London, 1859

He stumbles over the last step up into the dock. The winter sun, filtered through the tall, arched windows, strikes him squarely in the eyes. The brooding courtroom presses against him, suffused with the murmurs of the gathered crowd and the weight of expectation. His stomach churns ominously and he fears a return of the chronic ‘stomach catastrophe’ that has dogged him all his life.

Opposite, raised above the seated ranks of ecclesiastical advisers, sit the Privy Council of the Church of New Albion. Like a pantheon of judgment, cloaked in ecclesiastical grandeur, they dominate the room. In the centre sits his eminence Cardinal Erasmus Wilberforce, like a cruel effigy of Christ at the last supper. On either side of him sit the senior members the council; proud, bristling peacocks in their purple robes.

The Ecclesiastical Court was in session.

The prisoner in the dock feels vitally exposed - a specimen pinned to one of his own dissecting boards. His heart pounds and his legs weaken beneath him. In that instant, the true gravity of his situation strikes him. Everything he held sacred—a lifetime of dedicated study, exploration and contemplation— now stands as evidence against him. The long years of meticulous investigation, conjecture and finally revelation seemed but the errand of a fool. And it is this very truth, the wondrous underlying simplicity of nature, that is to be ridiculed as the ramblings of a heretic. In this Court, in this New Albion, faith rules with an iron hand, unyielding to the light of inquiry. It was this faith that now sought to unmake him.

Charles Darwin turns to face the benches around the court. A sea of eyes peer at him intensely, eager to see this dangerous radical brought before them. The feral faces of the newsmen poised hawklike over their notebooks. The pious widows crouched like crabs in their black shawls and heavy spectacles. The haughty bleached faces of the Church elders, secure in their pomposity and salvation. And lastly, the common people; a jostling throng excited in anticipation of the sport to come.

Darwin sensed their scorn, their visceral contempt. But he also detected something else - an unease, a confusion, and perhaps even fear. He could sense their puzzlement. Who was this villain, this monster, this insurrectionist? How could this obscure man of letters threaten the very foundations of faith? For surely this was no demon that stood before them? This was merely a man - and not a very impressive man at that. The tall, stooped figure of Darwin seemed no more dangerous than one’s gentle grandfather. Surely this was no firebrand, no tub-thumping activist, no seditious pamphleteer?

For surely this was too be the case of the decade. 

If there was one thing that the Church did well it was public justice - a righteous justice that screamed its divine provenance and authority. Justice and obedience to the Holy Law was a pillar of moral society that underpinned the entire power structure of New Albion. It was system that had been refined and embellished since the last days of Elizabeth and the founding of the new Catholic state. The ensuing two hundred years had been witness to many show trials. A panoply of false prophets had been cleansed by the fire of Holy justice and burned on the pyre of martyrdom.

And today all London was buzzing. Surely this was the most important trial since that of the Neo-Lutheran rebellion some fifty years earlier. While these earlier heretics had challenged the authority of the Papal Godhead, they still adhered to the revealed truths of the scriptures. Even Galileo had been easily quashed by the terror of the Inquisition.  In Darwin however the Church had a man that denied the very truth of creation and the nature of man. For Darwin posed a threat based not on dogma but on empiricism and explanation. The Church had no time or understanding for the scientific method. Darwin wielded a sword of a type the Church had never seen before. It was a sword that must be splintered and cast to the winds.

The presiding clerk rises, clears his throat and turns to address the defendant. 

“Charles Darwin, you are hereby arraigned on charges of heresy, blasphemy and treason against the Holy Church of Rome, the laws of New Albion and the sacred word and true testament of the Lord God. How do you plead?”

Darwin raises his head and meets the stony gaze of Wilberforce:

“Not guilty”

—-oOo—-

Sarawak, The Malay Archipelago
Three years earlier

The sun sank quickly in a blaze of orange behind the tangled mass of jungle. Blackness settled like a velvet blanket over the matted mangrove. A cacophony erupted from the forest canopy; a living orchestra where the players competed tunelessly for discordant supremacy. Tree frogs raise themselves on hind legs, inflate their voice sacks and call sonorously from branch to bough. The swarming cicadas chirrup rhythmically against a soprano counterpoint from the bats. Occasionally a distant howler monkey barks a gruff challenge to a rival.

Alfred Russel Wallace lay on a bamboo camp bed within a cage of draped muslin The sputtering spirit lamp sends manic shadows flickering up the walls of the tent. The fever had returned some days ago and he had been unable to progress deeper into the swamp. Around him the tent is filled with the fruits of his obsessive collecting.  A trestle table stacked with assorted glass specimen jars, each containing some new and as yet unclassified variety of living form. On the floor crude wicker cages hold small living specimens; mice, lizards, small monkeys and amphibians.  The air is stale with animal waste, formaldehyde and human sweat. The worms, the frogs, the endless beetles - sketched, labelled and catalogued in a minute copperplate hand. This was his trade, his passion, his livelihood. 

The fever pulls at his mind like a tide on which he ebbs between moments of lucidity and hallucination. A brief  clarity gives way to disjointed images and fragments of crazed conversations. An insanity of nightmare images, impossible chimera: beetles with the limbs of tree frogs, monkeys with the bodies of scuttling mangrove crabs.

The journey from the coast into the mangrove has been a descent back in time. It was a journey toward the very beginning of the world, where vegetation ran riot across the void and trees grew immense in their struggle for light. The atmosphere is hot, thick and sluggish. The distinction between sky and land blurred into an impenetrable green miasma of forest.  Three months of arduous travel by native canoe followed by a long trek though thorny scrub had sapped the soul of every member of the expedition - even the native bearers.

Doubts and worry crowded in on Wallace.  Why was the dispatcher late arriving this month? A week overdue already and many of the specimens were beginning to spoil. Could he trust his native porters for another month? He knew they had been stealing from him for weeks. He began to have real fear for his safety at their hands as things became more difficult and supplies began to dwindle.  His meagre funding was being rapidly depleted by the cost of paying his small army of collectors. Wallace wondered that if he survived this trip, was it not time now to return to England?  He had amassed enough specimens to make a good financial return from the scientific institutions. His agent in London had been making good sales of his earlier consignments and the demand for novel specimens seemed strong as ever. His reputation as a collector and as a serious scientific naturalist were surely solid enough by now for him to forge a career in one of the new museums? Was it not time to settle down at last, away from the sapping squalor and disease of the tropics?

The small hours often brought with them Wallace’s recurring nightmare. The fecundity and ferocious all-consuming power of creation seemed overwhelming. Life. There was just so much of it. The jungle teemed with endless squirming forms, swarming, biting insects and burrowing eyeless nematodes. Every handful of jungle floor was alive with myriad forms of fungus, worms, lavae  and creatures too small for the eye to see. The Creator it seemed was inordinately fond of beetles. Jewelled beetles in endlessly varied colours and adaptations, each exquisitely and delicately fashioned perfectly for its station in life. The soil was a boiling cornucopia of strange forms that erupted seemingly from nothing. Each life a brief struggle for survival without meaning or purpose.

Wallace was far from alone in puzzling over these questions. Why had the Creator given rise to so many species? Why were many of them so closely similar, varying from each other only in tiny degrees?  Where forms of one type fixed forever in time or did they slowly morph into new forms?

Wallace’s childhood reading of the Book of Genesis had taught him that each ‘kind’ - each variety of mammal, bird, fish or reptile - had been brought divinely into being on the day of Creation. Thereafter these separate lines of creation had remained unchanged over eons. And yet the recent evidence from the rocks of the Earth showed that this could not be the case.  The science of palaeontology was unearthing increasing numbers of fossils showing that in unimaginably ancient times all manner of strange and unknown creatures had existed. Many showed radically different forms from current known species. After existing for some millions of years, they would disappear from the fossil record.  In other words, new kinds seems to be created from nothing, only to eventually succumb to extinction. Was Creation a perpetual process driven by the ever-guiding hand of God rather than a once only event? 

And what of the supposed harmony of nature? The world it seemed to Wallace was not in a state of balance, a God-given order where every creature was exquisitely  matched  in perfect concordance with his neighbour. Life was no picnic - it was a bloody slaughterhouse where the struggle went on generation upon generation. The competition for light, for food, for air and procreation was pitiless and relentless - without cause or reason and without explanation.  Every living thing was in a high-stakes game where the rules were not fixed but changed radically over time. 

How had God’s Eden become this Golgotha?

But perhaps the greatest concern to Wallace was Darwin. 

He had sent a letter to England some months ago but received no reply. After years of contemplation, he had managed to distill his thoughts on a possible mechanism that would explain the diversity and fluidity of nature. His theories were tentative and not supported by conclusive evidence. Wallace however was convinced that he had grasped the essence of how and why living forms change over immense periods of time. To commit his ideas to paper was an act of courage, perhaps even recklessness.

And what of Darwin? Wallace feared he had caused offence to the great man in voicing his own theories.  Was he held in ridicule as some uneducated buffoon meddling in affairs which  were the preserve of educated gentlemen? Gentlemen like Darwin, with background, breeding and a famous and prosperous family. Darwin was already something of a celebrity in the clandestine scientific circles in the great centres of English learning. Wallace in contrast was a mere grammar school boy, son of a failed businessman and apprentice to a land surveyor.

Had he overstepped the mark with his presumptuous letter? Had Darwin cast it into the fireplace in contempt or amused his scientific peers with its contents? These doubts swarmed riotously through his fevered mind  while outside the tempest of life roared unabated like some mindless ocean of endless possibility.

Around three in the morning Wallace became aware of something moving within the tent. Two dark forms were crouched over him, black and featureless as the night itself. One came suddenly closer and a strong hand gripped his throat. Partially hidden by a cloak, it was a face that showed only eyes that burned with an inner zeal.

“Mr Wallace” came the half-whispered voice. “We have been tracking you for some days now and are pleased to make your acquaintance at this late hour. Please do pardon our intrusion - particularly as you seem unwell.”

The hand was removed from his throat and the speaker stepped back, pulling aside the mosquito netting to leave Wallace exposed on the bed.

“Who are you? What business do you have here?” said Wallace “Who let you in here? Where are my porters?  Who are you to trespass into my camp at this hour of the night?”

“It is your work that concerns our visit tonight Mr Wallace” said the second hooded figure. “We have good reason to believe that your work is leading you into unsound conclusions - conclusions that are deemed subversive to the good order of Christian society. Do you recognise this letter Mr Wallace?”

A folded parchment, scuffed at the edges, was held in front of his face. Even in the dim flickering light, Wallace recognised his own handwriting. The letter to Darwin dispatched some months before. His stomach lurched at the dire implications of the discovery of the letter. Had his letter never reached Darwin after all?  Was this a mimeograph copy and had the original been forwarded to Darwin?  Were his words and the years of work that lay behind them to be ground into the mud of the jungle floor and lost forever?

“Your letter was intercepted in London prior to its delivery.  It was addressed to a Charles Darwin of Down House in Kent.  This Darwin is a subversive who has been known to us for some years.  He has dangerous associates with heretical ideas that seek to undermine the authority under which our society is governed. These ideas are treasonous blasphemies against the word of God himself. Your words, Mr Wallace, your so-called theories, run parallel to the wild thinking that runs like a cancer beneath all that is good and true in the world. I believe Mr Wallace that your work has beguiled you into blasphemous territory. You have been led astray in thought and deed by devilish influences. Perhaps by the very devil himself.”

The speaker drew himself up to his full height.

“Alfred Russell Wallace, you have been tried in your absence by the Ecclesiastic Council for Heresy. You are found guilty of treasonous trespass against the laws of God and of the Church. The sentence for such crime is capital and final. May God have mercy on your immortal soul.”

Before he could react, Wallace felt the thin wire of the garrotte slip over his head and tighten around his throat. A third unseen assailant standing behind him pulled the wire tight with viscous force. It cut deeply into the tissues of the neck, severing the jugular and the windpipe at once. Russell could utter no sound, but lay gasping for air as the lifeblood poured from his neck onto the matted floor. With a final feeble attempt to lift his arms, Wallace lay spent and lifeless.

And then the tent was empty, save for flickering of spirit lamp and the inert body on the bed. 

Outside in the jungle countless living beings would die that night, as they had every night for untold millions of years. On this night however, one man’ died alone on a fetid camp bed on the edge of a swamp. But it was the idea that also died with the man.

Now it was up to Darwin alone.