost object wouldn’t cause trouble. It had the capacity for great violence, but only if activated the right way, and no one knew how to do that but Volio.

He lay his head down on his pillow, closed his eyes, and tried to fall asleep, and stop the grinding of his teeth.

* * *



THE duke ground his own teeth in frustration, but remained awake, working his way through the dark basement halls to the train. The encounter with Volio was unfortunate, and the duke felt guilty for letting his temper get the better of him. But he had been in such a rush that Volio’s appearance was an overly aggravating delay. And Volio, of course, had been an ass. But now that he had sent Volio to bed and shrugged off the blackmail—after all, who was going to believe a bitter student over a duke?—he gained control of his emotions and headed to the underground station, fondling the ring on his finger.

After his conversation in the garden with Ashton, the duke had retired to his water closet. He often did this after long conversations with Ashton, for they felt like long conversations with Violet, and long conversations with Violet made him feel in need of the relief only a warm soak could provide.

It was in the bathroom that the key to the key’s location had finally come to him. He lay in the tub and stared at the tiled wall, and noticed the fanciful adornment of gears that had been there for as long as he had occupied his father’s chambers. While he had always found the small circles with the gears inside them charming in a way that did not suit his father, that night they caught his attention in a new light, for he suddenly realized that they were the right diameter to fit into the small circles in the train. Naked and wet, suds rolling down his back, he knelt in the bath and tried to pry one of the circles out of the wall, but his hands were slippery and the tiles would not budge.

However, the gears in the circles would turn. He stopped trying to pry them out and looked at the pattern more carefully. It was a grid of circles, three rows of three, and each circle depicted a few gears, already interlocked. All but the center circle rotated, so he could turn the gears to face any way he liked. After a moment he noticed that if he imagined the outside gears as butting up against one another and not in separate circles, they could be made to fit together, and in doing so, they would also fit with the gears in the immobile center circle. He carefully turned each bronze disk so that the gears faced one another in a continuous system.

As soon as he moved the last gear into place, the center circle popped out slightly with a small ping. Ernest carefully removed it from the wall with a satisfied grin. It was a ring. A bronze ring with a large circle on its front, containing a number of small gears, like those in a pocket watch. Also like a pocket watch, there was a small knob on the side. Ernest twisted it a few times, and the gears spun slowly for moment, with a small buzzing sound.

Ernest finally understood. He hopped out of the tub, dried himself off, threw on some clothes, then headed to the cellar. He knew the way to the train well enough by now that he didn’t need a lantern to find his way there, but he brought one anyway and, after his brush with Volio, finally arrived at the train. He smiled as he stood on the station’s platform. Here, finally, was the door to his father’s secrets, and now he had the key.

Inside the train, he pushed all the switches and buttons. The tracks hummed, the train lit up, and the brake released, but still the train wouldn’t go. So Ernest took the ring from his pocket, wound the knob, and fit it into the small depression in the control panel before it could stop winding. A small click came from somewhere below him—a secondary brake?—and the train pushed forward on the tracks, into the darkness.

The train ride took longer than he had expected. It was dark outside the train, and he couldn’t see much, but it smelled like stone and wet earth. At least twice, he was sure that the tracks went over an underground river, and once, he thought that he had somehow gone through a river. Sometimes the train would squeal and totter, and Ernest would have to grab a wall for balance. Sometimes he thought he heard animals outside screeching. Where was he? Where was he going? He stared out the windows, but could see nothing but the darkness into which he was plummeting.

* * *



THAT night, like so many, Violet couldn’t sleep. All she could think about was her constant lie to the duke, and how much more wonderful life would be without it. She wanted to tell him the truth now. When she did finally manage to drift off, she had two dreams: In one, she told the duke, and he thought her clever for it and told her he loved her. In the other, she told him and he stood there openmouthed before telling her he could never love a girl so twisted and arrogant as she.

She got out of bed slowly and softly and crept from the room. She sometimes found the cranking of the gears to be a comfort, so she went to the students’ lounge to hear them better, but tonight, after an hour of listening, she did not feel soothed. She stood, spine rigid, headed to the lift, and took it down to the ground floor, and walked to the Great Hall. It was nearly empty and dark, lit only by a few golden lamps, but the sounds of the gears was strongest here.

Still in her nightshirt, she approached the central gear in the darkness. “Invention is the greatness of man” or, as Ada had said it, “humanity’s greatness.” In either case, she was surely a great inventress. She had invented an entire persona, a series of lies, and now all she wanted was to shrug them from her body and have the duke embrace her. She couldn’t keep up the façade much longer. She knew the end was in sight, less than two months off, but she still felt as though time could not move fast enough.

A sound came from the darkness, and the duke stepped slowly out of the shadows. “Sir!” she said in her man’s voice. “Sorry, sir. I couldn’t sleep, and I thought a walk would help me.” The duke said nothing, just stared up at the central gear. In the dim light, his skin seemed bronze. Violet looked down at herself. She wondered if it was light enough for the duke to see her, between disguises now: not quite a man, not quite a woman, her breasts unbound but her hair short, wearing just a white cotton nightshirt hanging to her knees.

And then, suddenly, it was like one of her dreams: She got down on her knees before the duke and confessed. “I need to tell you something, sir,” she said, the words pouring out of her unbidden but with great relief. “I am Violet Adams. That is, you have known me as both Ashton and Violet, but I am just one person. One woman. Violet. My brother was the man you met over Christmas, who said he was my cousin—also named Ashton. It was a stupid lie. That one, I mean, not the one where I disguised myself as my brother and came here as your student. That was necessary. You wouldn’t let women into Illyria, but I am worthy of being here. You know I am worthy of it, from my letters as Violet, and from my work as Ashton. And I just wanted to prove to you I was worthy …

“But then you started writing me letters, and talking to me about flowers, and I didn’t just want to be worthy of Illyria anymore. I wanted to be worthy of you. I … I love you, Ernest. And I hope, despite my gross deception, that you still love me as well. For I know you love me. You haven’t said so in your letters, but you asked me, when I was Ashton, if you could court me as Violet. And I said yes, because I love you.”

The duke said nothing. Violet felt tears begin to spill from her eyes, and she clasped her hands together. “Say something…,” she begged softly. “Anything.”

The clock in the hall began to chime three in the morning, and the sound of it echoed through the hall, louder than the gears. The duke looked away, and then suddenly ran from the room. Violet reached an arm out after him. “Ernest!” she sobbed. But he was gone. She cried awhile longer in the dark room, and must have fallen asleep for a while, because when she next had a thought in her mind, she was lying on the floor, her face sticky with salt. She pulled herself up and crawled back to her bed, not wanting anything but to close her eyes and make the evening end.