A Discovery of Witches - Deborah Harkness [82]
“I’d recently finished reading a book manuscript that was soon going to press. It was written by a Cambridge naturalist.” Matthew put down his glass.
My hand flew to my mouth as the significance of the date registered. “Origin.” Like Newton’s great work of physics, the Principia, this was a book that did not require a full citation. Anyone who’d passed high-school biology knew Darwin’s On the Origin of Species.
“Darwin’s article the previous summer laid out his theory of natural selection, but the book was quite different. It was marvelous, the way he established easily observable changes in nature and inched you toward accepting something so revolutionary.”
“But alchemy has nothing to do with evolution.” Grabbing the bottle, I poured myself more of the precious wine, less concerned that it might vanish than that I might come unglued.
“Lamarck believed that each species descended from different ancestors and progressed independently toward higher forms of being. It’s remarkably similar to what your alchemists believed—that the philosopher’s stone was the elusive end product of a natural transmutation of base metals into more exalted metals like copper, silver, and gold.” Matthew reached for the wine, and I pushed it toward him.
“But Darwin disagreed with Lamarck, even if he did use the same word—‘transmutation’—in his initial discussions of evolution.”
“He disagreed with linear transmutation, it’s true. But Darwin’s theory of natural selection can still be seen as a series of linked transmutations.”
Maybe Matthew was right and magic really was in everything. It was in Newton’s theory of gravity, and it might be in Darwin’s theory of evolution, too.
“There are alchemical manuscripts all over the world.” I was trying to remain moored to the details while coming to terms with the bigger picture. “Why the Ashmole manuscripts?”
“When I read Darwin and saw how he seemed to explore the alchemical theory of transmutation through biology, I remembered stories about a mysterious book that explained the origin of our three species—daemons, witches, and vampires. I’d always dismissed them as fantastic.” He took a sip of wine. “Most suggested that the story was concealed from human eyes in a book of alchemy. The publication of Origin prompted me to look for it, and if such a book existed, Elias Ashmole would have bought it. He had an uncanny ability to find bizarre manuscripts.”
“You were looking for it here in Oxford, one hundred and fifty years ago?”
“Yes,” Matthew said. “And one hundred and fifty years before you received Ashmole 782, I was told that it was missing.”
My heart sped up, and he looked at me in concern. “Keep going,” I said, waving him on.
“I’ve been trying to get my hands on it ever since. Every other Ashmole manuscript was there, and none seemed promising. I’ve looked at manuscripts in other libraries—at the Herzog August Bibliothek in Germany, the Bibliothèque Nationale in France, the Medici Library in Florence, the Vatican, the Library of Congress.”
I blinked, thinking of a vampire wandering the hallways of the Vatican.
“The only manuscript I haven’t seen is Ashmole 782. By simple process of elimination, it must be the manuscript that contains our story—if it still survives.”
“You’ve looked at more alchemical manuscripts than I have.”
“Perhaps,” Matthew admitted, “but it doesn’t mean I understand them as well as you do. What all the manuscripts I’ve seen have in common, though, is an absolute confidence that the alchemist can help one substance change into another, creating new forms of life.”
“That sounds like evolution,” I said flatly.
“Yes,” Matthew said gently, “it does.”
We moved to the sofas, and I curled up into a ball at the end of one while Matthew sprawled in the corner of the other, his long legs stretched out in front of him. Happily, he’d brought the wine. Once we were settled, it was time for more