Origins
CHAPTER ONE

Normandy France 1065 A.D.

Short skirts, bare chests, their dark skin, and black shoulder-length hair like nothing she’d ever seen before.

“Look Out!” the foreman shouted and waved at the surrounding men.

Outside the dream’s grip, Constance felt the weight of the emerald, the size of a baby’s fist, pressing down on her chest as she lay in her bed. It seemed to get heavier by the second, and, as if from a distance, she sensed her sleep-sealed eyes skittering around behind her lids as she ‘observed’.

There was a tremor. The rocks thrummed and rumbled. She felt it through her body. She sensed the earth shift. The ground rippled and buckled. Thunder seemed to rent the air and her throat tightened with fear as a large section of the cliff cracked overhead. The side of the mountain sheared apart and slid, as if in slow-motion, towards the mine workers.

She was a passive observer above the maelstrom of dust and chaos that surrounded her. She writhed and thrashed around as she tried not to watch, but she had no option. It was as if she was there, and everything was happening around her.

She was desperate to look away from the scene of devastation, but couldn’t.

The earth bucked like a wild horse. Hundreds of men cried out and swarmed out of the low square mine entrance carved from the solid rock, as enormous boulders tumbled from above. The heat of the desert made the scene shimmer, and she saw the sweat glistened bodies as they ran for their lives. Their feet scrambled over the rocky surface, their faces contorted in panic. They were like rats coursing through the town to avoid fire. Shoving and pushing each other out of the way and stamping over the fallen and slower men in their desperate race to escape. She heard screams cut off as the enormous slabs of rock, the size of houses, slammed into them as they tried to flee.

The running men, the shifting screed, the raining rocks, the buckling ground made it seem as if the whole of the mountainside was on the move.

She watched men die as massive boulders smashed into their bodies. Wild-eyed donkeys, frothing at the mouth with terror, their backs ladened with sacks of rock and rubble, tried to tear themselves away from the avalanche, but were tethered to their posts. No one thought to let them loose, and they too were caught up in the carnage.

Blood splattered the sandstone and ran in rivulets over the sands like wax dripping down a candle. Pools formed in hollows before breaking free and flowing downhill, the crimson staining the feet of those fleeing, and marking them with death.

The torrent of rock didn’t discriminate between the slaves and their masters. She saw men barely clothed, in filthy rags, fall alongside those in fine skirts and sandals, the footwear giving them no advantage over those in bare feet as the crowd swelled and more men joined the stampede, desperate to escape.

The mountain settled. An eerie stillness disturbed by the pounding of bare feet, the cries of the running men, the screaming of the injured and dying, the braying of the wounded and terrified donkeys. There were occasional rumbles as massive boulders and debris, rocks, pebbles, and gravel came to rest.

Constance looked through the clouds of dust and sand at the scene of devastation. Her chest heaved as if she herself had been running. She saw piles of rubble and rock with limbs sticking out from underneath. Men lay fallen where they’d been hit, their arms and legs bloodied stumps where they’d been crushed. One man scrabbled desperately at the ground around his trapped legs, trying to free himself, then passed out with the effort, the ground around him crimson and darkening.

And then she saw it. The flash of bright green against the stained desert sand. Something clasped in a fist, only the forearm and hand visible from beneath the fallen rock. She couldn’t tear her gaze away. It was as if someone was bracing her head between two hands, forcing her to watch. Her eyes burned from the heat and the dust, but she couldn’t move. A bubble of panic rose in her chest. She’d been holding her breath as the action unfolded around her, but she exhaled heavily as the fist opened, and the emerald fell from the hand to the earth. She looked on in horror as suddenly the index finger straightened and pointed directly at her as if saying it was her fault, accusing her of all that had taken place.

Constance screamed, and the world darkened.

The sharp stench burned her nose. She screwed her face up and tried to move away, but the smell followed her. Eyes clenched tightly closed, she violently shook her head, trying to make it stop. Tried to make herself smaller. Gasping, her breathing ragged and her heartbeat loud inside her head, she didn’t want to open her eyes, scared of where she might be and what she would see. The pointing finger swam into her memory again, and she whimpered.

“Constance,” someone whispered. “Come back to me.

“It’s alright.” A woman’s voice. “Everything is fine. You are safe. You’ve been away, but come back to me…”

She thought she recognised the voice but didn’t trust herself. She didn’t know what was real or not. She thought she had been asleep, but she’d been somewhere else, and it terrified her.

“Constance, it’s me… mother. Come back to me…”

Her face softened and her eyes relaxed, but she didn’t open her eyes.

Not yet, she thought. I must be sure.

She took a couple of deep breaths. She smelt lavender and straw, not desert, sweat and fear like earlier.

She sighed and slowly opened her eyes.

At first everything was a blur, as if she was behind a muslin curtain, but gradually the scene came into focus. She felt someone brush her damp locks from her forehead and stroke her hair.

“There,” the woman whispered. “Everything is fine.” Her mother looked down at her, her brow creased with concern.

Constance couldn’t move. She just stared. Her mother smiled. Her kindly dark-brown eyes crinkled at the edges and her bright red hair tumbled forward like a canopy between them.

Constance breathed in the familiar smell of her mother - lavender, chamomile, cloves, basil, rosemary, and thyme - the tools of her trade.

She closed her eyes again and rolled her stiff neck. Something was missing.

She jolted and her hand clasped at her neck.

The necklace had gone.

“Looking for this?” her mother asked. She sat on the bed and held up the thin filigree gold chain with the massive emerald.

Constance nodded, not trusting herself to speak.

“Really?” her mother looked at her quizzically. “You still want it. Even after what just happened to you?”

Constance frowned at her mother, who sighed and hung her head. “I had hoped you wouldn’t replace it”

She looked sideways at her daughter. “I thought I’d hidden it well enough… but evidently not well enough for inquisitive young women,” she said, without rancour.

Constance licked her parched lips and went to speak. Her throat dry and still tight from the panic of her dream, her voice rasped. “But why do you have it, and why do we live like this if you do?” Constance glanced around their rough, stone-walled, windowless cottage, just one small room with a mud floor, a fire pit under a hole in the straw roof, and an alcove for the rush mat bed. A table, a chair, a couple of stools, and a cooking pot their sole possessions. “It must be worth a Duke’s ransom…”

“I can’t sell it…”

“But why not? It….”

“No!” Agatha shouted.

Constance clamped her mouth shut; her eyes wide. Her mother had never raised her voice to her before, and it shocked her.

“Sorry, sorry, but you have seen what it is…” Agatha smiled sadly and patted her arm.

“But it was just a dream…”

The look on her mother’s face stopped her. “Wasn’t it?” she asked.

“What, the mine in Egypt? The landslide? The dead and the dying? And the finger pointing at you?” Agatha stared at her; her eyebrows raised.

Constance gaped at her mother. “But… but… how did you know that’s what I saw?”