Hesketh is Teskhamen’s fledgling and ghostly spouse. She is best known for being a founder of the Talamasca. She appears in Prince Lestat (2014), Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis (2016), and Blood Communion (2018).
When Teskhamen flees from the Druids and his oak tree, after turning Marius into a vampire, he encounters a woman living alone in a meager hut. She is badly deformed, with twisted limbs and skin full of warts and pockmarks. Many mortals cruelly call her a witch. Teskhamen sees beyond her exterior hideousness, finds a very beautiful woman deep inside, and learns that her name is Hesketh. Due to his own deformity from the Great Burning of 4 C.E., Hesketh takes compassion on him, invites him to stay with her, and the two take care of each other. With his supernatural powers, he gives her warning whenever people are approaching; he defends her whenever anyone attacks; his Fire Gift intensifies the fire beneath her cauldron to make it boil and bubble like magic; and he reads the minds of mortals and tells her their secrets.
In time, their love for each other grows. Because of her kindness, and because of his love for her, he turns her into a vampire, against all the ancient rules that he once lived by, which state that no one physically deformed can be brought into the Blood. They live together for the next six hundred years, while Teskhamen continues to heal, recover his former power, and gain new abilities that he’d never had before. They are timid at first about killing and drinking blood, drinking from thieves they find on lonely roads. But as time passes, they grow bolder and invade castles and fortresses.
Despite the fact that Hesketh is very strong and powerful as an immortal, she cannot escape the torture she feels at being immortally deformed. In the same way that mortals were frightened of her appearance before she was given the Dark Gift, mortals continue to scream in fear whenever they see her, not only because of her vampiric threat but also because of her deformity. Full of anger at her outer ugliness, Hesketh becomes argumentative with Teskhamen. Their bickering increases over time until their disagreements divide them. One night, when she is alone, she enters a village where a mob overwhelms her and burns her alive. Teskhamen hears of this, destroys the village and everyone in it, and then buries Hesketh’s ashes near an old monastery in France, hoping that her soul will find rest. Mourning the loss of Hesketh greatly, he stays in the scriptorium near the monastery and rises every night to light a lamp and place it over her unmarked grave. He stays there for a long time, hoping to see Hesketh once more, not wanting to go on without her.
In the spirit realm, Hesketh encounters another spirit named Gremt, who has the ability to incarnate by gathering motes of dust and other minuscule particles to himself to shape his organs, bones, flesh, teeth, hair, and other mortal externals, to the point that this new incarnate form can wear clothing. Gremt teaches Hesketh how to do this, and when she is finally able to maintain a form that Teskhamen can see, she comes to him and reveals that she not only is able to incarnate her spirit form but is also able to remove all of her defects and reveal the true beauty that she knows that she always had on the inside in life, with flaxen hair, a tall and straight body, and skin that is soft, pale, and shimmering. She is so incarnate that Teskhamen can touch her with his hands and embrace her with his arms and even kiss her lips, all of which he does.
Inspired by Gremt’s desire to more fully understand the supernatural world, Hesketh forms an alliance with him and Teskhamen. The three of them make it their mission to gain knowledge about ghosts, vampires, witches, and anything else that no mortal or immortal has been able to explain hitherto. Their alliance is the inception of the Talamasca. Mortals join their quest. Hesketh, Teskhamen, and Gremt form the anonymous Elders and select a few mortals from each generation to guide the Order into new eras of learning and growth. As time wears on, Hesketh, Teskhamen, and Gremt withdraw from the Talamasca, until the Order forgets about them.
Hesketh and Teskhamen remain together into the twenty-first century as supernatural spouses, he her Blood Husband, she his ghostly wife. They eventually resettle in the Replimoid colony in rural England, although Teskhamen also visits the Court of the Prince in France.
For more perspectives on Hesketh’s character, read the Alphabettery entries Great Burning of 4 C.E., Gremt Stryker Knollys, Talamasca Order, and Teskhamen.