Girls Gone Canon Cast - The Book of Dust Episode 1 - La Belle Sauvage Chapters 1-3

Episode Date: September 25, 2020

Gather round for a reading from The Book of Dust, Chapters 1-3 of the Gospel according to Malcolm. Chloe and Eliana begin the later released prequel to the His Dark Materials series, following Malcolm in Oxford.  Please note that unlike the His Dark Materials episodes, La Belle Sauvage episodes will be spoilers all with the exception of The Secret Commonwealth.  Chapter 1: The Terrace Room Chapter 2: The Acorn Chapter 3: Lyra --- Eliana's twitter: https://twitter.com/arhythmetric Eliana's reddit account: https://www.reddit.com/user/glass_table_girl Eliana's blog: https://themanyfacedblog.wordpress.com/ Chloe's twitter: https://twitter.com/liesandarbor Chloe's blog: www.liesandarborgold.com Intro by Alexander Nakarada; Background music from Bensound.com

Hello, and welcome to Girls Gone Canon, covering His Dark Materials, Book of Dust, La Belle Sauvage, Episode 1. I am one of your hosts, Chloe. I am another one of your hosts, Aliana. Today we are covering chapters 1 through 3 of Lebel Savage, and we'll talk a little bit more about what that entails in a bit, but for some of you, this episode might sound a bit familiar, and that's because we had previously released this episode and pre-recorded it a few months ago to release to our patrons in the stranger tier and above five dollars and above

so for the rest of you who are getting it now welcome to our read-through of la belle savage if you are part of the public there might be some parts that sound a little bit strange like as though we might have time traveled back in time and it's not just that we've done it within this very book, which goes all the way into the past of the world in His Dark Materials, but it's also because we originally released this in the summer of 2020. Yes. And moving forward right now, it is the autumn of 2020. We will be covering La Belle Sauvage monthly in our usual His Dark Materials slot the last week of the month.

When the show premieres season two in November, we will also be covering that weekly. So once we finish up La Belle Sauvage, it's probably going to be spring of 2021 and the show will end in winter. So we'll end up switching over to Amber's Spyglass, hopefully come spring of 2021. Yes, I'm excited for the show. As you all know, we've talked a little bit about what's in the trailers. And I don't know, just really looking forward to that in general. But it's just around the horizon now, you know, end of the year might be here, but before we know it, or it might not, I don't know how time works anymore but it's passing that's for sure theoretically and it passes really quickly in the book of dust we start our first

book around the time of lyra's birth and i don't think that that's too spoilery and i like to call the book of dust which includes la belle sauvage and the secret wealth a sandwich series because it sandwiches the his dark material series right now it's an open face sandwich we are missing the top of the sandwich it could be or it could be like a double down oh we're missing its bottom i mean isn't the bottom isn't the bottom labelle sauvage or the secret common mouth and then and then His Dark Materials is the filling we are going to get very into

many philosophical or theological depending on which world you're from discussions on sandwiches and what kind of books these are but it is it is a companion trilogy to the main series so you have His Dark Materials, you have Northern Lights, Subtle Knife, Amber Spyglass, and then you have the Books of Dust, which include La Belle Sauvage, The Secret Commonwealth, and a third untitled book so far.

I don't think that's been released to anyone that we are waiting for very patiently, very patiently. So we'll see. Yes, there are a couple of novellas as well, which we for the most have covered one of also in our patron episodes. But you know, for now, let's talk about the book of dust. Eliana, how do you feel about this book? I you know, I'm itching for the Eliana perspective on all of this. I'm very excited because all I did was bug you for months straight. I read this book on the way to and from your home. I finished it after I left your home.

You did. Wow. That's meaningful. I know. And you did this for me. We used to be allowed to be in the same place. Yeah. Two moms, one podcast.

Trust your heart. let fate decide so yeah um what i thought about lavelle sauvage is it was in some ways very different right from his dark materials but the beginning of the book strikes me as very similar right in tone and feel to the beginning of historic materials you get that same sort of childish whimsy of entering this world and like things are cute and shit in oxford right i mean yeah just like northern lights yeah you've got like the you've got like kids who are just like out there living running around a secret yeah then then yeah then they start witnessing a secret and then they're like what do i do but we've got a lot of that and i think that the trout inn is a really fun setting for that to all start out in and also

the um the abbey it's an abbey right The Priory of God's Tower is really beautiful. Priory. So I really like that. I like Malcolm a lot. And I like the descriptions of food, as always. I like the peacocks. Something that I think I was thrown off about, though, is how we then go into

the flood part, which I understand how we transition into that, but then it kind of just becomes that, and i feel like we don't quite get a full resolution at the end it just ends with like doesn't like malcolm faint or something and i'm like and then it's like cut to black so that i think is something that kind of threw me off a little but otherwise i don't know i have to think more about like, it as a whole. And I also haven't like reread this, right? So this is

You're gonna find a lot more. Yeah. Through this. Yeah. Well, and I don't, I've only read it the one time. And then I've gone back and read bits and pieces. So I reread these few chapters, and I did skip ahead up Sala and on just a couple rereads of those lightly kind of skimmed but I don't want to spoil that I like rediscovering this new stuff and

I thought it was really different when I read it because maybe it's because the amber spyglass is an emotional freaking roller coaster like I got barreled into by a freight train holy shit i'm sorry i am a grown ass woman and if you do not sob like horrendously at the goodbye and we don't we don't get to talk about this yet so this is kind of like fun we're time traveling with you all we're experiencing some emotions before they happen in official girls gone canon canon yeah the end of that book is just like sucker punches you really hard each time it doesn't each time i was like still pretty fucking devastated after i think i've said it again before but i finished rereading the amber spyglass like coming off a red eye flight jumping into a series of many meetings because i wasn't able to sleep on the flight. I had

big plans for me. And then I'm just an emotional wreck on the way to these meetings like, oh my god, Will and Lyra. And then I think I've said I imprinted on fucking Daniel Bedingfield? Was that his name? Yeah. Gotta get through this guy. If you're not the one guy.

Yeah, if you're not the one. If you're not the one and then now I've decided there's no logic. There's kind of logic that that's will and lyra's song for no reason it's not even that great of a song yeah yeah so yeah that's pretty sad uh i'm the story many reasons that it was that song of all the songs yeah a lot of things to be said about no this fucked me up and it's all your fault honestly so i'm gonna i was so mad at you i was like why didn't you tell me and you're like i did kind of try to tell you and i don't know what you expected like you have already read the other two books. It's just like when

at the end of Subtle Knife there's a certain character that dies that you might know about. My favorites. Hester. That's soon. That's next month. But they kind of don't. You know, you've got that happy ending of like, they live on together as part of the universe.

And that's supposed to be a happy ending. But this was different. It was springy, plucky it was springy and plucky and then it got weird and dark and stormy and then like jumping to a lot of different things

and ideas and it was all of course just trying to lead up to Lyra and how she ends up right at jordan college but it's a hell of a story to explain it it's so good like some parts are weird and dark but otherwise it is such a story yeah it is it is such a story and it focuses so much on malcolm and then he just faints at the end and I'm like oh okay that's it and and then my understanding is that the secret commonwealth doesn't express I and I guess we don't need it right I don't know because we're just like whatever we know what happens to Lyra

from there on out well but at the same time also Lyra's Oxford uh Malcolm plays a part in that right but like we don't pick up on does someone give Malcolm some tea when he wakes up? There's none of that resolution of how he feels. He's just like, okay, I got her there, and my understanding is the secret commonwealth is like a time skip to, what, 20 years into the future, basically, for him.

So it's just like, well, clearly Malcolm is fine. And we knew that Malcolm was going to be fine, but I'm just like, damn. It is kind of abrupt. Someone give that boy a blanket. Well, I think that boy got more than a blanket. I think he got plot armor.

So I think he'll be okay. Well, no. Actually, I have qualms about what I just said too. But let's get into La Belle Sauvage. Because before we give you all of our la beautiful secrets about this la beautiful book we don't want you to know how the sausage is made we want you to know how the sausage is talked about so we're going to start with chapter one the terrace room yes so our story opens up three miles up the river tem from oxford at the prairie at of gode, where the nuns conduct their holy business. Across from

the nuns is an old, comfortable inn called The Trout, decked out with peacocks. Their names are Norman and Barry. Along the river terrace. And we also have a landlord's son. It's Malcolm. He's age 11. He works as a pot boy. He's listening in on people drinking, chatting,

some scholars, some laborers. He's stocky, ginger-haired, inquisitive, and while he has friends, he's independent. Preferring his demon Asta and his canoe, which he had named La Belle Sauvage. My fan cast for Malcolm is Carl from Jimmy Neutron. Oh, I don't- I see it. I see it. gets described as like pudgier throughout this book I realize so I just like always think that might be him he's Carl from Jimmy Neutron and then

I guess he gets a glow up someday I mean we don't know that he could still look like that right I don't know if they described him as like super hot in the secret commonwealth fucking Philip Pullman might as well hot teacher okay i have to tell you i'm gonna not spoil things but i just personally i don't think it's a spoiler

to tell me that malcolm's hot no not hot i i mean i think pullman thinks he's hot is what i'm saying interesting i uh i just and maybe i'm a i'm a a Malcolm Polstead secret commonwealth auntie, but I like Malcolm in La Belle Sauvage. It's hard. It's a hard life. You know, what else is also hard? Some of Malcolm's more clever friends at Overcoat Elementary School

had scrawled an S over the V in La Belle Sauvage quite a few times so that it spelled La Belle Sausage, which is also a very good name, which Malcolm then painted out three times before pushing that kid into the water angrily which then forces a truce between them I love that and so Twittergazi I want to say has posted photos of it on Twitter before I posted some the other day just because I was looking them up and they just were so beautiful. But the Trout is a real inn, if you did not know.

All of these places are mostly real places being spoken about. And Malcolm's school is staged in kind of a Wolvercote area, a village out of Oxford on the northern edge of the Wolvercote Common, which is itself, it's north of Port Meadow and it adjoins the River Tame. which is itself it's north of port meadow and it adjoins the river tame and the trout is actually featured in a couple other pop culture pieces the bride's head revisited by evelyn wow colin dexter's inspector morse 1997's movie the saint that starred val kilmer and this is it's alternate reality right as most of his dark materials books goes the this took place 12 years ish before northern lights mid 80s they call it the flood of 86 but time might flow differently here we don't know also pullman was back writing a lot of this right like he decided to pull some books out to explain some stuff so i get it if there might be a few anomalies i think it's hilarious that the gap that uh

the trout in nowadays in the real world describes itself as a gastropub but yeah the the they have some drink that's called the porn star something and i'm like oh malcolm malcolm chill out but, I don't know where these numbers come from, and it's something we have all kind of accepted before, as like, yeah, the timelines got shifted and weird, and I think we had all kind of just accepted that

Lyra's world takes place a couple decades before, like, the 90s. But then now this kind of just throws it all off. Ezreal is literally like 85. Yeah, that was like accepted canon before that everyone was like, Lyra's world takes place in like, I don't know, the 60s

of her world, right? On their calendar. It's confusing. Whatever. Anyways, Malcolm is used to doing chores in the tavern. He only has one annoyance. Alice Parslow, a girl who helped with washing the dishes,

16, tall, skinny, who teases him all the time. Malcolm and Asta were so annoyed with her teasing. Like, who's your girlfriend, Malcolm? At one point, that Asta just turned into a rat and bit her. Mrs. Polston did not, though, sympathize with Alice. She was like,

maybe you should mind your own business then. I mean, it's my son. What do you think you're going to do? And I would like to agree. I kind of do agree with Mrs. Polstead and Malcolm. Like, let Malcolm come into his sexuality in his own time. Oh, he will. And I just personally think that...

Okay. I just personally think, whatever. Yeah, I mean, obviously we know Pullman isn't the most progressive in general, but I guess maybe this is why Alice had the same things made fun of onto her. She's projecting. Seems like, yeah, probably.

Alice is the best. Every single episode I hope you know I'm going to appreciate her just because she deserves to be appreciated. I hope that Alice knows right now somewhere that I'm thinking of her. Someone's thinking of her. It's Chloe.

She goes so ham in this whole novel and she gets shit. She gets shit sandwiches. She really does. Shit sandwiches. Malcolm loves learning things at the inn from the different customers that come through.

The helpless idiocy of the government or the rascality of the river board or even philosophical matters like the age of the stars in comparison to the earth. Doesn't feel important to me. Does it feel important to you at all? The age of stars in comparison to the earth? to you at all the age of stars in comparison to the earth i mean we're trying to figure out the age of like whenever all these things happen i guess stars are like way more important so what about skulls you know i mean it's not so different is it it's not so different no i i actually was i mean like i'm a little biased i was the kid who thought i was going to be an astronomer when i was what 11 or 12 years old i was like yeah i'm gonna study astronomy i know right well i know i think it's cute though and i think it is a nod right to the age of things in this novel we're always hearing

like the age of the skulls and the subtle knife the age of stars in comparison to earth malcolm of course as a kid so he's like this all is silly but we as adults that have read these books go malcolm malcolm it's cool yeah malcolm this is the cool stuff this is stuff that relates to the d word he might have thought he might have thought it was cool it was just like in passing because he can't like you can only overhear so much and like be able to contextualize it yeah well if we're looking at real life government eliana talked about this a little bit in the subtle knife uh brought up a little bit of some of the uk government history and in the uk from 79 to 97 there was a conservative government

there was a really severe recession in the 80s and the government was widely blamed and of course if you want to explore more look up thatcherism or thatcher right yeah she was akin to r reagan at the time i might say please see the songs right you have tramp the dirt down by elvis costello mother knows best by richard thompson margaret on the guillotine by morrissey i mean there's there's research y'all can do and she did inherit it in a really shitty post-war time, right? Like, really bad. Inflation was toppling 20%.

Unemployment was the highest it had been since the 30s. And it over doubled from 1.5 million to 3.5 million in 83. And all of the heavy industries like shipyards and coal and steel, those were hit hard. And the Falkland Islands were seized by the Argentine forces so she was really fast to say let's go declare war on Argentina and they won that the victory at the next election was basically inevitable for her from that but she eventually resigned after three terms longest serving of the 20th century in the UK I don't know enough about UK government and history to make any comparisons to characters in these books but you can see some of these kind of different things pop up with some sort of parallel.

We talked about this in the June Historic Materials episode, like I said, but it's brought up about Boreal, the official Secrets Act exists in Historic Materials. So I'm sure Pullman is pulling some sort of something here well it's in our world so it is yeah the actual one has come it's this commentary yes yeah absolutely and i just don't you know i don't know it as well but i did think it was interesting the different revelations that come up and this might even be something we want to talk about again when we get to commonwealth together because uh there's two versions of the official secrets act right or well two prominent versions there's many versions but the biggest changes are that the 1911 version their section one created offenses connected with spying and espionage that was the beginning of

that under section one a person commits the offense of spying if, for any purpose prejudicial to the safety or interests of the state, they enter a prohibited place defined under the act, make a plan, sketch, model, or note calculated to be useful to an enemy, communicate a plan, sketch, model, or note calculated to be useful to an enemy so pretty broad right pretty broad pretty powerful and we're looking at this government that even here in malcolm's times we're about to see them be pretty powerful and make people just disappear like that right yeah malcolm notes it and yes there's a child like wonder still somewhat about this of it's a murder mystery but it's not a murder mystery this is a government with too much power over its citizens, and they're exercising it. And Section 2 of this act was a catch-all, so it did just reinforce that, right?

It reinforced that the government had the power to do whatever the hell they wanted under this. And in 1989, they removed that section under which it was a criminal offense to disclose official information without lawful authority and creates offenses connected with the unauthorized disclosure of information in six specified categories. Security, intelligence, defense, international relations, information that might lead to the commission of crime, foreign confidences, special investigation powers under Interception of communications act and security services act so this book and its strong focus on government and government officials especially early on that malcolm sees and meets i think it's really important to bring this up i don't obviously like

i said understand all of it but when you look at jk rowling books, she had an opportunity to really use some of this history in her books, and she used a little bit when it came to the magical world, right? But the magical world and their government was not as fleshed out as it could have been. I think that's something that had she fleshed all of that out, it would have kept my interest as a teen, whatever I was at the time reading them, like it would have fleshed my interest a as a teen whatever i was at the time reading them like it would have fleshed my interest out more because some of the stuff pullman's doing in the bell savage and eventually in the secret commonwealth is just like really really apt yeah and so as you were saying all this something came to mind for me of you know we discussed how heavily the western like western films right like

by that we mean like what of the wild west cowboys shooting out things like that seems to have informed the structure of once upon a time in the north and of course lee scoresby's story some of that idea of like adventuring in his dark materials but the Book of Dust feels more like it's kind of drawing and riffing on the genre of spy movies, right? It's like James Bond, but a child in a way. And I think that this backdrop of what's going on here with the government and all these secrets and espionage is a big part of that

yeah i find it really interesting and i know this is obviously pullman uh loves this stuff i mean this is definitely his commentary and it's very uh that childlike wonder that we feel throughout this book is back and it feels like a young pullman and spy stuff. And I like it. I do like it. In some ways. It's kind of cute and wholesome. And then you're like, wait. Serious things going on. Sometimes, though, Malcolm would join in when scholars discuss these sorts of things.

And if he, it's racist, like if you were the person who would like have a nickname, like if Malcolm were cool enough that people gave him nicknames, it'd be Professor. Which is so lame, in my opinion. Yeah, that's true. First of all, he's so lame that his nickname would be Professor. Second, he's so lame he can't even get someone to give him a nickname. Malcolm's other favorite place to hold court is the prairie

of St. Rosamond, where the nuns lived off their land, and they sell and sew things. He would also help Mr. Taphouse, the carpenter, do work or run errands for the nuns, like taking Sister Benedicta to drop off mail, often in La Belle Sauvage herself. Sister Benedicta teaches

Malcolm grammar often, and also other cool life hacks, like how to tie parcels correctly for shipping. He admires their neat ways, their fruit trees, their gentle church songs, like how to tie parcels correctly for shipping. He admires their neat ways, their fruit trees, their gentle church songs and their kindness, and of course, religious and philosophical discussions with them. Like when he asks Sister Fenella how God made the world in six days. He wants to know how fossils could exist then, and she tells him that these were much longer then. So again, hearkening back to when he was talking about the stars and how like how old

they were in comparison to earth i think this is something that like pullman's obviously been saying that's when consciousness was actually started it's not when we think it was it was much before then right that's like the whole feeling of dust and everything we learned throughout the first three books uh but i do wonder if he's going to give us some other reveal about it like i feel like he has another trick up his sleeve because he's constantly pushing in this book about like time and time not being real and time being different and time changing you know after these like past few months during covid19 as i tell everyone like time is fake like march was real fast.

I think, what was it? April was real long, and I don't know what's happening, but now we're in July, and time is fake. And Malcolm is also one of those kids that asks a lot of annoying questions, often, apparently. He's very inquisitive. He asks Sister Fenella, why don't you sew? Like the other sisters do. Where Squirrel makes a tut-tut noise and she explains that she's bad at sewing and good at making pastries. And he continues to

assist her in using up the spare bits of food to make pastries for visitors. And I like that. I like that about them. They're like, yeah, well I'm not good at this, so why would I force myself to do that? I can contribute in other ways. I'm like, precious. The precious sisters. It is cute i hold them all in my hands and i love them so much i do i uh and the relationship's really sweet we're

gonna talk about a lot about the nuns and some of the representation they've had that hasn't been great and has been okay in the past and i think this is a better exploration on Pullman's side, but the Priory often has visitors that stay there, much like at the Trout. The Trout's visitors are usually fishermen or traders in smoke, leave, or hardware,

but at the Abbey, the guests were greater usually. Lords, ladies, bishops, once a princess who was sent there as a punishment. Yeah, her weasel demon sn snarled at everyone i thought

that was very acute detail like of course malcolm wanted to know about that he would help those guests when he visited too he would take messages and errands collecting tips that he saved in a walrus tin in his room we see the walrus tin very often he's saving for a gun, though he knows his dad won't let him have one. Malcolm, why? What is with Philip Pullman and giving children guns, first of all, as we remember in Chittagaze? Yeah. A bunch of

children with pistols and rifles. But also, I wanted to say, like, what I kind of like about the way that the Trout Inn is, it kind of reminds me, maybe because we are doing those chapters on Chittagaze right now, of a place where a lot of people are coming through, right? This crossroads of information. So Malcolm's got a pretty fun childhood here. Except for the part where adults are always putting him to work.

But, you know, he seems like a good, busy boy. I mean, he makes his living, you know? He helps his mom and dad out. He has good food on the table every night he does his homework he meets a plethora of people and he seems to really like it as we're about to hear him tell people uh and i do think i think this is really sweet because he thinks to himself there's nowhere like the inn or the prairie or uh basically anywhere in god's toe where someone could learn this much. He thinks that he'd love to take over the inn from his parents someday because of all the knowledge that came through. But of course, deep down, he dreams of being a scholar, a theologist, making discoveries,

so on. And his school doesn't teach any of that. It teaches craftsmanship and clerking skills, of that it teaches craftsmanship and clerking skills and it ends at age 14 so i think that's an important framework here right like for malcolm his life ends at 14 his school life that's what he has to look forward to so i think thinking that while we go through this novel is something interesting because as he says soon he's he thinks of himself as a bright boy with a canoe and he knows there is no such thing as a scholarship for him in sight it's just not what happens for him and his family and it sounds like it's not something that happens for a lot of the children who lives here which i think is really sad right they live in a place that's surrounded by so many universities it sounds like right like so many different colleges and, so many of the people who live there are barred from being

able to enter that, and we've seen Pullman explore some of that class aspect, of course, with Roger and Lyra, and, of course, a bunch of the other kids at Bolvangar, and I think this is another way that that's coming through in his work.

One winter evening, three unusual men came to the inn traveling by Ann Bowery car. Damn, these people have fucking electric cars in the 80s. Wow. They established that. Their Sims eco footprint is probably way better

than neutral. Oh my god. They sat themselves in the terrorist room. Goodbye. In the terrorist room. In the terrace room. Which was not often used in the winter due to its windows and lack of doors. After finishing his homework and food, which is roast beef and Yorkshire pudding.

Sounds so good. Mr. Polstead sends him to wait on the men to order claret, which is, I guess, a fancy wine. I don't know much about wine. I'm so sorry. One wants rum, and he offers them all roast beef. The tallest and thinnest of the men has a greenfinch demon and asks Malcolm's name.

One of them has a lemur demon, and the other, whose demon is curled up on the floor, asks what the place across the river is. He explains it's the Priory of St. Rosamond, who he doesn't know much about, and says he'll ask the nuns next time he's there who St. Rosamond is. So I am going to tell you all who St. Rosamond is in this story, and this is based on the Abbey at Godstow. It's housed in order of Benedictine nuns. It was built in 1133 in limestone.

The plot was given to foundress Edith by John St. John. A further piece of land was then rewarded in honor of St. Mary and St. John the Baptist and enlarged and the church was consecrated in 1139. This is why these nuns are the sisters of the order of St. Rosamond in Pullman's world. She's a saint. In our world, this was a reference. Rosamund in Pullman's world, she's a saint. In our world, this was a reference to Rosamund Clifford. She was a longtime mistress of Henry II, and she was brought here retiring and dying at 30, and the abbey was enlarged against between

1176 to 1188 by Henry II. Henry II gives them a bunch of money, 40,000 shingles, 4,000 laths, and a large quantity of timber, and he ends up receiving patronal rights from the nuns and was known to pay them a favor from time to time. There is a German traveler, Paul Hensner, who visited England in 1599 and recorded her faded tombstone inscription read the following, and this is a translation let them adore and we pray that rest be given to you Rosamond following by a punning epitaph here in the tomb lies a rose of

the world not a pure rose she who used to smell sweet still smells but not sweet that was on her tomb damn that's a choice to put in there yeah that's a must have been quite a lady dead at 30 and the other connection this kind of has is the last abbess of this abbey was elected in 1535 lady catherine bulkley she was a plant one of three nuns who were promoted to head and abbey by

the English lawyer and statesman who you may know of, Thomas Cromwell. You might remember him as the man who helped engineer the annulment of the king's marriage to Catherine of Aragon so that Henry could marry Anne Boleyn lawfully. He sent Catherine off to the nunnery because he could. Catherine Bulkeley's brother was acting chamberlain for North Wales. He was pretty powerful. So late October 1538, Godstow's Abbey is visited by Cromwell's suppression commissioner, Dr. John London. He demands access to the nuns to question them, pressuring them to leave religious life. Both John and Catherine send letters to Cromwell, each basically alleging the same story but opposite,

right? Catherine is claiming Dr. London and his henchmen were applying threats of force against her and her other sisters to surrender the house, refusing to leave until they surrender. And Cromwell takes Catherine's side, but the king was disallowing these religious houses, even if they were reformed in life and practice. So in 1539, it was suppressed under the second act of dissolution. Catherine still retained a really healthy salary, right? She had 50 pounds per year as a pension. But that is kind of what Pullman is pulling from here. And he is displaying the violence committed against these nuns in full, unfortunately. I hate to remind us of that because this is all

very pure times it is pure times and how dare they yeah they do that to the nuns but yeah there's a lot of interesting history and it's interesting to see that rosamund was uh canonized is that the word i'm looking for in Yeah, in this universe. Yeah, kind of makes you wonder if it all went down a little differently. Who knows? Malcolm's a chatty Cathy. He offers his strike of fire for these three men while they ask him

if they're expecting many people at the inn this evening. As Malcolm leaves them to bring roast beef, Asta tells him the men were testing them, looking for the truth about the nuns because they already knew about them. Asta also says they look like politicians, and that she just has a feeling that they are.

I don't know where Asta got that idea from, but she's right. Anyways, Mr. Polstad helps serve the food to the gentleman with Malcolm, and then beckons him back to the bar, asking him what those men said to him. The men apparently have asked Mr. Polstad if they can speak to Malcolm more, saying he's bright. And Mr. Polstad tells him who at least two of them are.

Lord Nugent, the old Lord Chancellor of England. Yeah, and I guess a reminder for US listeners, a.k.a. me, I'm bitches, that the Lord Chancellor is the highest officer of the crown. So like a president here, not here, there, is the highest ranking official at a university. The Chancellor is like the senior academic officer. It's very strange. It's a very strange political thing. I don't get it. Yeah, and I guess nominally outranks

the Prime Minister, but... Asta says, I told you so. Malcolm heads over to see if they would like a nap the lamp, and they question him more, asking where he attends school and what he wants to do when he grows up. He says, I'll probably be an innkeep like

his father, and Ted Nugent says he likely would meet many interesting people, asking what sort of people he sees here malcolm tells them of the egyptian boats the horse fair that leaves the canal full scholars watermen you name it and the scholarly looking man with the green finch asks again about the nuns and what they do how do they earn a living do they make perfumes anything like that no comment now interesting those of you listening interesting i just have thoughts uh for those that read the secret commonwealth i think that could be a connection i don't know i don't know nuns do not get paid the same way other people do for working uh they turn earnings over to their congregation they

trust to provide a stipend to them that will cover their minimum living expenses, and their pay thus depends on their community, not on how much or where they work. In the branches of the Benedictine tradition, Benedictines, Cistercians, Camaldolises, Trappists, among others, nuns take vows of stability to remain a member of a single monastic community, obedience to an abbess or prioress, andows of stability to remain a member of a single monastic community, obedience to an abbess or prioress, and conversion of life, which includes poverty and celibacy. In other traditions, such as the Poor Clares, the Franciscan order, and the Dominican nuns, they take the threefold vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. These are known as the evangelical councils, as opposed to the monastic vows proper.

Most orders of nuns not listed here follow one of these two kind of patterns with some orders taking an additional vow related to the specific work or character of their order, for example, to undertake a certain style of devotion, praying for a specific intention or purpose. Malcolm's a narc and tells them basically everything that the nuns do, like selling produce and sewing, and I'm just saying, maybe he should be a little more careful about what he's blurting out. That's all. About what they

do? Yeah, I mean, what if he implicates them accidentally? It's not his business. That's true. That's true. I understand. On one hand, though, maybe Malcolm thinks he's being a great salesman. Right, that's true. He's like, please buy the nuns things. And I'm sold on this.

I'm like, I want to buy their veggies. Yeah, I would go to that farmer's market for sure. Definitely. He tells them the nuns have highborn visitors. Again, narc. Bishops, priests, they come for a rest, according to Sister Benedicta. Mostly convalescent clergymen and nuns now visit, but people used to stay at monasteries and priories often. The last man to finish his roast beef asks if anyone was staying there now visiting, and Malcolm's like, I don't think so.

Usually people like the garden and the weather's bad right now. And then, oh, sounds so good. He offers them a baked apple and custard pudding with apples from the nun's orchard and they say yes lord nugent goes on with his 21 questions and he says so do you know if they've ever looked after an infant over at the nun's place and malcolm's like no and then asta and malcolm see a red flag from this as they go to put the order in the kitchen and his mom's like so what are they saying and he tells her and he goes back he brings a nap the lamp with him and takes

the coffee order he comes back and he asks his mom if she knew the nuns to look after babies ever and she says well what did you tell them he says no and she says that is the right answer and she sends him back Asta notices Mrs. Polstead's demon a gruff badger pricked his ears up at the question about the baby they decide they have to ask the nuns tomorrow and that is chapter one yes a lot of good wholesome things a lot of good wholesome world building of this world that i guess many people are very familiar with because it's based on real life things but whatever, you know, it's new to me cross the pond and that brings us then to things that start getting

a little less wholesome with chapter 2 The Acorn get more information about Lord Nugent he was a chancellor in a much more liberal government before than the present one religious organizations found their powers now and this government enhanced and officials who

supported the secular line were out of favor now working undercover and that is who thomas nugent was a retired lawyer of no interest thomas nugent now directed an undercover secret service ask organization can't be that secret or undercover if we all know it here. And Malcolm knows it. Frustrating the work of the religious authorities while remaining anonymous. I love this line. It's just like so action. This took ingenuity, courage, luck, and so far they had remained undetected.

Under an innocent, misleading name, Nugent's organization carried out all kinds of missions dangerous complicated tedious and sometimes downright illegal but it never before had to deal with keeping a six-month-old baby out of the hands of those who wanted to kill her I would watch this movie about the rock me too if the rock started this i would watch this sounds like it sounds like one of those movies right like la belle rock there what is there i think this movie exists malcolm finishes his chores on saturday and he crosses the bridge to see sister finella dealing with potatoes malcolm thinks he knows a better way to cut potatoes but now isn't the time to fight sister finella yes pick your battles, Malcolm. He helps her prepare Brussels sprouts with the sharpest

knife in the drawer. She reminds him to cut across in the base of the Brussels sprouts as it makes sure the devil can't get in, although his mother later told him, actually, that's speed up the cook time and make sure that the Brussels cook all the way through. I would like to say I just usually slice my

larger sprouts in half malcolm is a very good boy he tells sister finella about lord nugent and his merry men who were asking about an infant staying in the priory finella is shocked that an ex-lord chancellor showed up at the trout and tells him he is an extremely important person she asks malcolm what he told them and she wonders aloud if she should be talking to sister benedicta about this malcolm launches into a made up story that he was thinking could be the case very lyra get ready keep tracking this a royal infant who maybe was sick or bitten by a snake because its nursemaid wasn't paying attention and then the snake comes along and there's a scream and the baby has a snake on it and she's probably in trouble the nursemaid

and the baby probably needs convalescing and the lord chancellor probably needs somewhere to have the baby convalesced and the nuns have experience in convalescing and sister finnell is like yes i see this all makes a lot of sense malcolm and it's the sweetest cutest moment uh and his favorite word is convalescing that's the most important part because he learned it once and it literally just means to recover one's strength or health right over a period of time after being ill but malcolm's like convalesce this convalesce that yeah it's it's a very imaginative story and it's very cute i i there's a part of me that was kind of wondering is the idea of like, a baby being bitten by a snake? Could it work in the context of like those Edenic overtones in this story of Lyra and the snake and then the temptation, right? And that's something that comes along later, especially as she's Eve. something that comes along later especially as she's eve i mean because he ends up protecting her he ends up being the one to protect her from the snake in this scenario which is not like mary

malone snake but like gerard bonneville snake yeah there's a couple of different there's a couple of different ways that pullman uses snakes they're not all not all only one thing yeah Yeah, like Boreal's demon. Yeah, but like technically, you know, the snake would also be Asriel, right, as the devil. But it's not all straightforward. Sister Fenella thinks that she should still talk to Benedicta, and Malcolm says that they

probably would be coming here and asking instead soon. But Sister Fenella says not if they don't want us to know. She wonders if they're really asking about sanctuary, and she explains to Malcolm what that means. If someone breaks the law, they could go into an oratory like the Priory and claim

sanctuary. Refugees are included in this. We spoke earlier about how the real-life God's Toe Abbey is kind of used here, right, specifically with Henry II's mistress retiring there. But sanctuary in a church predates Christianity, right? It goes back as far as Greek and Roman temples. By 4th century end, it became part of Roman imperial law. If you murdered someone and

ran to the church and claimed sanctuary, no one can harm you. You guys might remember Quasimodo swooping in on a rope with Esmeralda yelling yelling sanctuary as he lands in the church, a little dramatic, but you get the picture. That was a real deal. But it came with a price generally, which was permanent exile, right? The Roman Catholic Church specifically was a safe, consecrated place. It was seen as inappropriate to carry weapons into a church, to arrest or to exercise force within its walls.

The church was also deeply suspicious about punishments given by secular authority. Early church leaders thought the Roman Empire was too concerned with punishing criminals as opposed to restoring the moral balance between the wrongdoer and God. As you can see, it's still like that in many places. Those who joined the church in their exile were expected to convert to their lifestyle and religion in exchange for sanctuary. They would be disallowed to bring weapons in. Their attackers could lie outside the boundaries waiting for them, but they could not seek action against them. While they were safe indoors, they could work out an agreement with their attackers to leave safely,

but more often they would go from sanctuary into permanent exile from their region. This was specifically true in England in the 12th century. They legally regulated sanctuary more than any other region in Europe. The law during this time in England stated fugitives had to leave England for the rest of their lives unless they received a royal pardon. Most churches didn't have this rule, but English churches weren't supposed to allow sanctuary for more than 40 days. Still better than a death sentence or jail, though in jail you were given only bread, water, and you weren't protected from disease, which was pretty rampant. The apparent abuse of sanctuary by aristocrats might have actually been the reason it fell in England after the Protestant Reformation, because in the 15th century, prominent royals

were abusing the process and outstaying their welcome. In 1623, England outlawed sanctuary a few decades after the church restricted what crimes it would apply to, but it didn't end sanctuary. A lot of places did it in private. People are still claiming sanctuary in some instances all the way up through 19th, 20th century and today. Many medieval European churches don't have a right to protect fugitives under secular law, but most people who pursued fugitives knew if they broke church's canon law and harmed someone or arrested them within, it didn't look good. If a government agent chased someone down in a church or hurt or killed them, it had enormous repercussions.

Politically, it made the government look brutal thomas beckett is a great case of this his execution in canterbury cathedral was an outrage it damaged king henry ii's reputation and beckett was pushed towards sainthood because of this it inspired t.s elliott's play murder in the cathedral eight centuries later and it's likely pullman's drawing from murder in the cathedral in a lot of this story as we move on. That'll be interesting. And there's King Henry II again. Yep.

That man had a salacious life. Sister Fenella explains some of the colleges used to do this for scholars as well. Fenella then changes the subject, asking what Malcolm is doing the rest of the day, and he tells her he's going to work on La Belle Sauvage, and that he wants to boat, but the river is too high. She asks if he's planning a long voyage, and he daydreams down the river to London, maybe to the sea, but he worries that La Belle Sauvage isn't made for big waves, and that he may have to get a different boat someday.

He promises to send postcards, though, or he could take sister finella with him and then sister finella says who would take care of the other sisters and then they laugh about it together and go on it's really sweet and i know we spoke about it but i love the way that we're seeing the nuns here it's very light in the beginning and it's a story he's allowing them to have uh on the other sites of nuns in his dark materials, they haven't always gotten to be expansive. Mary Malone was our best view at life for her as a nun, as far as nuns go, but she left the convent, and the why is details at the end of the original HDM trilogy.

She chose free will. She tells the story to the children, and how we kept on talking, and there was a birthday cake, and he took a bit of marzipan, and he just gently put it in my mouth i remember trying to smile and blushing and feeling so foolish and i fell in love with him just for that for the gentle way he touched my lips with the marzipan and then of course what she says later i knew what i should think it was whatever the church taught me to think and when i I did science, I had to think about other things altogether. I never had to think about them for myself at all.

So about religion and about the magisterium. But in the magisterium... Oh my god, Eliana, lewd. That's what was actually going on here. Sex. But, so in the magisterium camp, we also see nuns nuns right they've been hired and co-opted to do work the stenographers were taking down every word where nuns of the order of saint philomel sworn to silence but at fra pavel's words there came a smothered gasp from one of them and there

was a flurry of hands as they crossed themselves fra pavel twitched and went on uh it is nice to see nuns with their humors and their own free will-ish here, although it's very much made apparent they don't really have free will as far as being under the magisterium's wing. And they feel pretty subject to their destiny, right? Like when the magisterium's brought up, they just say, oh, well, we just can't really ask about it. We just have to pray that it's all for the good of man.

Yeah. And I mean, I do love how the sisters are portrayed in this book, and we'll talk about them more, of course, as the story goes on and we get more glimpses of them, but I do at the very least appreciate that they're portrayed as good, and we even see them later on standing up to the

CCD, which we'll talk about in a second, which I mean, I think it does bring into question these issues of, like, what side they're on, etc. And in general, though, we see the sisters as this really caring force. And it deepens our understanding of Mary Malone, I think, and the decision that she made within that context. Because although the sisters are good, we see that they do accept some of the answers or don't think too deeply about them, right? They leave it up to God and say this must be that plan and mary malone had these questions and rather than let the answer be

in faith and leave it at that she needed to know those answers and she wanted to pursue those and i think that's something that's demonstrated here but But I mean, the nuns are portrayed as good. And of course, Mary Malone is also good, right? We don't seem to see that she was particularly oppressed when she was a nun, it sounds like, other than the general rules that go with being within an order like this. Yeah, the normal oppression. Yeah, but I mean, it's something that she chose to go into and then chose to leave, at least. It's not something that she was forced into at this day and age, right?

I mean, obviously some people were forced to go into becoming nuns or priests or whatever, but... Right, like these stenographers seem to not really have much of a choice but to be stenographers for the magisterium. Yeah, so Mary had that. These stenographers seem to not really have much of a choice but to be stenographers for the Magisterium. Yeah. So, Mary had that. Later in the afternoon, Malcolm works on his boat. The peacocks check in on him while he does so, and I treasure these peacock scenes.

The boat is solid, though the green-painted LBS was peeling. He thinks about doing odd jobs to pay for some red paint so that he can repaint the name, and then pulls the boat down the lawn, paddling upstream and slipping into the Duke's Cut. He tells the lockkeep, Mr. Parsons, that he's going fishing, but he decides to paddle to Jericho to look at the paint in the chandelier. He goes past gardens and fields until he arrives at this place that is now largely half-gentrified, full of brick houses, but also abandoned burials and churches. There's an Italianate style beside the church. Yeah, and this style of architecture, it's so funny because we just were speaking about how there's a lot of subtle life in this, right?

Like, there seems to be a couple feelings that are similar. And the architecture is very distinct. It's 19th century phase in the history of classical architecture there are certain neighborhoods like over the rhine in cincinnati brooklyn heights in new york city the 600 block of east capital street northeast in dc all these kind of reflect this style these buildings cropped up in the early 1840s and reached a high point after the 50s before dying out in the 1880s. The style was derived from medieval Italian villas and farmhouses.

You might recall small, round capolas like George Washington's Mount Vernon had. But in this Italianate style, these capolas are square, not round. And if they're big enough, a person can comfortably stand in and look out its windows as many of them were they become a belvedere oh which is typically what you'll find in italianate structures so this harkens back to that bit of subtle knife absolutely with the belvedere yeah interesting and malcolm then sees a movement in the reeds quietly watching a bird and here's a couple's voices behind him they're're two lovers, hand in hand. They're demons, two birds, flying

ahead together. The lovers pass, and Asta whispers to him to watch ahead, when a strange man in a grey raincoat stands under an oak tree. Asta becomes a fly, flying as far as she can before it starts

to hurt, and settles on a bulrush. I love the foreshadowing there. Thanks, Pullman. So this man on the path is trying to be inconspicuous, but he and his cat are definitely not. The cat makes a noise, dropping something out of her mouth, and they scramble around as someone else comes up the walk. This one is a man with a dog demon, and the other man pretends he's not dropped anything. He plays it cool until they pass. Malcolm and Asta think, oh, we should go help him,

but the man then scoops his cat demon, and off they go. Yeah, he doesn't play it cool that well. It's hard when you don't have a smartphone, you know? The language that describes the man and his cat, though, how the cat is ashamed for dropping the acorn, and then briefly, I think, if I recall correctly, the man kind of accidentally cuts himself right on his cat demon as he's scooping her up uh because they're just so distressed it plays into a lot of these more complex ideas that we're going to get into throughout this book of self-harm and self-flagellation

and how we see those manifest through the relationship that humans have with their demons in this book so it's an interesting little precursor to some of the gerard bonneville stuff will absolutely get dark cannot wait for that creepy right like that haunts me it is but here it's it's interesting to see that the soul can hurt the body like that right and it's on accident but they yeah it's something that really comes forward in this book. It really examines these relationships with humans and their demons. And a few moments later, we see Malcolm and Asta's relationship as well, because they immediately are like, let's go get that item. They get the item. It's an acorn, and it's a weird acorn. It's heavy. It's actually two-pieced, he realizes. It has a seam. it's a wooden carving

and they try to find the man to return it but as they go to look they see that man being confronted by another man with a vixen demon a fox kind of dog demon with the cat demon and the third man with the bird demon arrives as well holding the man up and they start to walk him across the bridge and he seems very you know like i've been I've been found out, shoulders rounded and down. He walks off and stalks off with them. Malcolm then pockets the acorn, per Asta's advice, and tells her they seem to be arresting the man, and Asta agrees. She's like, we gotta go home. They paddle back to the Duke's cut, and they whisper about the men they saw asta thinks he's a spy and they agree that they're probably from the ccd the consistorial court of discipline the church

agency concerned with heresy and unbelief damn malcolm remembers about a man who asked too many questions of the ccd and then disappeared after a journalist and I do think this is noteworthy considering A. this is something that Pullman is clearly concerned about in terms of free speech but also concerned that people actually seem to read the newspapers in this world straight up

recognizing faces from them constantly so obviously journalists are held as a trustworthy source and good esteem in this world. Yeah, they didn't have Snapchat or Instagram. Yeah, or else that man would have looked a lot more inconspicuous. So they agree that this is best not to bring up to the sisters, because while the sisters stand for good, the CCD is technically on the same team as them,

and the sisters give their humble support pretty quietly to the CCD. When Malcolm once asked Sister Benedicta about them, she said the Holy Church knows the will of God and they must trust him, love one another, and not ask too many questions. And we already talked about this a little with Mary Malone and the sisters, but I do appreciate that we start to see in this book that there can be multiple sides to all of this. Like, after all, we learned there are multiple branches vying for different power within the church. Some not, like the priorities probably not really vying for power. But Malcolm starts off, it seems, with this idea that they're all on the same side because of their shared belief and religion but we start to see that the sisters might every now and then fear or be questioning of the ccd and even stands up to some other authorities later and i think that really deepens and we

start to see a lot more complexity between what it means to to hold on to certain beliefs even if things seem like at first blush they're all within that same faith. It's dark once they're home, and they hurry inside to examine the acorn. It takes a bit, but they twist it the tighter way, the way that usually you'd think it would tighten. So I don't know if they have like

lefty, loosey, righty, tighty in this world, and then they just reverse it, right? Or is it the opposite for their world, because it's a different world, and now it's like lefty type, whatever. The point is, inside is a piece of paper, it's thin, like the paper for Bible

pages, and with dark ink it's written on it that says We would like you to turn your attention next to another matter. You will be aware that the existence of a Ruzakov field implies the existence of a related particle but so far such a particle has eluded us when we try measuring one of hand by most official bodies, seems to us to hold some promise, and we would like you to inquire, through the alethiometer, about any connection you can discover between the Ruzakov field and the phenomenon unofficially called dust. We do not have to remind you of the danger, should this research attract the attention of the other side.

But please be aware that they are themselves beginning a major program of inquiry into this subject tread carefully aha it is all about dust and that is what we are somewhat knowledgeable about we know rossikov we know this these are the books of dust so malcolm's opened his acorn to find the ultimate symbol of knowledge right dust of course we have this in northern lights russikov is mentioned 12 times throughout the main series asriel explaining to lyra in northern lights is probably the best explanation that goes with this so we will revisit it anyway it's what the church has taught for thousands of years and when when Russikov

discovered dust, at last there was a physical proof something happened when innocence changed into experience. Incidentally, that Bible gave us the name dust as well. At first they were called Russikov particles, but soon someone pointed out a curious verse towards the end of the third chapter of Genesis for God's cursing adam for eating the fruit he opened the bible again and pointed it out to lyra she read in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread till thou return unto the ground for out of it wast thou taken for dust thou art and unto dust shalt thou return so we're starting to get finally in the second chapter more of that tie to the main series

through all of this through this and they said the thing a lithiometer of course and we get hints of that program of inquiry into the subject which of course we end up seeing what comes of that in the main series but you know you talked called out how it is called the books of dust and it feels very biblical right like it feels like the book of leviticus that's the first one that came to mind um or i don't know the gospel of mark or whatever but here it's like the book of and it kind of makes me think of and we can interrogate this more later this idea of malcolm as a sort of apostle and part of lyra's story or something like that yeah absolutely especially when we get to the end of this episode here. At the very end, I think we'll read a passage

that definitely makes it feel like that. Solidifies that apostle status. Yes. So Asta and Malcolm decide that this sounds like experimental theologians and that the other side must mean the CCD. They're interrupted by Malcolm's mom calling for them, and he folds the paper and acorn all back together,

puts it in his sock drawer, and heads downstairs for chores. It's super busy, Saturday night. The mood is nervous and quiet, and soon Malcolm learns why from his father. There are two CCD men at the fire. Malcolm asks, how do you know, dad? And he says, they're tie colors, but also how everyone is acting around them. He tries to remain calm, but a jolt of Asta's fear goes through him. The two men are the men from the bridge earlier, and one of them beckons him over. The man bore a

navy and ochre striped tie, and his vixen demon lays at his feet. He says he's going to ask Malcolm a question and that he needs Malcolm to answer it honestly. Malcolm thinks he can smell his cologne. So first, I think this is kind of interesting compared to the previous encounter that Malcolm had where he was not ordered to tell the truth, but rather tested on it. Here, this man's trying to order Malcolmcolm to tell the truth who knows if it's going to be fucking true or not right and he asks if he recognizes a man in the photogram and malcolm does it's a man who was in here with the chancellor the dark-eyed man with the mustache not the bird

demon so this must be the lemur guy right mm-hmm zaboomafoo uh malcolm answers honestly and the ccd man asks who he was with and if he recognized them at all malcolm says no and the CCD man asks who he was with and if he recognized them at all Malcolm says no and the man pushes asking what they spoke about and here we're just like this is what happens when you try to order people to tell the truth right instead of earning their trust

Malcolm's just like oh you know they're just talking about the claret and they ordered a second bottle of it in the terrace room and Alfred said they didn't want to come in the warm room. They wanted to stay in the private room. He answers that he hasn't seen them since, and the man asks for his name before letting him go. Yeah, the CCD man then raises his voice, and he looks around, and he kind of commands the room. And he says,

You've heard what I've been asking, young Malcolm here. There's a man we're eager to trace. I'm going to pin his picture up on the wall beside the bar in a minute so you can all have a look at it. If you know anything about this man, get in touch with me. My name and address are on the paper too. Mind what I say, this is an important matter. You understand that. Anybody wants to talk to me about this man, they can come and do so once they've looked at the picture. I'll be sitting here. Yes, so I found this very interesting

because the tactics used here by the CCD earlier on and with the poster and shit, it kind of feels like a precursor or in line with some of the tactics that we'll see from the League of St. Alexander later, where you see them

trying to break down that public trust that people have with one another. Yeah, and Aliana, are you saying that the government would pit two sides of the same class against one another? What? They would never. Why would that ever happen? I do think, to come back to T.S elliott that pullman is really highlighting the behavior of these men these government officials if we look my lord i these are not men these come not as men come but like maddened beasts they come not like men who respect the sanctuary who kneel to the body of christ but like beasts you would bar the door against the lion, the leopard, the wolf, or the boar. Why not more? Against beasts with the souls of damned men against men who would damn themselves to beasts. My lord, my lord. As we continue through the story, we'll see this government

that has absolutely created monsters unleashing them on things they cannot control. I think the T.S. Eliot's references are really well-pointed. It's something we'll probably talk about more in the Amber Spyglass. I see a lot of the wasteland in there, but right now, the man, the other man, pins the paper on the corkboard after removing for some reason, it's very

rude. It's incredibly rude. Community notices, and one of the regulars, George Boatwright, complains about this. It starts a little fight with the two. George often gets a little drunk it happens and mr polstead has had to throw him out before but he's a very good man and the bar is now buzzing you know everyone is standing up watching it happens he's a patron mr polstead is warning him to be steady under his breath and the ccd man asks malcolm you know what is this man's name and george is like fuck you talk to me not not the kid, you coward.

Not in those words, but basically those words. And says he'll speak for himself. He tears down the CCD notice, clearing at the CCD chief, because he's like, this is our community board, you can't just tear down our shit. And the vixen demon stands up, looking at George's

much bigger dog demon in the eye, and now the dogs are obviously bristling and ready to fight, and, you know, this is the time when Philip Pullman really shows us that yes, it's true, he doesn't. He does not hate dogs. But he also

still doesn't think about the musical cats. Mr. Polstead tells George to leave and come back when sober, and there's something off, a bolt of terror seems to suddenly go through George's demon the vixen demon then advances on this giant dog and the big dog falls and rolls over, cringing back, avoiding

the vixen's teeth after her advancing attack the big dog remains in the corner, whimpering yeah, the CCD man commands George to wait outside and George miserably does yeah the ccd man commands george to wait outside and george miserably does so the second ccd man brings another notice out asshole he's like what you thought we didn't have a stack of these yeah and they go outside to deal with their prisoner no one said a word this is total like like government gang like thug action right like they're just like coming in

unconventionally not even like giving you a smile and kissing a baby like they're coming and tearing down community notices this is every movie right like this happens these are bad guys he is trying to tell us these are bad guys and he succeeded yeah right from the beginning right it's setting the story up it's only the second chapter. Yeah, we have one chapter now. That was it. Second chapter. Next is a chapter that is based on a song by Kate Bush called Lyra.

Yeah. The chapter's Lyra. Yep. Lyra. Lyra. Lyra. George Boatwright banished instead. Oh my god.

Waiting for the CCD man no one spoke about it that's the way things go with the CCD good for you George Boatwright the trout was low-key a bummer after that everyone was super fearful and suspicious damn they really like just harshed the vibe of the

fucking trout after this and Malcolm was bummed too cause the world he's used to is interesting and happy and now Malcolm's just worried about the priory welcome to adult life motherfucker that's it this is definitely like the change of like you see that flip of like adult life for Malcolm like he goes from just being a kid

and helping out the nuns and painting stuff with the guy and now he's like oh wow life's real so Malcolm and Asta watch the chandlery in the coming days they're hoping to get more information from this oak tree now i didn't notice this till now but the oak tree is where he originally saw this go down oakley oak tree is that kind of like some sort of framework like he gets it from the oak tree and then it turns out to be oakley street i don't know i know there's a reference in his other works to it as well uh he makes an

oakley reference he shows oakley street in uh his other series he has so i don't know i didn't really notice my first read that the tree was an oak i thought that was special yeah i think it is it's um i mean it's a pretty cool tree, you know? So I know I do think that's significant, but it could be all those things, right? Right. He buys some red paint for La Belle Sauvage, finally,

and a brush. And Mrs. Carpenter at the counter asks what he's looking for. He wants to make a lanyard. And so she sells him some cotton cord to double up and do so with. She's like, I don't know why you need like a thicker cord just make it thicker yourself life hacks but that's not all he's looking for and mrs carpenter can tell he trusts her and tells her about a man in a gray

coat and hat and that he has something this man dropped yeah she pulls out the oxford times and she's like oh is it this guy that apparently was found drowned in the canal? It is. Robert Lockhurst was his name. He was a scholar of Magdalene College and historian. Malcolm's heart is thumping. He realizes the body was found the day after he saw him being arrested. They couldn't have killed him, could they? He thinks.

No, Malcolm, no government could ever kill its people. That'd be illegal. They would never, never do such a thing. So, like many of the other things in these first few pages, you start to get a lot, like a much clearer view of what will one day become Lyra's Oxford

compared to our own Oxford, not that I actually know what our own Oxford is like. But hopefully one day I'd like to. Another example of this is Magdalene College, which actually does exist in our world and is one of the colleges that is part of the University of Oxford. Obviously, it's named after Mary Magdalene.

It actually, though, is not pronounced the way that we think it is. It is, in fact fact pronounced kind of like maudlin maybe you all know this if you're some of our listeners in the UK you probably know this but it's pronounced as maudlin because during the time of its founding

in like what is it 1458 magdalene would be pronounced as maudlin from the old french madeleine madeleine which turns out is where we actually get fun facts, more fun facts the adjective which is derived from artistic depictions

of Mary weeping at the crucifixion and burial of Christ and later that term evolved to mean overly emotional displays of emotion especially associated with drunkenness or maybe like fools, etc. But also interestingly, speaking of scents, this term maudlin in the 15th century,

which would have been around this time, 1458, you know, because Chloe's always bringing up perfumes. I don't know what she's talking about, but maybe this will be helpful for her. Maudlin could actually be associated with two different aromatic plants, depending, one being Cosmary, the other being Sweet Yarrow.

So. Thank you, Eliana, because honestly, I think you might be onto something, and we'll talk about it someday in the future, but I could see this being associated in many ways with the current plot for Lyra. Continue. Yeah, so, I was like, maybe this is helpful.

I'm helping. You are helping. Upon rereading. Yes, thank you. And now that we are doing this reread, right, I'm starting to realize that the death of Robert, and in this context of all this, is part of that larger conversation that we were having earlier about Sanctuary.

Like, yeah, Robert hasn't invoked scholastic sanctuary and probably wouldn't be able to, but we do know there's a tension between those who are pursuing what's considered like heretical scholarship and studies. And it's likely that in many ways, something that's, you know, whether or not it's formal sanctuary,

you're supposed to kind of like respect, right? It's implied that there's this respect and sort of protection towards scholars. Obviously, there's a more formal process for it. We'll get to that one day. But like Malcolm saw the CCD take Robert and it kind of violates that idea of scholastic sanctuary. Obviously, also Robert was a spy, so it's whatever.

But also it violates that idea of scholastic sanctuary and we can see that they are willing to just completely flout these rules and therefore could be willing to fly like violate other kinds of sanctuary right and it goes to more basic ethics right like what we the tm scanlins what we owe to each other as a society even at its most basic levels if all rules are off you don't mess with old ladies you don't mess with kids you don't just like people of higher knowledge are supposed to be respected or elders in the community that have helped cultivate things etc and robert is an historian and that obviously relies on a constructed society that they have their right of scholarship but yeah you don't

just go killing scholars like i personally am a big, if you've listened to our A Song of Ice and Fire episodes, that all, like, lives should be equal to each other, and Stannis Baratheon is not more important than the life of many free folk beyond the wall that are basically dying because of him. But I digress. But, like, that's kind of the person I am. But, like, yes, that is in this society,

how it's set up, that they respect the people that hold the knowledge. You look at Joe Parry, right? John Perry's role that he plays in the other world. They're to be respected. And obviously, in general, seeing these people that Malcolm was questioning, like, how come they are treating him this way? Like, they're not arresting him like the normal way. This is a different way they're arresting him.

They're not arresting him like the normal way. This is a different way they're arresting him. And they are seeking people that are into these heretical studies, like you're saying, out purposefully and killing them. Yeah, anything that would threaten. They're defining hereticals, basically anything that goes against them. And Nogum's like, I think something dangerous is going on here. So now he's finally like starts lying to Mrs. Carpenter. He says that he actually saw the man a few days before, and that it's likely unconnected.

And he's like, oh my god, it's connected on the inside. She hopes that they'll take care of the towpath, though, so that more people don't fall in like this guy did and goes to deal with another customer. And we're all like, yes, hopefully they take care of the towpath. Malcolm curses himself for saying anything at all and leaves with Asa.

Asa tells him, you told a good lie. And we have this exchange. I didn't know I could do that. Best to do it as little as possible. And remember exactly what we said each time. That's a great contrast with the protagonist

we originally opened the story with because Lyra has such confidence in her lies, right? They had swords! Her name is Lyra Silvertongue right like storytelling is what she does and it's not so different because they're both very moved by the truth and ethics in harmful situations like Lyra saving Asriel from the Tokai for example but the contrast does stand that like Malcolm and Asta are like I don't like doing this and lyra's like i love lying i'm so good at it she really enjoys it and i do think you know obviously malcolm ends up lying a lot in this book and pullman just kind of loves his young protagonist with secrets yeah and it starts to show like that between the youths and the old folks

they debate whether the CCD killed this man and wonder what did they do to Mr. Boatwright as well and then they start to discuss the paper the acorn as well and what it meant Malcolm rewrote it on a second piece of paper but it didn't help him understand it any better

all he could understand was that someone was asking someone to ask a question that measured something and also dust with a capital D, special dust. They discussed finding this man's colleagues or families at Moblin College and working out what he did, but they know they won't be listened to. He's just a kid with a demon. And if the CCD found out,

they'd definitely be suspicious and they'd come search the trout for the acorn. They decide to pay attention to the college students wearing scarves of the trout, hoping they can identify a maudlin student. The rain gets heavy. Asta becomes an owl. Well, kinda. And I think this is really cute. Probably a metaphor, but cute. Asta became an owl and perched on the prow her feathers shedding the water in a way she discovered when she was trying to become an animal that didn't yet exist the best she could do so far was to take one animal and add an aspect of another so now she was an owl with duck's feathers but she only did it when no one but malcolm was looking

yeah it's something that is interesting about LaBelle Sauvage. We see more demons that are like chimeras in a way. It's a different understanding of them than I had before. Soaked in home, his mother asks where they've been

and tells him, you know, you've got steak and kidney pie. It's going to be served soon. He washes his hands and asks if they found Mr. Boatwright yet. She says no, and that he missed a famous man earlier, Lord Asriel, the explorer, had come through. He's an Arctic explorer, she says. And guess what, Malcolm? The baby was there.

That's right. The infant being asked about by everyone. And it's real. It's Lord Asriel's love child. And they literally use the term love child in this book. And I don't know why. I just think that the use of that term is so funny. It's very salacious. They're gossips. I love that.

They are. Literally after this, we'll talk about it in a minute. But he goes to the nuns and he's like, oh, yeah, everyone already knows about the baby. So you may as well just let me see it. Like that's straight up what he says to them. It's like're the gossips over there at the trout inn and i love it i'm living for it you messy bitches this is the place to get the gossip about the nuns you can't go anywhere else for these bad habits oh habits he asks where the baby came from and she reminds him his mother reminds him of the story in the papers a month back where

lord asriel had killed a politician mr coulter malcolm begins to ask why he wasn't locked up and his mom says it was a matter of honor mr coulter's wife had the baby lord asriel's baby and then mr coulter came charging down to lord asriel's estate and burst in threatening to kill him and they fought and lord asriel won and it turned out there's a law allowing a man to defend himself and his kin that'd be the child the baby so he wasn't put in jail nor hanged but they find him all his fortune near enough eat your pie come on now for goodness sake malcolm asks how she knows that he's putting the infant with the nuns if he didn't tell her she says she doesn't but it's like 99 absolutely what's happening malcolm's parents are pretty smart she says he can ask sister

finella when he next sees her and also to stop calling her an infant all right because this loaf of bread is six months old she's just like call it a baby you weirdo and there's a couple of things that i do find interesting here in malcolm constantly calling Lyra the infant or royal infant earlier and I wonder if it's at all related maybe maybe not but you know speaking earlier of religion and artistic depictions there's a term that comes for the

what's usually the depiction of Jesus as a child or the Christ child and sometimes it's actually called the divine infant or the terminology is infant Jesus. Right. And I think there's also some hints of royalty. I know that Lyra is not royal. But there's apparently in some in some monarchies, the title of the infanta or infanta, meaning the child of monarchs. So she's a pretty she's a pretty special child, as we all know.

Yeah, I mean, she's the chosen one. Yeah, basically, you know, so that's interesting. Actually, I knew there was something special about it. But divine infant or infant Jesus has to be it. So Malcolm is like asking all the good questions, right? He's asking the stuff that gives us some of this really good detail. He wonders why she isn't staying with her mother. And his mom tells him some say the mom

never wanted anything to do with the kid but that could just be gossip. She then gives him rhubarb and custard very jealous and I want to clarify so we know a version of the story and I had to correct myself because I almost used a show fact not a book fact here and I was like well what are you doing? I fixed it in time for this episode, but we want you to know even I, Chloe, am human. So the version of the full story we get from John Fah in Northern Lights, right? Lyra's mother, Mrs. Coulter, was lower born, but beautiful and clever, a scholar, and Asriel fell in love with her as soon as they met. But the problem was she was already married she was married to a

politician of the kinks party who was rising in power lyra was taken to her father's estates in oxfordshire and put in the care of egyptian woman who nursed her ma costa mrs coulter's husband ransacked asriel's cottage but they left before he got there and continued to follow in a murderous rage and passion lord asriel had gone out hunting which is of course the sort of thing you do when there's a murderous politician who would face likely very little consequences for murdering you or your kid on the loose just some commentary for me you should definitely go hunting lord azrael it sounds responsible he did the best he could chloe shut up um he had a sword stop praising lord asriel and his sword um for the minimum but he did it i just think it's so funny i do love that lyra is you know the real story is kind of

you know uh macosta and lyra are in the closet the man finds them just in time and asriel showed up from hunting just in time very convenient wow the Wow, the basis of this book, actually, now that I say that. Asriel showing up just in time. Lyra and Makosta would have been dead, and the lawsuit was rough. Asriel versus murder guy. Asriel was self-defense. Coulter had the law on his side for, you know, Asriel fucking his wife. The case lasted for a week.

Asriel was left a poor man as punishment. His lands taken from him and his goods too. He had been richer than a king before. He was cast down. Interesting. Lyra, unfortunately, was in this weird in-between space, aka this book. Coulter doesn't want her, we're told,

but as we know, there's probably something a little more there. Ma Costa begged to keep Lyra, but the courts were incredibly racist and did not see the Egyptians as equals. Ly lyra was placed or was to be placed with the sisters of obedience at watlington per the magisterium we'll cover that later on in chapter 20 but she was also literally there for three days she was at the godstone nunnery for far longer which i guess that speaks to how well they hid her good job sisters benedictine and also again pullman's back raining some of this but then john fa says lord asriel wouldn't stand for that he had a hatred

of priors and monks and nuns and being a high-handed man he rode in one day and carried you off not to look after himself nor to give you to the egyptians he took you to jordan college and dared the law to undo it which is bullshit this is revisionist ass history listen up bitches because over the next several thousand days we are going to tell you what actually happened as we go through this book where was the malcolm where was the alice excuse me literally he just showed up what is this revision as he hated nuns and monks so so he tore in there to find you. Hmm. Not at all what happened, as we'll see in a few chapters.

But for now, three days later, Malcolm hurries to learn about this famous child! Poorly kept secret within this town when you really think about it. He washes his hands a bajillion times, and Sister Fenella is at first like, no, Malcolm, you can't help me make dough your hands

are super dirty what's up with your fingernails and he argues it's just tar from working on his boat and it both come out and then they finally decide for some reason they're like i guess tar is fine tar is clean and she teaches him to knead the dough he begins to press on the dough and press them about lord azrael's baby he tells her what he knows and she confirms he's right and that the lord chancellor was looking into it in the trout the other day her name was lyra sister vanilla doesn't know why they didn't name her after a saint though well i mean now on the flip side her dad wanted to kill god or wait rage war against you know the system and god rage against the machine.

So I guess we understand that now, right? Like, of course, he didn't name her after a saint. But I don't think we ever discussed Lyra's etymology more than a few back and forths back in his dark materials in Northern Lights and The Subtle Knife. I guess we should do that, right? focusing on the Greek Lyra, composed of lyre used to accompany lyric poetry, meaning singing to the lyre, and was supposed to be invented by Hermes from a tortoise shell. Hermes gave the first lyre to Apollo, who gave it to Orpheus, son of the Thracian king, to the muse Calliope, who let him charm even inanimate objects in turn. Orpheus's mother, Calliope, taught him to write verses, which is kind of a Greek culture to Lyra comparison comparison if you want to think on it, I guess. And of course, if you've lately

listened to our dusty discussion in the His Dark Materials Subtle Knife episodes, and also in our Secret Commonwealth episode, you'll remember a possible connection between Will and Lyra with Orpheus and Eurydice. I won't detail that today. Go take a look back if you need. No spoilers. But Lyra is also the name of a small constellation that looks like a lyre. In 2nd century AD, Greeks and Romans took this as Orpheus's lyre and Arabs regarded it as an eagle carrying a lyre and it became known as King Arthurthur's harp or king david's harp and held celestial meaning yeah and i think the liar is a big part of lyra's name of course and part of it is there is a slight play on words right between liar and lyra is quite the liar but we also know that pullman is heavily

inspired by quite a few poets, including Dante. And we have this line from Convivio by Dante, poet of, as you all know, the Divine Comedy, which heavily inspires his dark materials. It says, thus Ovid says that with his lyre, Orpheus tames wild beasts and made trees and rocks move toward him as you were saying chloe which is to say that the wise man with his instrument with the instrument of his voice makes cruel hearts grow tender and humble and moves to his will those who do not devote their lives to knowledge and art and i think we see lyra do that quite a bit right making cruel hearts grow tender throughout a lot of the story especially with that beautiful moment between her and the harpies i just love that she hugs the harpy with its crusty face and it also speaks to the power of

art and music and lyrics which plato warned people about when it came to that because he felt that poetry and and verse were incredibly powerful and could easily sway people in terms of propaganda in certain directions. But you also have the liar, of course, as you said earlier, associated with Apollo, who was also highly associated with reason and intellectual order and, of course, knowledge, as you were talking about.

And then again, the liar in lyrics and poetry, a lot of those strong connotations and connections especially when you think of the roots of his dark materials being from paradise lost milton's poem and speaking a lot to those really epic connections that pullman's trying to to, so you could really rename the series to like a song of babies and dust. I'm just kidding. Wrong podcast, I'm sorry. Yeah, some pretty epic proportions.

And I just feel like Lyra is being brought up as a legend here and treated like a legend in real life, right? This is living legend. This is the chosen one, the child that's supposed to change everything. And here is this 11-year-old boy that doesn't really have hopes beyond his immediate end of his education in three years and working for an inn that finds out about Russikov particles and takes us on to have a professional career, right?

That's big. It's big a professional career, right? That's big. It's big. Academic career, yeah. And it's similar in a way, I guess, to Will, right? Like, not in that manner, but, like, you get these backstories of these kids that otherwise were kind of in a situation that wasn't great. And not, like, bad for Will's was kind of shitty.

Malcolm's was, he was happy. But it was obviously upended. And I think that's a great end to look at, that both of these become something so much bigger. They follow their dreams amidst the dusty stars. They follow their being called when the call to adventure comes. But right now, first, Malcolm's voicing, yeah. Malcolm is voicing his concerns about Lara being taken care of

and asks kind of rude to be honest he's all like do you guys know how to take care of babies ya virgins that's basically what he's saying to them in nicer terms the Chad Malcolm Polstead

the Chad Malcolm Polstead oh my god the virgin nuns the virgin sister finella and her squirrel demon laugh at him understandably so i mean they might not all be virgins you know yeah no absolutely mary malone she sure ain't well some of them like sometimes they've i've heard like sometimes people become nuns after they're like, wow. Yeah, no, absolutely. And Asta and Malcolm join in laughing, too. She says he'd be surprised what she knows. Whoa!

Now the Chad sister, Fenella, tells Malcolm to keep it quiet, though, as no one is to know, but he says everyone basically already knows that the trout... Malcolm turns the conversation to the CCD, asking if they came to the Priory at all. Fenella says, Lord Preservus, no! He tells her about Mr. Boatwright in the trout, and she is worried after this.

She asks what the CCD... He asks her what the CCD does, and she says, they do God's work? It's too hard for them to understand and sister benedicta would have dealt with them and kept it to herself as she's a brave woman she says that enough dough kneading anxious uh and takes him to see lyra and of course we have to read this it is a beautiful passage i i just love it so much, so without further ado. Malcolm had never seen a baby at close quarters, and he was struck at once by how real she seemed.

He knew that would be a silly thing to say, so he held his tongue, but that was his impression all the same. It was unexpected that something so small should be so perfectly formed. She was as perfectly made as the wooden acorn. Her demon, the chick of a small bird like a swallow, was asleep with her, but as soon as Asta flew down, swallow-shaped too, and perched on the edge of the crib, the chick woke up and opened his yellow beak wide for food. Malcolm laughed, and that woke the baby. Seeing his laughing face, she began to laugh too. Asta pretended to snap at a tiny insect and thrust it down the baby demon's gaping mouth, which satisfied him, making Malcolm laugh harder, and the baby laughed so hard she got hiccups, and every time she hicked, the demon jumped. There, there, said Sister Vanilla and bent to

pick her up, but as she looked at the baby, Lyra's little face crumpled into an expression of grief and terror, and she reached round for her demon, nearly twisting herself out of the nun's arms. Asta was ahead of her. She took the little chick in her mouth and flew up to place him on the baby's chest, at which point he turned into a miniature tiger cub and hissed and bared his teeth at everyone.

All the baby's dismay vanished at once, and she lay in Sister Fenella's arms, looking around with a lordly complacency. Malcolm was enchanted. Everything about her was perfect and delighted him. Better put you down again, sweetheart, said Sister Fenella. Shouldn't have woken, you should be darling. She laid the baby in the crib, tucking her up and taking the greatest care not to brush a hand against her demon. Malcolm supposed the prohibition against touching another person's demon was true for babies as well. In any case, he would never have dreamed after those few minutes of doing anything to upset that little child. He was her servant for life.

It's such a sweet end to the passage. It does make me think that we've only seen certain parts of Malcolm Polstead with Lyra, so, like, what does that mean for the future? I don't know. Interesting. Interesting. Interesting. Yeah, for me, it conjures most strongly the language that's used

to describe Roger Parslow in his Dark Materials, where it says that Roger would have followed Lyra pretty much anywhere, and I'm just like... He did. Yeah, he did. So that to me says that Malcolm would would have followed her anywhere and he did we don't know the end i mean no spoilers but he's alive so we'll see apparently a chad as you are portraying him i'm wondering if this line doesn't i mean the finality of it is what I am really kind of like dwelling on this time.

I didn't dwell on this last time. Last time I read this, I just thought it was the cutest line in the world. We read this during the His Dark Materials show, and I just thought it was very cute. But this time rereading it, I just feel like there's a lot of finality, and I feel like Pullman knows the story he's telling. So I just am curious if it's foreshadowing. I don't know. I think it's foreshadowing. Well, obviously it's foreshadowing for like the lengths that Malcolm will go to within this book.

But also now that you say it, like, and I think, of course, of how devoted Roger was that. Yeah. There's that. And also, like, I don't know. I feel weird still a little about the, he was her servant for life and, like, all these people feeling that way towards Lyra, especially those of lower classes. Though I guess,

you know, now Malcolm's kind of equal, you know? In standing? I mean, kind of professor versus a scholar. Anyways, the more important person here, the more important person is another person who was her servant for life.

And, well, at least during this book. Kind of literally. Alice. Alice. Yeah, literally. Alice Parslow. Roger's cousin. I thought that was a big deal. They are literally cousins. So do with that what you will. So sad. Yeah. Just get sad with it.

Yeah. Well, that was our first LaBelle Sauvage episode. that was all three chapters what do you think eliana um i'm excited there's a lot of things that i haven't like thought long on i mean when i read books right i don't always sometimes i'll linger on some things but a lot of the time you know i'm just kind of enjoying the story. And so it'll be interesting going through it again and seeing all these things on a slower read. Well, you all can expect another episode of La Belle Sauvage to hit your Patreon feed in August. We will come back in August with that episode,

and hopefully after August, we'll be able to make that our His Dark Materials episode monthly. So you'll wait a couple months, and you'll right on track with more LaBelle Sauvage. I've been really excited about this. This is, I think the stuff I'm the most excited about is, of course, River Tame later. That's, I mean, that's amazing. I kept being like, how come Chloe doesn't want to know my thoughts about LaBelle Sauvage? When are we going to talk about it? And now here we are

finally doing it. Doing it live. Well, recorded. We're going to edit this. Not live. Not live, everyone. We'll be back in a couple months. Yeah, I guess we'll have to edit this outro at some point, too.

Yeah, absolutely. I'll have to think about it. Alright, well well thank you very much everyone for listening to this month's patreon episode about la belle sauvage yeah the beautiful sausage the beautiful sausage sometimes i think about lbs and i'm like loose bowel syndrome we will be back next month with another patreon episode for you but it will be for our a song of ice and fire series we will likely be covering one of the free cities, so stay tuned for that.

Yeah, or you know, something else could spark our inspiration, but it's probably going to be one of the free cities. You never know. Yeah, you know us. Free will, free cities. Same thing, right? Free him. Bye, everyone. Bye.