Origins

“But what is the necklace, and how did you know about my dream?” Constance asked.

Agatha studied her daughter, and not for the first time thought that her fine features, fair, flawless skin, and fiery auburn hair were bound to break someone’s heart one day. Agatha sighed.

Constance obviously took her mother’s hesitation as reluctance.

“Come on. Tell me what you know. Please,” she said.

“Very well.” Agatha sat back on Constance’s straw mattress bed, took a deep breath, and began.

“The emerald in that necklace, as well as being precious, is ancient, and to understand it, you need to know its history. What you saw in your dream is some of that, but obviously not all. The jewel comes from ancient Egypt, from the time of the Pharaohs and Cleopatra herself, who was obsessed with emeralds.

“It was mined in a place called the Emerald Mountain, Wade Sikait, between Luxor and the Nile. The Egyptians mined there because they believed the stones represented fertility and rebirth, could cure eye disease, and conferred riches and power.”

“Well, if you have one, you’re hardly likely to be poor. Or at least not for long, are you?”

Agatha laughed at her teenage logic.

“That’s true, but an emerald helps you to gather riches…”

“Then why aren’t we rich? If you have it, why aren’t we living in a castle?” Constance challenged and sat forward.

“I don’t need a castle. I have riches beyond material things because I have you and you’re worth all the emeralds in Christendom…”

“But…”

Agatha smiled at Constance’s frown. “You’re still young, but one day you’ll understand what treasures are available in this world without money. After all, don’t forget Midas’s touch was a curse.”

Constance crossed her arms and slumped back on her pillow.

Agatha continued. “Even the church believes that emeralds worn as a talisman can make people more eloquent, improve people’s memories, and sharpen the owner’s wits. Also, mystics from the East believe emeralds confer their owners with knowledge of the soul and the eternal. And I believe that is what you have witnessed…”

“What do you mean?”

“Constance, you really shouldn’t frown so much. If you make that face every time I try to teach you of the things that I know, your face will quickly become lined and creased. Relax your forehead.” She smiled as her daughter worked to relax her brow. “There, that’s better.

“Anyway, as I say, you have seen into the eternal. You have seen the emerald’s past. A past that has been told to each of its owners over the years. They took it from the ground of the Emerald Mountain towards the end of the mine’s life, when it was becoming exhausted and when mining was extremely dangerous. There was a large honeycomb of tunnels carved out of the rock, and there were no wooden props used to support them, so they were prone to collapse. On the day they excavated it, as you saw, part of the mountain collapsed and killed the miner who found it.”

“But the hand and the fingers… If I saw the past, how…” Constance stopped and sobbed at the memory.

Agatha reached over, hugged her, and stroked her hair. “You’re wondering how the dead man pointed at you?” she said.

She felt Constance nod into her shoulder.

“I have wondered that myself, many times, as I too saw the hand point at me in my dream, and after a lot of study, I think I have discovered it has to do with the Egyptian God Nehebkau.”

Constance sat up and sniffed back her tears. “Who?”

“Nehebkau. The snake god. He was an Egyptian god of the afterlife. His role was to judge a person when they died. The Egyptians believed people were only alive because they had ka.”

“What?” Constance asked.

“Ka. Think of it as their soul. The Egyptians thought that ka left someone’s body when they died and they also believed that people lived again, but only when ka was restored. It was Nehebkau who judged and decided who would have it restored and be reborn. That is why the Egyptians preserved the bodies of their dead until Nehebkau could decide to restore them to life. The Egyptians thought he was all powerful and that fire, water, or magic couldn’t hurt him.”

“But what has he got to do with the necklace?” Constance asked impatiently.

“I’m getting to that,” Agatha laughed. “Well, emerald necklaces, or Amulets such as the one we have, were often found in burial sites and coffins to help protect the deceased on their journey to the afterlife and being reborn.”

“But what does that have to do with the dead man’s finger?”

“Sorry, I’ve just remembered I must make a poultice for Madam Giffard’s leg.” Agatha struggled to her feet, groaning, her old bones fused and stiff, and put a pot of water on the fire to boil.

As she worked, she continued, “Well, I don’t know for certain, but I believe that because of the number of people who died during the emerald’s excavation, and it being washed by the blood of so many innocent people, it was tainted by those needless deaths.”

She reached up and pulled herbs from the bundles hanging from the rafters and added them to the pot.

“I believe Nehebkau saw what happened to the emerald and wanted to leave a message for those greedy enough to have emptied the mountain of its riches. The accusing finger pointing at those of us who live reminds us that greed and material goods will not help in the afterlife and beyond. Quite the reverse, in fact. As Christ also taught us - but much later than the Egyptian gods - the rich and the powerful will not inherit the earth, the poor will.”

Agatha stirred the pot, and a smell of mint and thyme filled the confined space. She bent over the pot and added rosemary.

“In fact, Cleopatra herself - she who took most of the jewels from the mountain - was killed by a snake, which was his sign. So perhaps that too was a god taking his ultimate revenge on her for laying waste to his special mountain.”

Agatha took some tree bark from a basket and tossed it into the pot. A musk-like aroma filled the cottage.

Constance watched her mother, then asked, “But how did you get a precious stone that was dug up centuries ago?”

“I don’t know every step the stone has taken on its journey to get to us, but I know some from its previous owner. It would appear that not everyone who owned it knew its history. Only those of us ‘open to the influence of the spheres’, know what it is and where it came from…”

“‘The influence of the spheres’, what do you mean?”

“Those of us who can perform magic,” Agatha said, and studied her daughter.

Constance gasped. “Me!?”

“Yes, of course you. You are my daughter, and you know what I am…”

“Yes, but… but… I didn’t know I could…” Constance sat back in shock.

Her mother smiled. “Neither did I. After all, the ability only reveals itself when we reach sixteen. Before that, no one can be sure who will or won’t be blessed. I didn’t develop and begin my training until I was nearly seventeen and none of my six brothers or four sisters became proficient, despite mother trying to help them. I always hoped that you would be able, but wasn’t sure you would, she said with tears in her eyes. “That you can, means a great deal to me.”

She watched Constance run her elegant thin fingers across her rose-coloured lips and thought about what she’d just heard. Agatha knew it was a shock, after all, she remembered not believing and arguing with her own mother that it wasn’t possible, when she’d found out.

Constance looked up, her gaze distant, then she looked at her mother. Agatha smiled and nodded.

“So, when will you teach me?” Constance asked.

“Well, it looks as if I have already started…”

“Maybe you could tell me the rest of what you know,” Constance whispered.

Agatha nodded. “I first found out about the amulet when the person who owned it brought it to me because he thought it cursed. It had come down to him from his grandmother, who’d inherited it from her mother. In turn, he wanted to pass it on to his daughter, who was sixteen and to be betrothed. He was rich and felt it made a worthy dowry.”

She stirred the pot.

“But on the wedding night, the daughter had the same dream as you, and she woke her parents with her screams. They rushed in and tried to console the girl and her new husband, but she was too distraught, driven mad by that vision and other things she had seen in the jewel.

“The man who brought it to me told me of the other things she had seen, but that can wait for another day. For the moment, all that matters is that he wanted to destroy the emerald. He tried smashing it with a hammer. But it just glanced off and didn’t even mark the stone. He then tried to burn it, but it emerged intact from the ashes. As I said, Nehebkau is too strong, and will not be destroyed. The man wanted rid of it, so he threw it away, but when he woke the next day, he found it on his doorstep. Nothing he could do would rid him of it. He sold it, but it came back, and he had to repay the money he got for it. Nothing he did could get it to leave him. It was not ready to go.”

“So it moves on its own?” Constance asked, her eyes wide as her mother moved around the cottage, picking up muslin and a piece of twine.

“Yes,” Agatha replied as she spread the cloth out across a bowl on the table and took the pot over. Reaching in with a spoon, she pressed the mixture against the edge to squeeze out some of the water, then placed the herbs on the muslin. She pulled the square of fabric into a purse and tied off the top. Then she turned to Constance. “It has a life of its own and having failed to destroy it, nothing the man did could get rid of it.

“Finally, in his desperation and having heard rumours about my abilities, he sought me out. He wanted me to remove the curse from his family in whatever way I could. It took me a long time to work it out, during which he locked the necklace in a trunk in his house, but finally, I realised I had to make it come to me…” Agatha stopped and considered how best to continue.

“What? How?” Constance asked as the silence extended.

“Well, have you never wondered who your father is…?”

“No! You told me he was dead, that he’d died. I mean… you… him?” Constance stared at her, her mouth open.

“Well, he is dead. I had nothing further to do with him after he’d left, but I heard.”

“But how could you?”

Agatha shrugged. “Well, I was unlucky in love. After all, I am a witch and that does put some men off…” she smiled at her own joke, but Constance just stared incredulously at her. “And he needed help and… well, so did I… I needed an heir, someone to pass on the family business to.” She smirked, but Constance just shook her head wearily and closed her eyes.

“Look, he was attractive and, as I say, desperate. He would have agreed to anything. Mind you, he didn’t seem to have much of a conscience about what he was doing, despite being a family man…”

“Enough! Please spare me the details. But you’re telling me I have a half-sister somewhere…” Agatha saw a flicker of hope and longing in her daughter’s eyes.

Agatha shook her head sadly. “No. What had happened and what she’d seen drove her mad and she took her own life. He had no other children, so when he died everything went to a cousin of his. I tried to find out if there might be something left for you, but I’m afraid not. He could never acknowledge you as his.”

Constance looked crestfallen. “So all I got is a cursed piece of jewellery that’s much too good for me to wear and which might drive me mad?”

Agatha walked over. She took Constance’s hands in hers and looked at her. “You are not mad and won’t ever be. You will be strong enough to resist it. But you’re right, it can’t be seen and nobody else must know about it.”

“So, how did you hold on to it? Why didn’t it go back to him?” Constance sighed.

“It seems that it stays with blood relations. The only way to rid yourself of it is to gift it to your children. He kept coming here until I knew I was carrying you, and then he left the emerald with me, and it has stayed ever since. He paid me a reward, and that was it…”

“But why did you want it?”

“Because I know what it is and what it can really do. And you or I may have need of it in the future. I haven’t told you everything there is to know about it… but that will have to wait, because now I need you to go into town, to the butcher, to collect the pork chops, bacon, and sausages… and this time, don’t forget the head and trotters.”