62 pages • 2 hours read
Deborah HarknessA Discovery of Witches
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2011A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 31-35Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 31 Summary
The ghost of Diana’s father joins her in the oubliette as she listens to the rest of her mother’s story. Rebecca describes how the shadowed prince finds little Diana but can’t get down the hole to help her. Little Diana finds a silver ribbon tied around herself, tosses it to the top of the hole, and flies up after it. Matthew’s voice brings Diana back to the present. He opens the covering of the oubliette and tells Diana she needs to fly out. Diana isn’t sure she can trust Matthew after what Satu said. Rebecca reassures Diana, saying Matthew is the one they’ve been waiting for. Diana flies into Matthew’s arms. The three rush to the helicopter and return to the château. Diana goes into shock and Matthew gives her a drop of his blood to sedate her. Baldwin is grudgingly impressed with Diana’s injuries.
Matthew, Ysabeau, and Marthe tend to Diana’s wounds. Matthew confesses to killing Eleanor St. Leger in Jerusalem, to killing Gillian, and to slipping into Diana’s Oxford rooms and using his blood to drug her. He shows Diana her back, which is “flayed and burned” and marked with symbols (400). Diana describes most of what happened to her in La Pierre. Diana must return home to learn to use her magic.
Chapter 32 Summary
Baldwin suggests that Diana’s capture feels like a stratagem and tells them to act before the Congregation does. Before leaving, Baldwin resentfully accepts a letter detailing his orders as a Knight of Lazarus. Matthew and Diana arrive at the Bishop home in Madison, New York. The white clapboard house is old, haunted, and sentient enough to act out. Sarah and Em wait outside while Matthew and Diana tour the house and let it become accustomed to them. They settle in Diana’s parents’ old room. Tabitha, Sarah’s cat, immediately takes to Matthew.
Em is charmed by Matthew, but Sarah is not. Sarah uses magic to heal Diana’s injuries and sees that Satu tried to use an opening spell on Diana’s back—something one never uses on living beings. Sarah can’t mend two of the scars: a crescent moon and a star. Satu branded Diana with Matthew’s seal, shaming her as Matthew’s “property” (421) and showing that witches know about the secret Knights of Lazarus. Diana apologizes for snooping through Matthew’s desk. Diana, angry at Sarah’s attitude toward Matthew, calls up witchfire. Matthew calms her down and explains about the Knights.
Chapter 33 Summary
Diana eavesdrops on Matthew’s conversation with Em and Sarah. Matthew can’t believe they let Diana go on so long without developing her powers. Sarah retorts that they didn’t know how strong her powers were. When they tried to teach her after her parents died, Diana withdrew. They promise to teach Diana everything, but it will take time. Matthew argues that they don’t have time: The Congregation isn’t playing games.
Diana thinks she must be a monster for her mother to have bound her magic. Feeling trapped, she inadvertently summons a witchwind. Em says her parents just wanted Diana to be safe. Diana thinks it is her fault her parents died and runs into the woods. Matthew follows and reassures her. Diana realizes that Rebecca’s bedtime stories were designed to help Diana remember her magic. Rebecca’s binding spell was set to last until Matthew—“the shadowed man”—arrived to protect her (428). Matthew goads Diana into trying to defend herself. He plays cat and mouse with her, frightening her until Diana closes her eyes and uses her magic. She opens her witch’s third eye and flies above the trees to Matthew. She creates a microcosm of her shimmering energy and hands it to him. Diana wants him to train her to fight like his knights. Diana apologizes to Em and Sarah.
Chapter 34 Summary
Diana’s magic continues to emerge. When Diana unconsciously calls the butter from the refrigerator, Matthew realizes her magic reacts to her needs. The house indicates it wants to tell them something. An envelope with Diana’s name on it emerges from the wall. It contains a letter from her mother written on Diana’s seventh birthday and a note with three mysterious lines that read: “It begins with absence and desire, / It begins with blood and fear. / It begins with a discovery of witches.” The envelope also contains one of the missing illustrations from Ashmole 782.
The letter explains that Diana is special—her parents spellbound her to hide her from the Congregation—but now it is time for Diana to learn about her magic and the secrets of the illustration, which came in a letter from Israel when Diana was three. They think the picture represents a wedding between Diana and the shadowed man. Rebecca admits she tied Diana’s magic to her love for Matthew, but only Diana can free it. Diana was also born with a caul, which places her between worlds. Rebecca tells Diana not to avoid her destiny. Diana’s grief pours forth as witchwater.
The Ashmole 782 illustration shows the “chemical wedding” (445) of mercury and silver: A golden-haired woman marrying a pale, dark haired husband, while people and animals, including a wolf and unicorn, look on. The woman wears Matthew’s crest of star and crescent moon. Matthew thinks that each kind of creature must have one of the missing pages.
Chapter 35 Summary
Everyone ponders the illustration and the mysterious note and speculates about what the “discovery” of witches is, why it mentions fear and desire, why the queen wears Matthew’s crest, and whether they will have to travel to Jerusalem for more info. They notice a message from Diana’s father on the back of the letter. In a quote from Albert Einstein, Stephen urges Diana to embrace the mysterious. Diana learns that her father could timewalk. Diana recognizes the handwriting from one of the penciled inscriptions in Ashmole 782, and believes her father wrote it. Matthew is certain Stephen bewitched Ashmole 782 so only Diana could retrieve it.
Sarah says Diana has been timewalking since she was three years old and went back to her own birthday party. Sarah notices that Diana’s tea is a contraceptive. Diana feels confused, wondering why Marthe wanted her to drink it, knowing that Matthew cannot father children. Matthew and Sarah make potions from the ancient Bishop grimoire to try and get information from the Ashmole 782 illustration. Marcus and Miriam arrive to share news with Diana that they have not yet told Matthew. They get a chilly reception from Matthew and a warm welcome from Sarah and Em. Marcus and Miriam agree the illustration is a picture of Diana and Matthew in the alchemical step of conjunctio. Marcus uncomfortably says their news can wait until tomorrow, but Miriam asks Diana what comes after marriage. Diana replies that conceptio—conception—comes next. Diana faints.
Chapters 31-35 Analysis
Fear tied to both protectiveness and possessiveness encourages secret keeping. Matthew neglects telling Diana about breaking into her Oxford rooms, giving her blood to sedate her on the plane, and killing Gillian, afraid to tell Diana because he could lose her. Diana is also subject to secrets from her own family, like Rebecca’s secret that Diana is spellbound. Diana sees all these secrets as deceptions that indicate a lack of trust. They make her feel “betrayed and alone” (425). But Diana herself has also been keeping secrets, a habit ingrained by her mother to keep “my secrets inside, Mama, just like you wanted” (400). Diana has also been lying by omission: she hasn’t confided fully in Matthew about the number of missing pages in Ashmole, or about her mother saying that they have been waiting for Matthew. Diana hypocritically excuses these omissions saying she doesn’t think they’re important, or that she’ll tell Matthew in time. She is reluctant to give up keeping secrets despite her mother’s insistence that the time for secrets is over. Diana’s reticence to fully confide reveals her fear of betrayal and a desire to maintain a sense of control.
Diana struggles with self-pity over her powerlessness, encapsulating the ongoing theme that fear and desire are conflicting yet complementary emotions that both motivate and restrict, and help define one’s identity. She is emotionally damaged by Satu’s assault; doubting her own magic and her ability to protect herself. Her reaction to her magic stems partly from fear, and partly from desire.
Diana also displays conflicted feelings about her desires for protection and independence. Diana accepts being branded as Matthew’s “property” and at times is, “content to let him do whatever he thought best” (404), but she also chafes at being sheltered. Matthew gives Diana a new nickname, “la lionne,” the lioness, because of the fortitude she showed under Satu’s torture (and for her August birthday). But at the same time, he tells Diana that “even la lionne needs her protectors” (398). He realizes she is strong-hearted, but defenseless.
The continuing theme of species prejudice dominates these chapters. Baldwin dislikes Diana because she is a witch who threatens their family and way of life. The sentient Bishop home is more tolerant than its owners: It welcomes the vampires despite Sarah’s conditioned dislike and fear of the species. Sarah and Matthew clash, only ceasing hostilities when each realizes the other is sincere in their love for Diana. They come to respect, if not like each other.
The house gives up one of its secrets: the page from Ashmole 782 that shows conjunctio, the allegorical chemical wedding of the Red King and the White Queen, or sulfur and mercury, considered to be the masculine and feminine elements. Conjunctio is a marriage of opposites and is the goal of alchemy—the union is a critical part in the creation of the philosopher’s stone. The fact that the wedding figures in the Ashmole 782 illustration resemble Diana and Matthew suggest that their marriage and unification will produce a miraculous child. Miriam realizes this, as she prompts Diana for the next alchemical step in the process, which is conceptio, or conception.
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