All Men of Genius

VI.



A LETTER can sometimes take many days to reach its destination. First it must be written, of course, then signed and sealed, and then given to a page to take to the post office. From there, it must be sorted, handed off to an officer of the post, who will deliver it the next time he is on the correct route. And if the letter one is waiting for is instead delivered to one’s twin, who decides to hold onto it for as long as possible for his own amusement, then it may take even longer.

Every day, starting just five days after her interview, Violet would go to Ashton’s bedroom before breakfast and knock gently on the door. Then, if he didn’t respond, she would knock louder, and if there was still no response, she would burst in in a flurry of white cotton and auburn hair. Then, shyly, with poorly suppressed anxiety, she would ask if he had perhaps received a letter from Illyria? The ninth night after the interview, he began locking his door. After the fifteenth, Violet had devised a machine to open it without the key. And on the eighteenth day, when he received her acceptance, steamed it open, read it, and resealed it, he decided that as revenge, he would keep it to himself for a while. Ashton was not cruel. Only after he confirmed that his sister had been accepted did he decide to hold on to the letter in secret. To keep failure from her would be mean-spirited, he reasoned, and would take the fun out of the prank, but to delay her success was a good joke.

Jack received his acceptance on the nineteenth day after their interviews, and came by the house to tell the Adamses and have a celebratory drink with them. This is when Violet first became suspicious. Ashton could see her suspicions right away, of course. The way she narrowed her eyes at him when Jack showed them the letter from Illyria; the way her sweetness toward him became saccharine and insincere, instead of pleading.

“How funny it is,” Violet said to Jack, looking at Ashton as she did so, “that your letter has already arrived. I suppose that since my letter is late in coming, I must not have been accepted.”

“I doubt that,” Jack said, drinking thirstily. “If I got in, you can get in. You impressed that Bunburry fellow, an’ if his eyes hadn’t been open, and he hadn’t coughed a few times, I would have thought he was asleep all through my interview.”

Ashton had heard all about both their interviews. Violet’s seemed promising, especially given the duke’s compliments, and Jack’s had been exciting, if nothing else. His new winged ferret had yawned when the cage was opened, and stretched before poking her head out the door. Soon after that she had bounded out, curiously sniffing the floor. Valentine said it was quite adorable but wondered if it really could fly, so Jack gave the professor a bit of bacon to hold out to the ferret. The ferret, smelling it, leapt into the air and flew straight at the bacon, snatching it from Valentine’s hands and retiring to the ceiling to eat. This is what had caused the outburst of laughter and clapping from both Valentine and the duke. Then they summoned a footman, who, with the aid of a butterfly net—Valentine had one in his office, as he often, if unsuccessfully, hunted butterflies in an attempt to grow their wings and attach them to canaries—on a very long stick, managed to catch the ferret and bring it back down to earth.

When they picnicked on the twenty-first day, Violet spent most of the day sighing and bemoaning her fate; without Illyria’s acceptance, she must, after all, marry and give up her life of invention. Jack was taken in by this and argued that her mind should not go to waste, but Ashton recognized her ruse and agreed that she should marry. “I think,” he said, grinning, “you ought to marry Jack here. Then at least you can keep on inventing. I’m sure all your genius will be attributed to him, what with you being a woman and all, but at least you’ll still be able to work.” Jack burst out laughing at this, and then blushed.

Violet crossed her arms. “I know you have the letter,” she said finally.

Ashton poured himself a glass of wine from the basket and bit into a cucumber sandwich. “What letter?”

“The letter! The letter from Illyria. You’ve got it, and you won’t give it to me. And that is a very cruel thing, brother.”

“Of course,” Jack said, nodding, “the letter would be sent to you, Ashton. You probably do have it. You’re a dog, Ashton. What a prank. What if she isn’t accepted at all? Then you’ll feel horrid.”

“You think there’s a chance I won’t be accepted?” Violet asked, jumping up from the picnic blanket.

“No, no,” Jack said, his hands held defensively in front of him, “I only meant that I agree with you. Ashton must have the letter. And it’s really a very cruel prank.”

Violet crossed her arms and walked away from the pair of them, annoyed.

“You have it, then?” Jack asked. Ashton nodded and sipped his wine. “Have you opened it?” Ashton nodded again. “Did she get in?”

“Of course she did. I wouldn’t be having so much fun if she didn’t,” Ashton said, and the two of them began laughing, causing Violet to glare at them from over her shoulder.

“You must let her have it, though,” Jack said, “or else she will kill you in your sleep.”

“I’ll give it to her before it goes that far,” Ashton said, “but she woke me before ten every day for a week. This is my revenge.”

On the morning of the twenty-third day, Violet strode into Ashton’s bedroom without even a knock, which gave Antony precious little time to gather the sheets around his naked body or hide in the closet. Violet stood over the pair of them, apparently only a little surprised to find her brother naked in bed with the coachman, even though Ashton had worked so hard to be discreet for the past week. Violet raised an eyebrow, appraising them. Antony cowered.

“Oh, all right,” Ashton said, and reached under his pillow and pulled out the letter from Illyria. “Congratulations. Now, leave my bedroom and keep your mouth shut.” Violet grinned, kissed her brother on the cheek, and left, opening the letter and reading as she walked. Ashton sighed and leaned back in his bed.

“What was that all about?” Antony asked. What he really meant was Will she tell anyone what she saw?

“Nothing of import, my dear boy,” Ashton said. “There’s nothing to worry that beautiful head about.” Ashton leaned over Antony and smiled reassuringly. Antony, reassured, smiled back.

* * *



THE duke was not reassured as he took the lift down to Illyria’s basement to hunt for monsters. This was one yearly tradition that he dreaded. It began the year after his father’s death, his first year running the college, when he had been roused from bed one night by a frantic knocking on his door.

The servant there, a young maid, was pale and shaking. “There’s a monster, sir, in the cellar.”

After dressing and going down to the cellar to straighten things out, he couldn’t disagree with the maid. The thing that had crawled up through the corridors of the basement could be described in no other way than “monster.” The maid had found it while retrieving flour from one of the storerooms. She had opened the door, and there it was, anxiously licking up a spilled bag of sugar. If it resembled anything, the duke thought, it was a squid—dark and dragging a score of tentacles behind it—but with two disturbingly human arms reaching out of its loglike torso. Huge alien eyes stared out from above the tentacles, and a large toothed mouth crowned its head. It lay on the floor, about as long as the duke was tall, and moved by pulling itself forward on its human arms, crawling like a man dying of thirst. It was covered in water and mold and dirt, as though it had come through long tunnels to get there. It had finished the bag of sugar, and was gorging itself instead on the flour the maid had been sent for. Upon sensing the duke’s entry, the thing turned at him and opened its mouth wide, showing a circle of sharp fangs and emitting a loud hiss. The duke took a good long look at it; then, with one motion, unholstered his pistol and shot the thing three times in its head. It slumped down dead into the bag of sugar, and then rolled over the floor a few times, landing by the duke’s boots. The duke had swallowed, managed not to vomit, and then, with the help of some of the male servants, he had wrapped the creature up and burned it in the garden. He then locked up that storeroom and forbade anyone to use it again. He sent some additional servants to search the rest of the cellar. They found nothing else, though the duke suspected they hadn’t looked very thoroughly. It was a huge basement—so huge, the duke had no idea of its scope or where the creature could have come from within it, so when nothing else followed the creature up in the next few days, he felt it had probably come alone.

The duke’s father had had many secrets, the duke knew. And this creature could have been one of them. It could also have just been a castoff from former experiments by the students or professors, a random mutation from chemicals consumed by an animal thought dead. But to the duke, it was more a physical representation of his father’s secrets, rising up through the cellar to try to take back Illyria. And the duke knew his father had had more than just the one secret. So from then on, in case others welled up, every year before classes began, he had taken a trip to the basement to make a personal tour, lantern in one hand, pistol in the other.

The lift shook as it hit the basement floor, and the duke stepped out. He stood at the entrance of a series of dimly lit halls, like a maze, all grime-covered stone and gas lamps that had gone out years before. In the time since that first encounter, the duke found nothing else to warrant the use of his pistol, and he had begun to feel as though he probably never would—that when he shot the grasping creature, he had killed the last of his father’s secrets. But several years back, the students began using the basement as a place to initiate the first-year students, and so the duke wanted to be sure it was as safe as he could make it.

He generally explored only the area around the lift—that was where the storage rooms were, and where the students went for initiation. Beyond that, to the areas where the walls curved and twisted in unpredictable ways, where the air seemed damper and faint mechanical screeches crept around corners, he did not go.

Tonight’s explorations were the same as in every year previous. The basement was dark and smelled of rust. Things that he could not see brushed up against him, and he had to clench his jaw at times and reassure himself that it was only a basement, and that he was the Duke of Illyria. There was nothing to fear down here, he told himself.

Not one part of him believed it.

No one knew the reason behind his annual forays. If asked, he said he was taking inventory. Once, he told a serving girl he had been close with about his real reason for coming down here. She called the trip “monster hunting” and insisted on coming down with him. They found nothing, but he had made love to her pressed against the dirty walls, her red hair a candle flame in the dark. He smiled as he stalked the halls, remembering that night. He wondered if there were other women who would go monster hunting with him. Women with fierce gray eyes like those of Miss Adams.

He was nearly done exploring. So far, he had found nothing, to his relief, when he heard footsteps behind him, and turned with lantern and pistol both outstretched.

“S-s-sir!” said a frightened-looking Professor Curio.

“Curio,” the duke said, relaxing the arm that held the pistol, “you startled me.”

“S-s-sorry, s-sir. Are y-you d-d-doing your annual t-tour of in-in-inventory?”

“Yes. And I’ve found nothing out of order.”

“G-g-good.”

“What are you doing down here?” the duke asked, tilting his head slightly.

“J-just pre-preparing for the y-y-year,” Curio said, not meeting the duke’s gaze. The duke paused, but didn’t press further. Curio twitched suddenly in the darkness.

“Good, then,” the duke said. “I suppose I’d best get to bed. Let me know if you find any monsters down here.”

“A-any o-o-other monsters,” Curio said, nodding.

“Good night, Curio,” the duke said, and walked off toward the lift. He was anxious to shower off the grime of the basement and go to sleep.

“G-g-good night s-sir,” Curio said, standing alone in the darkness as the duke’s swinging lantern bobbed out of sight. In the shadows, the sound of footsteps echoed through the basement. Then those faded, too, and there was only the sound of the winding gears.