Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Book Club book Club, book Club book Club. Hello and
Speaker 2: welcome to Cool Zone Media book Club. I'm your host
Speaker 2: or reader or the person who's talking to you right now.
Speaker 2: My name is Margaret Kiljoy. And this is the only
Speaker 2: book club where you don't have to do the reading,
Speaker 2: because I do it for you. Sure, you might say
Speaker 2: to yourself, there's a lot of podcasts where people read fiction.
Speaker 2: How is that different? And the difference is that this
Speaker 2: is called a book club, so it's a book club,
Speaker 2: it's also a podcast. It's weird how things can be
Speaker 2: more than one thing at the same time. This week,
Speaker 2: I've got a short and I think a story you
Speaker 2: all will quite enjoy. I guess I'm always reading you
Speaker 2: short stories, but this is on the shorter side of
Speaker 2: short stories. It's a story called John Simnel's First Gosshaw Book.
Speaker 2: It's written by an author named Teagan Moore. At First
Speaker 2: was published in twenty twenty by the literary fantasy journal
Speaker 2: Beneath Ceaseless Skies. And if you're thinking to yourself John Simnel,
Speaker 2: I know all about John Simnel, then you are thinking
Speaker 2: differently than I was when I read the story. Because
Speaker 2: even though I read history books, for a living. I
Speaker 2: don't know everything about English history because I spent a
Speaker 2: lot of my life being like, well, I don't like them,
Speaker 2: and that's the wrong medieval because I obviously I'm obsessed
Speaker 2: with medieval shit. But you know, not specifically an expert
Speaker 2: in English history, even though I run a history podcast
Speaker 2: and have covered a ton of English things on the show.
Speaker 2: There's just a lot of it, Okay, there's a lot
Speaker 2: of the oldies sword times in England, y, and so
Speaker 2: I did a bunch of research about John Simnel. I'm
Speaker 2: gonna tell you about it, but first i'm gonna tell
Speaker 2: you about the author. I'm gonna tell you about Teagan Moore.
Speaker 2: Teagan is an aspirational farmer living on twenty Muddy Acres,
Speaker 2: about an hour outside of Seattle, Washington. She's been published
Speaker 2: in magazines including Asimov's Science Fiction Tour, dot Com, Clark's World,
Speaker 2: and others. She has a dog agility instructor, can't not
Speaker 2: look at crustaceans, and has a biologically improbable, entirely separate
Speaker 2: second stomach for containing dumplings. Deagan's great. You should read
Speaker 2: more of her stories. So this story is called John
Speaker 2: Simnel's First Gossawk, and the first time I read it,
Speaker 2: I was like, Yep, that's a name, and then didn't
Speaker 2: think about whether or not it had any historical significance.
Speaker 2: And then after I picked it for this show, I
Speaker 2: was like, I should really google this, so I did,
Speaker 2: and I think that this story is enriched by just
Speaker 2: the slightest bit of background. Last week on Cool People
Speaker 2: Who Did Cool Stuff, which if you're listening to this
Speaker 2: it could happen here feed. You should really check out
Speaker 2: the Cool People Did Cool Stuff feed, which is where
Speaker 2: my history podcast is. Last week I talked about Joan
Speaker 2: of Arc and the hundred Years War between France and England,
Speaker 2: and in that story, Henry the sixth is sort of
Speaker 2: the main antagonist, even though he's a little kid. Henry
Speaker 2: the sixth didn't manage to rule France in the end
Speaker 2: because a lady with a sword turned the tide of
Speaker 2: one hundred year War and slowly the French drove him out,
Speaker 2: putting a different asshole named Charles the Seventh on the
Speaker 2: French throne because you really can't win when you have
Speaker 2: a king. But back in England, Henry the sixth kept ruling,
Speaker 2: and then a ton of fuckery happened, and this is
Speaker 2: all like fourteen hundreds time or so. And the important
Speaker 2: thing is, at the end of all this fuckery, a
Speaker 2: guy named Henry the seventh came into power. But the
Speaker 2: fuckery continued during this fuckery just the academic word for
Speaker 2: complicated shit that I don't really feel like is worth
Speaker 2: explaining or understanding. That's what fuckery means in this context
Speaker 2: admits this fuckery. A common born boy named John Symnell
Speaker 2: was groomed to become a pretender to the throne. Basically
Speaker 2: he looked like he could be related to this like
Speaker 2: one royal who was locked up in the Tower of England,
Speaker 2: Tower of London, whatever, the prison for rich people, and
Speaker 2: so some people who didn't want the current king set
Speaker 2: up this common born kid, John to be the fake,
Speaker 2: rightful heir of the throne. When John was ten years old,
Speaker 2: and so he became the figurehead of a failed rebellion
Speaker 2: called the Yorkist Rebellion. He was crowned in Dublin as
Speaker 2: Edward the sixth. The reason he was crowned in Dublin
Speaker 2: the Irish supported the Yorkist rebellion because the Yorkist faction
Speaker 2: mostly just left Ireland alone like that was like kind
Speaker 2: of how that was? Like Their plan for Ireland was
Speaker 2: like huh, like, I guess we could call ourselves in
Speaker 2: charge but just not actually do anything. And the Irish
Speaker 2: people were like, yeah, that sounds good. We'd rather you
Speaker 2: left us the fuck alone. Whole lot of that throughout history,
Speaker 2: wanting England to leave you alone. Anyway, being a pretender
Speaker 2: to the throne didn't go well for our young John,
Speaker 2: but since he was all of ten years old, he
Speaker 2: was spared. He wasn't executed when the whole rebellion collapsed
Speaker 2: and he was put to work in the king's court. First.
Speaker 2: He was like the roast spit turner, you know, when
Speaker 2: they like kill a bore and then they have to
Speaker 2: like turn it on a spit. That was his job,
Speaker 2: which is a step down from king, although morally it's
Speaker 2: probably a step up. In the end he ended up
Speaker 2: a falconer. That's your history lesson. Now here's the story
Speaker 2: John Simnel's First Goshawk by Tiagan Moore. In the light
Speaker 2: of a single candle, the goshawk and I regard each other.
Speaker 2: Sleep presses against our eyes, but we are both obstinate.
Speaker 2: The hawk has run out of foul names to spit
Speaker 2: at me. He does not blink, so I try not
Speaker 2: to blink. The sallow light is golden in his livid
Speaker 2: golden eye. One of us will break and the other triumph.
Speaker 2: Though in the muffled dark of my room, I wonder
Speaker 2: if I might instead go mad. Or perhaps you're mad already.
Speaker 2: The goshawk suggests. This is how you break a hawk.
Speaker 2: Wait him out. It's simple but not easy. Eventually he
Speaker 2: must sleep. If the falconer is alert to see the
Speaker 2: moment his hawk concedes slips away to sleep despite his fear,
Speaker 2: then the bird begins to be his. It is a
Speaker 2: game of minds, not of dexterity, but strength. If the
Speaker 2: falconer sleeps, he simply begins the excruciating weight again the
Speaker 2: next day. If the hawk sleeps, however, then the bird
Speaker 2: has lost forever. And this is how you break a boy.
Speaker 2: Tell him he is king, simple but not easy. You
Speaker 2: must watch him hawk like to see how he slips
Speaker 2: beneath your lies. You must seem to believe it enough
Speaker 2: that the boy believes too. You must crown him and
Speaker 2: put him at the front of an army. If he fail,
Speaker 2: there is always another, handsome hazel eyed boy somewhere in
Speaker 2: the world, any one might do. If the boy believes
Speaker 2: that he is king. Though, and this is true, whatever
Speaker 2: circumstances befall him, however low he is brought, he can
Speaker 2: never completely unbelieve. I have toiled a lifetime at the
Speaker 2: hard labors of the low born, so much longer than
Speaker 2: the time I spent his claimant to the throne of England,
Speaker 2: designated by God in legitimate secession to take the crown
Speaker 2: back from Henry Tudor. For only one short year was
Speaker 2: I misled? One year which I, a small and frightened boy,
Speaker 2: spent under the spell of my own belief. One year
Speaker 2: in a lifetime of years, Yet which of these returns
Speaker 2: to me again and again? I hold my hawks to
Speaker 2: the right. The glove must be made to fit. Most
Speaker 2: of the King's falconers hawk to their left. I prefer
Speaker 2: the right. My forearm there is hardened, scarred from years
Speaker 2: at the turnspit, and smelted tough. It is an animal job,
Speaker 2: like an ass at a mill. I have heard that
Speaker 2: in some great Flemish houses they turn the spit with dogs.
Speaker 2: I imagine the work is worse for a dog with
Speaker 2: the riches of slow baked meat forever just beyond reach.
Speaker 2: Worse if they've once tasted it and know they'll now
Speaker 2: have none. The sky lightens, slow and patient as it
Speaker 2: bleeds into my room. The paling dawn swims flecks of
Speaker 2: silver and my tired vision. The goshawk and I have
Speaker 2: watched each other all the night. He looks to me,
Speaker 2: and his head tilts, taking my measure, he turns away.
Speaker 2: He's on me, lacking snub me. I say, I don't care.
Speaker 2: You aren't the first. His breast feathers puff enoughense. Few
Speaker 2: other falconers speak to their hawks. Certainly none have heard
Speaker 2: the hawks speak in response. Or perhaps they are wiser
Speaker 2: than I and simply pretend they cannot hear, much like
Speaker 2: you could pretend not to hear the ads that are
Speaker 2: now interrupting your story. But I want to say that
Speaker 2: this episode was brought to you by peasant rebellions exerting
Speaker 2: the power of the working class over the rich. Since
Speaker 2: before anyone bothered writing history down in books, You too
Speaker 2: can revolt against the modern day monarchs. All you need
Speaker 2: is a pitchfork, a torch, one hundred friends, and more
Speaker 2: interest in doing right than living to be old. Peasant revolts.
Speaker 2: They're fun until you google what drawn in quarter it is,
Speaker 2: and then they're no longer fun. Peasant revolts, and whatever
Speaker 2: these other the ads are, and we're back. The shaping
Speaker 2: of a free mind into a tamed one is a
Speaker 2: fascinatingly predictable process. You begin by stripping away good comes
Speaker 2: only from the master's hand. They receive nothing if it
Speaker 2: is not from you. Dress your beast so finely that
Speaker 2: it is impracticably conspicuously plumed in clothing unfit for an
Speaker 2: innkeeper's boy. If at home it eats pottage and barley bread,
Speaker 2: then feed it roast, mallard and stewed fruits from your
Speaker 2: own rich table. Give promises like tidbits, dreams like sugared almonds. Next,
Speaker 2: you must test the quality of what you've captured. Is
Speaker 2: the best suited. Hold it up to a trusted few
Speaker 2: for evaluation. Once fattened and finally dressed, if it is
Speaker 2: of any caliber, it will pass well enough. Then you
Speaker 2: hone it. Feed it by hand, gentle it, Teach it
Speaker 2: good French and a little Latin, show it courtly manners,
Speaker 2: and how to believe it deserves more than it has.
Speaker 2: Once the beast is trained, examine its skills at work.
Speaker 2: Make the trials easy so that failure is not catastrophe.
Speaker 2: Sit it beside you at dinner, and bid it speak.
Speaker 2: The dinners will grow grander, the guests wealthier. Its performance
Speaker 2: is more complex. It should be dutiful, but not slavish,
Speaker 2: proud as befits the high born, but also demonstrating bidability
Speaker 2: and tact. Only after much practice or the long training creances.
Speaker 2: Shed your creation unhooded and loosed upon the greater stage.
Speaker 2: Even then, it will always wear thongs at its wrists
Speaker 2: if escaped or even freed. Is something tamed and trained
Speaker 2: in this way ever its own sovereign. The master makes
Speaker 2: his mark not only on the body, but the mind.
Speaker 2: He is always there, silently governing, even if his touch
Speaker 2: is unseen. On the third day, the gosshawk closes his
Speaker 2: eyes on his perch. I let him sleep until supper, too,
Speaker 2: aching with exhaustion and relief to sleep myself. Then I
Speaker 2: wake him to celebrate by carrying him out to the
Speaker 2: sunny grass beyond the meuse. I bring him a haunch
Speaker 2: of rabbit. He examines the meat with one eye and
Speaker 2: turns his head away. You'll have to trust me eventually,
Speaker 2: I say, oh aye, says the gosshawk, voice rough and listless,
Speaker 2: And you'll trust me too, I wager. He lifts one leg,
Speaker 2: tugging the jesses, and my fist A man's words from
Speaker 2: the mouth of a bird. I am mad with the
Speaker 2: lack of sleep. The sunlight is so warm and tender.
Speaker 2: By close my eyes here I may sleep standing up.
Speaker 2: All boys think they are important. All you have to
Speaker 2: do to win one's heart is to agree. Father Simon
Speaker 2: told me I had been mislaid, a royal cuckoo in
Speaker 2: a sparrow's nest. This made my mother a whore and
Speaker 2: my father a cockold. But I did not consider the
Speaker 2: implications of the claim beyond its first greatest consequence. The
Speaker 2: king does what he likes, after all, and who's to
Speaker 2: stop him? Who's to judge? I would do what I
Speaker 2: liked when I was king if I obeyed well enough.
Speaker 2: Simon told other people other things about where I was
Speaker 2: come from and what my name was. They were free
Speaker 2: to choose amongst their preferred truths. I was not when
Speaker 2: I was called Duke of York. I believed I was
Speaker 2: the Duke of York when it became advantageous to be
Speaker 2: Earl of Warwick. Instead, I was Warwick whole heart, and
Speaker 2: spoke warmly of my uncle Edward, who had only days
Speaker 2: before been my father in Ireland. When I was King
Speaker 2: Edward the sixth, I believed that best of all, I
Speaker 2: was only ten years old when I was captured, and
Speaker 2: my false names stripped like layers of guilding, taken from
Speaker 2: me along with the fine clothing. I was taught again
Speaker 2: what to perform. After all these rehearsals. It was hard
Speaker 2: to take a role which did not come with finery
Speaker 2: horse to ride the blessings of nobility. I played it,
Speaker 2: though I put my heart behind contrition, bewilderment, innocence. It
Speaker 2: didn't matter if the role was true. I only needed
Speaker 2: to convince the court. Treasonous nobles are beheaded for treasonous commoners.
Speaker 2: Oh but death is so much worse, almost as bad
Speaker 2: as these ads. This podcast is brought to you by Swords.
Speaker 2: Get yourself a sword. Have you ever lacked confidence? Do
Speaker 2: you think that maybe what you really lacked was a sword?
Speaker 2: I think so. Swords they're what you can use to
Speaker 2: cut people. And we're back. The hawking master comes to
Speaker 2: try the goshawk. After I've had him a month at
Speaker 2: my side, he makes his kill. He flies to fist.
Speaker 2: The master offers a silver of cold mutton in exchange
Speaker 2: for the sparrow my hawk has taken. The hawk raises
Speaker 2: his broad barred wings and threat He hands the bird
Speaker 2: to me. Bloody minded, he says, you've still work to do.
Speaker 2: M now, Yes, sir, I say, wrapping the jesses around
Speaker 2: my fist. If you won't man fully, there's no use
Speaker 2: keeping him, Yes, sir, I repeat, obediently, bloody minded, The
Speaker 2: goshawk mutters aggrieved. Once the hawking master is gone, he
Speaker 2: has slept. I have slept. There is no reason I
Speaker 2: should still hear him speaking. Yet all this month he
Speaker 2: has spoken. His words show him to be indeed bloody minded.
Speaker 2: I hide my smile. I fly the goshawk alone, far
Speaker 2: from the meuse. He is a blade through the sky,
Speaker 2: an arrow when he falls into his stoop. Neither this
Speaker 2: hawk nor I were born into the service of the king.
Speaker 2: For me, that past life was squalid and ignorant. The goshawks,
Speaker 2: though with some other beast, entirely. He brings me a
Speaker 2: gory jed eyed starling, its black feathers flecked with brilliance,
Speaker 2: remind me of Simon's priestly robes. I let him keep it.
Speaker 2: After my Royal Army's defeat at Stokefield, I was imprisoned,
Speaker 2: not in the tower, but some nameless dark hole where
Speaker 2: I might be ignored. No, not ignored. There were rotten,
Speaker 2: mouthed men there who paid me attention I did not like.
Speaker 2: I was not a prisoner of the tower like a nobleman,
Speaker 2: but in squalor with common wretches. The death prescribed trees
Speaker 2: and as commoners as something small boys talk about, wide eyed,
Speaker 2: squeezing out every drop of sweet dread, but only if
Speaker 2: they can't imagine playing any part in it. It's less
Speaker 2: pleasant to dream of it if the dream might be
Speaker 2: your life. Henry called me to him, and like any
Speaker 2: tamed thing, I went willingly, though stupid with fear. Even
Speaker 2: walking to my doom, I felt terror and pleasure, both
Speaker 2: for I was not forgotten. Every boy likes to think
Speaker 2: they are important. The King forgave me and sent me
Speaker 2: to turn the spit. I thanked God, though it was
Speaker 2: animal work. The rest I was allowed to do on
Speaker 2: my own, though I never suppose that I'm free. The
Speaker 2: goshawk will eat from my hand. He will return to fist,
Speaker 2: and he does not bait, but he will not give
Speaker 2: up his kills mine. He hisses at the hawking Master.
Speaker 2: Wicked man, useless man. The hawking Master does not hear him.
Speaker 2: No other man seems to hear the hawk's voice, or
Speaker 2: at least none will admit to it. I have not
Speaker 2: the courage to ask. Perhaps I am mad. Perhaps the
Speaker 2: hawk is mad too. He certainly comports himself like a madman.
Speaker 2: The hawking Master offers the hawk a whole dead pigeon
Speaker 2: for a scrawny, fledgling crow. The hawk strides for the
Speaker 2: Master's fingers with his wrathful golden beak. Eat that yourself,
Speaker 2: he says, This one's mine. He does not belong in
Speaker 2: the muse, his body fierce but soft, his eyes golden
Speaker 2: and terrible. This closed in place offends him, offends God's
Speaker 2: hand which made him. He glares at me when I
Speaker 2: collect him the next morning, and mutes in a great
Speaker 2: silver spurt of shit. Goshawks are always the most trying,
Speaker 2: the hawking Master says, as we undo the goshawks, jesses,
Speaker 2: I put two back to the forest before I kept
Speaker 2: one on my fist. I will have another hawk in
Speaker 2: the springtime. I am at liberty to try again. We
Speaker 2: are all tamed by our circumstances. None of us is free,
Speaker 2: or perhaps we are all exactly as free as we
Speaker 2: wish to be. The hawk lifts from my fist, from
Speaker 2: the glove that covers my turn spit scars. It is
Speaker 2: a good glove, well fit to me and simple. The
Speaker 2: hawk makes one turn over our heads and drifts away
Speaker 2: into the sky. I suppose he is his own gosshawk now,
Speaker 2: and that's the end of the story. When I asked
Speaker 2: Hegan if there was anything important for you all to
Speaker 2: know about this story, she told me to say that
Speaker 2: she is the direct descendant of both the goshawk and
Speaker 2: John Symnell, and has shipped the two together. Well, rather
Speaker 2: history did. Because I don't see why Tagan would have
Speaker 2: lied to me about being a direct descendant of a
Speaker 2: pretender to the throne and a bird. I don't know.
Speaker 2: If you meet Tagan, you'd be like, yeah, that makes
Speaker 2: some sense. I like the story for a lot of reasons.
Speaker 2: I like this story because it's like simple and well told,
Speaker 2: and I like what the story talks about, and it's
Speaker 2: funny because it's like, you know, me, I like stories
Speaker 2: that where the metaphor is fairly blunt, you know, like
Speaker 2: it's pretty easy to see the connections that are being
Speaker 2: drawn between a commoner who is tamed into believing that
Speaker 2: he could be king and a bird, you know, a
Speaker 2: falcon or whatever, a gossawk. And I like it because
Speaker 2: it points out the ways in which you know, they're like, oh,
Speaker 2: once i'm king, i'll be free, and then you're like, well,
Speaker 2: you're still just you know, you still have other masters,
Speaker 2: and like we basically it's like the act of being
Speaker 2: tamed is what undermines your freedom or leaves you in
Speaker 2: this situation that whatever this story does a better job
Speaker 2: of explaining it, then I could explain it, and you know,
Speaker 2: just to I really like the lines we're all tamed
Speaker 2: by our circumstances. None of us is free, or perhaps
Speaker 2: we're all exactly as free as we wish to be. Also,
Speaker 2: I think it's telling that the gosshawk that wants to
Speaker 2: be free has to be bloody minded anyway. Peasant revolt.
Speaker 2: It always ends, well, that's our final sponsor, shout out. Well,
Speaker 2: I guess there's probably more ads at the end. But
Speaker 2: I don't know anyone who listens to the ads the
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Speaker 2: just listening to a bunch of podcasts while you're doing
Speaker 2: something else and you're like, oh, whatever cu'es up next
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Speaker 2: the other ads. But I want to shout out that
Speaker 2: if you're listening to this on the Cool People Who
Speaker 2: Did Cool Stuff feed, you should also check out it
Speaker 2: could happen here. And if you're listening to this it
Speaker 2: could happen here feed, you should check out Cool People
Speaker 2: Who Did Cool Stuff? And you should check out all
Speaker 2: the podcasts from Cool Zone Media and not any other podcasts.
Speaker 2: Except I can't really say that because I have podcasts
Speaker 2: that aren't on this network, like Live like the World
Speaker 2: Is Dying, which is on a different network called Oh God.
Speaker 2: I get Cool Zone Media and Channel zero Network mixed
Speaker 2: up in my head constantly because one of them. I'm
Speaker 2: on one network called CZM and another network called CZN.
Speaker 2: What are the odds? And none of the words are
Speaker 2: the same Cool Zone Media and Channel zero Network. They're
Speaker 2: all different words, but they have similar It's not an acronym.
Speaker 2: If it's it doesn't make a word, whatever abbreviation. I
Speaker 2: should be done. I'm done, goodbye, see you next week.
Speaker 1: It could happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from coal Zone Media, visit our website
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Speaker 1: You can find sources for It could Happen Here, updated
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