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

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

It could happen here as a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from coal Zone Media, visit our website cool zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It could Happen Here, updated monthly at coolzonemedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.

It could happen here as a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from coal Zone Media, visit our website cool zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It could Happen Here, updated monthly at coolzonemedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.