Hex

by Jenni Fagan

King James’s enemies will shudder. Will his wife? Anne: fourteen and wed to a man who likes men and is paranoid he’ll be caught out for it.

A woman’s voice is a hex. She must learn to exalt men always. If she doesn’t do that, then she is a threat. A demon whore, a witch – so says everyone and the law.

I was already in hell and they were the demons surrounding me, and it is for their crimes I will die!

We must take what talent is in us naturally and bend at the feet of a male angel (fallen and evil), our only want to do his bidding, to kiss his rancid arse. Our tongues (especially) must not be our own. To curse. To use words. To have them hang on the air . . . Who would listen to the tongue of one who has kissed the Devil’s arse?

There’s not a storm on this earth didn’t come from a woman – it’s what happens when they clip our souls!

I’ve got the voice of a siren – it’s not a voice to launch a thousand ships, it’s a voice to sink them.

His toxic bile does not belong in my throat to make my gut acidic and corrode my body as well as mind and soul. I am a healer. I was born like this. I am a pure one. I cannot choose to live, but I can decide to leave this world with men’s hatred as the strongest mark on me.

I’d plucked a single flower and placed it in a tiny green bottle on the mantelpiece, and when they were torturing me I tried to keep my eyes fixed on it.

You are a river. I am a river. Your consciousness flows to me. Mine to you.

If you question your brother, even, who claims to love and respect you, how offended will he be that you think you have the right to do such a thing?

As the priest steps up to the cell door, Iris hides in the corner where he can’t see her. She has placed herself exactly where she can watch him. I know she’d like to pluck his eyes out. Drop them in the hangman’s bucket. Let them scoop those out instead of my head.

I hope when they set me alight black butterflies fly up and out everywhere.

sobbing.

We are just women with power and skills and an innate knowledge. That’s what makes us scary. Who are we? We are many.

I will speak, and nobody will stop me now. It is my decision. They can’t hang me twice. I am not yet dead in heart and mind. They have pushed me beyond all things. Before I stand in front of God, I will tell the truth so I am not tried on arrival as a liar in the next world. I feel so guilty.

I can’t control it any more, I place a hex on every witness who takes glee in this – may a plague arrive one day to cast down every last one, may it pursue their children, and their children’s children. If your grandmother took pleasure in this, may you pay for her sins.

We ascend higher and higher, away from Castlehill and her gently swinging corpse. Away too from mine. I’ve never felt a stronger beat to these wings.