CHAPTER 5

All that Schmendrick remembered later of his wild ride with the outlaws was the wind, the saddle's edge, and the laughter of the jingling giant. He was too busy brooding over the ending of his hat trick to notice much else. Too much english, he suggested to himself. Overcompensation. But he shook his head, which was difficult in his position. The magic knows what it wants to do, he thought, bouncing as the horse dashed across a creek. But I never know what it knows. Not at the right time, anyway. I'd write it a letter, if I knew where it lived.

Brush and branches raked his face, and owls hooted in his ears. The horses had slowed to a trot, then to a walk. A high, trembling voice called out, "Halt and give the password!"

"Damme, here we go," Jack Jingly muttered. He scratched his head with a sound like sawing, raised his voice, and answered, "A short life and a merry one, here in the sweet greenwood; jolly comrades united, to victory plighted--"

"Liberty," the thin voice corrected. "To liberty plighted. The I sound makes all the difference."

"Thank' ee. To liberty plighted. Comrades united--na, na, I said that. A short life and a merry one, jolly comrades--na, that's not it." Jack Jingly scratched his head again and groaned. "To liberty plighted---gi'me a little help, will ye?"

"All for one and one for all," the voice said obligingly. "Can you get the rest yourself?"

"All for one and one for all--1 haven't!" the giant shouted. "All for one and one for all, united we stand, divided we fall." He kicked his horse and started on again.

An arrow squealed out of the dark, sliced a wedge from his ear, nicked the horse of the man riding behind him, and skittered away like a bat. The outlaws scattered to the safety of the trees, and Jack Jingly yelled with rage, "Damn your eyes, I gave the password ten times over! Let me only get my hands on 'ee--"

"We changed the password while you were gone, Jack," came the voice of the sentry. "It was too hard to remember."

"Ah, you changed the password, did ye?" Jack Jingly dabbed at his bleeding ear with a fold of Schmendrick's cloak. "And how was I to know that, ye brainless, tripeless, liverless get?"

"Don't get mad, Jack," the sentry answered soothingly. "You see, it doesn't really matter if you don't know the new password, because it's so simple. You just call like a giraffe. The captain thought of it himself."

"Call like a giraffe." The giant swore till even the horses fidgeted with embarrassment. "Ye ninny, a giraffe makes no sound at all. The captain might as well have us call like a fish or a butterfly."

"I know. That way, nobody can forget the password, even you. Isn't the captain clever?"

"There's no limit to the man," Jack Jingly said wonderingly. "But see here, what's to keep a ranger or one of the king's men from calling like a giraffe when ye hail him?"

"Aha," the sentry chuckled. "That's where the cleverness of it is. You have to give me call three times. Two long and one short."

Jack Jingly sat silent on his horse, rubbing his ear. "Two long and one short," he sighed presently. "Awell, 'tis no more foolish than the time he'd have no password at all, and shot any who answered the challenge. Two long and one short, right." He rode on through the trees, and his men trailed after him.

Voices murmured somewhere ahead, sullen as robbed bees. As they drew nearer, Schmendrick thought he could make out a woman's tone among them. Then his cheek felt firelight, and he looked up. They had halted in a small clearing where another ten or twelve men sat around a campfire, fretting and grumbling. The air smelled of burned beans.

A freckled, red-haired man, dressed in somewhat richer rags than the rest, strode forward to greet them. "Well, Jack," he cried. "Who is't you bring us, comrade or captive?" Over his shoulder he called to someone, "Add some more water to the soup, love; there's company."

"I don't know what he is myself," Jack Jingly rumbled. He began to tell the story of the Mayor and the hat, but he had hardly reached the roaring descent upon the town when he was interrupted by a thin thorn of a woman who came pushing through the ring of men to shrill, "I'll not have it, Cully, the soup's no thicker than sweat as it is!" She had a pale, bony face with fierce, tawny eyes, and hair the color of dead grass.

"And who's this long lout?" she asked, inspecting Schmendrick as though he were something she had found sticking to the sole of her shoe. "He's no townsman. I don't like the look of him. Slit his wizard."

She had meant to say either "weasand" or "gizzard," and had said both, but the coincidence trailed down Schmendrick's spine like wet seaweed. He slid off jack Jingly's horse and stood before the outlaw captain. "I am Schmendrick the Magician," he announced, swirling his cloak with both hands until it billowed feebly. "And are you truly the famous Captain Cully of the greenwood, boldest of the bold and freest of the free?"

A few of the outlaws snickered, and the woman groaned. "I knew it," she declared. "Gut him, Cully, from gills to gullet before he does you the way the last one did." But the captain bowed proudly, showing an eddy of baldness on his crown, and answered, "That am I. He who hunts me for my head shall find a fearful foe, but he who seeks me as a friend may find me friend enough. How do you come here, sir?"

"On my stomach," said Schmendrick, "and unintentionally, but in friendship nonetheless. Though your leman doubts it," he added nodding at the thin woman. She spat on the ground.

Captain Cully grinned and laid his arm warily along the woman's sharp shoulders. "Ah, that's only Molly Grue's way," he explained. "She guards me better than I do myself. I am generous and easy; to the point of extravagance, perhaps --an open hand to all fugitives from tyranny, that's my motto. It is only natural that Molly should become suspicious, pinched, dour, prematurely old, even a touch tyrannical. The bright balloon needs the knot at one end, eh, Molly? But she's a good heart, a good heart." The woman shrugged herself away from him, but the captain did not turn his head. "You are welcome here, sir sorcerer," he told Schmendrick. "Come to the fire and tell us your tale. How do they speak of me in your country? What have you heard of dashing Captain Cully and his band of freemen? Have a seat."

Schmendrick accepted the place by the fire, graciously declined the gelid morsel, and replied, "I have heard that you are the friend of the helpless and the enemy of the mighty, and that you and your merry men lead a joyous life in the forest, stealing from the rich and giving to the poor. I know the tale of how you and jack Jingly cracked one another's crowns with quarterstaves and became blood brothers thereby; and how you saved your Molly from marriage to the rich old man her father had chosen for her." In fact, Schmendrick had never heard of Captain Cully before that very evening, but he had a good grounding in Anglo-Saxon folklore and knew the type. "And of course," he hazarded, "there was a certain wicked king-"

"Haggard, rot and ruin him!" Cully cried. "Aye, there's not one here but's been done wrong by old King Haggard--driven from his rightful land, robbed of his rank and rents, skinned out of his patrimony. They live only for revenge-mark you, magician--and one day Haggard will pay such a reckoning--"

A score of shaggy shadows hissed assent, but Molly Grue's laughter fell like hail, rattling and stinging. "Mayhap he will," she mocked, "but it won't be to such chattering cravens he'll pay it. His castle rots and totters more each day, and his men are too old to stand up in armor', but he'll rule forever, for all Captain Cully dares."

Schmendrick raised an eyebrow, and Cully flushed radish-red. "You must understand," he mumbled. "King Haggard has this Bull--"

"Ah, the Red Bull, the Red Bull!" Molly hooted. "I tell you what, Cully, after all these years in the wood with you I've come to think the Bull's nought but the pet name you give your cowardice. If I hear that fable once more, I'll go and down old Haggard myself, and know you for a--"

"Enough!" Cully roared. "Not before strangers!" He tugged at his sword and Molly opened her arms to it, still laughing. Around the fire, greasy hands twiddled dagger hilts, and longbows seemed to string themselves, but Schmendrick spoke up then, seeking to salvage Cully's sinking vanity. He hated family scenes.

"They sing a ballad of you in my country," he began. "I forget just how it goes-"

Captain Cully spun like a cat ambushing its own tail. "Which one?" he demanded.

"I don't know," Schmendrick answered, taken aback. "Are there more than one?"

"Aye, indeed!" Cully cried, glowing and growing, as though pregnant with his pride. "Willie Gentle! Willie Gentle! Where is the lad?"

A lank-haired youth with a lute and pimples shambled up.

"Sing one of my exploits for the gentleman," Captain Cully ordered him. "Sing the one about how you joined my band. I've not heard it since Tuesday last."

The minstrel sighed, struck a chord, and began to sing in a wobbly countertenor:

"Oh, it was Captain Cully came riding home
From slaying of the king's gay deer,
When whom should he spy but a pale young man,
Came drooping o'er the lea?

" 'What news, what news, my pretty young man?
What ails ye, that ye sigh so deep?
Is it for the loss of your lady fair?
Or are ye but scabbit in your greep?'

" 'I am nae scabbit, whatever that means,
And my greep is as well as a greep may be,
But I do sigh for my lady fair
Whom my three brothers ha' riven from me.'

"'I am Captain Cully of the sweet greenwood,
And the men at my call are fierce and free.
If I do rescue your lady fair,
What service will ye render me?'

" 'If ye do rescue my lady fair,
I will break your nose, ye silly auld gowk.
But she wore an emerald at her throat,
Which my three brothers also took.'

"Then the captain has gone to the three bold thieves,
And he's made his sword baith to shiver and sing.
'Ye may keep the lass, but I'll hae the stane,
For it's fit for the crown of a royal king.' "

"Now comes the best part," Cully whispered to Schmendrick. He was bouncing eagerly on his toes, hugging himself.

"Then it's three cloaks off, and it's three swords out.
And it's three swords whistling like the tea.
'By the faith of my body,' says Captain Cully,
'Now ye shall have neither the stane nor she.'

"And he's driven them up, and he's driven them down,
And he's driven them to and fro like sheep-"

"Like sheep," Cully breathed. He rocked and hummed and parried three swords with his forearm for the remaining seventeen stanzas of the song, rapturously oblivious to Molly's mockery and the restlessness of his men. The ballad ended at last, and Schmendrick applauded loudly and earnestly, complimenting Willie Gentle on his right-hand technique.

"I call it Alan-a-Dale picking," the minstrel answered. He would have expounded further, but Cully interrupted him, saying, “Good, Willie, good boy, now play the others." He beamed at what Schmendrick hoped was an expression of pleased surprise. "I said that there were several songs about me. There are thirty-one, to be exact, though none are in the

Child collection just at present--" His eyes widened suddenly, and he grasped the magician's shoulders. "You wouldn't be Mr. Child himself, now would you?" he demanded. "He often goes seeking ballads, so I've heard, disguised as a plain man--"

Schmendrick shook his head. "No, I'm very sorry, really."

The captain sighed and released him. "It doesn't matter," he murmured. "One always hopes, of course, even now--to be collected, to be verified, annotated, to have variant versions, even to have one's authenticity doubted...well, well, never mind. Sing the other songs, Willie lad. You'll need the practice one day, when you're field-recorded."

The outlaws grumbled and scuffed, kicking at stones. A hoarse voice bawled from a safe shadow, "Na, Willie, sing us a true song. Sing us one about Robin Hood."

"Who said that?" Cully's loosened sword clacked in its sheath as he turned from side to side.

"I did," said Molly Grue, who hadn't. "The men are bored with ballads of your bravery, captain darling. Even if you did write them all yourself."

Cully winced and stole a side glance at Schmendrick. "They can still be folk songs, can't they, Mr. Child?" he asked in a low, worried voice. "After all--"

"I'm not Mr. Child," Schmendrick said. "Really I'm not."

"I mean, you can't leave epic events to the people. They get everything wrong."

An aging rogue in tattered velvet now slunk forward. "Captain, if we're to have folk songs, and I suppose we must, then we feel they ought to be true songs about real outlaws, not this lying life we live. No offense, captain, but we're really not very merry, when all's said--"

"I'm merry twenty-four hours a day, Dick Fancy," Cully said coldly. "That is a fact."

"And we don't steal from the rich and give to the poor,"

Dick Fancy hurried on. "We steal from the poor because they can't fight back--most of them--and the rich take from us because they could wipe us out in a day. We don't rob the fat, greedy Mayor on the highway; we pay him tribute every month to leave us alone. We never carry off proud bishops and keep them prisoner in the wood, feasting and entertaining them, because Molly hasn't any good dishes, and besides, we just wouldn't be very stimulating company for a bishop. When we go to the fair in disguise, we never win at the archery or at singlestick. We do get some nice compliments on our disguises, but no more than that."

"I sent a tapestry to the judging once," Molly remembered. "It came in fourth. Fifth. A knight at vigil--everyone was doing vigils that year." Suddenly she was scrubbing her eyes with horny knuckles. "Damn you, Cully."

"What, what?" he yelled in exasperation. "Is it my fault you didn't keep up with your weaving? Once you had your man, you let all your accomplishments go. You don't sew or sing any more, you haven't illuminated a manuscript in years-and what happened to that viola da gamba I got you?" He turned to Schmendrick. "We might as well be married, the way she's gone to seed." The magician nodded fractionally, and looked away.

"And as for righting wrongs and fighting for civil liberties, that sort of thing," Dick Fancy said, "it wouldn't be so bad--1 mean, I'm not the crusader type myself, some are and some aren't--but then we have to sing those songs about wearing Lincoln green and aiding the oppressed. We don't, Cully, we turn them in for the reward, and those songs are just embarrassing, that's all, and there's the truth of it."

Captain Cully folded his arms, ignoring the outlaws' snarls of agreement. "Sing the songs, Willie."

"I'll not. The minstrel would not raise a hand to touch his lute. "And you never fought my brothers for any stone, Cully! You wrote them a letter, which you didn't sign-"

Cully drew back his arm, and blades blinked among the men as though someone had blown on a heap of coals. At this point Schmendrick stepped forward again, smiling urgently. "If I may offer an alternative, he suggested, "why not let your guest earn his night's lodging by amusing you? I can neither sing nor play, but I have my own accomplishments, and you may not have seen their like."

Jack Jingly agreed immediately, saying, "Aye, Cully, a magician! 'Twould be a rare treat for the lads." Molly Grue grumbled some savage generalization about wizards as a class, but the men shouted with quick delight, throwing one another into the air. The only real reluctance was shown by Captain Cully himself, who protested sadly, "Yes, but the songs. Mr. Child must hear the songs."

"And so I will," Schmendrick assured him. "Later. " Gully brightened then and cried to his men to give way and make room. They sprawled and squatted in the shadows, watching with sprung grins as Schmendrick began to run through the old flummeries with which he had entertained the country folk at the Midnight Carnival. It was paltry magic, but he thought it diverting enough for such a crew as Cully's.

But he had judged them too easily. They applauded his rings and scarves, his ears full of goldfish and aces, with a proper politeness but without wonder. Offering no true magic, he drew no magic back from them; and when a spell failed-as when, promising to turn a duck into a duke for them to rob, he produced a handful of duke cherries-he was clapped just as kindly and vacantly as though he had succeeded. They were a perfect audience.

Gully smiled impatiently, and Jack Jingly dozed, but it star- tied the magician to see the disappointment in Molly Grue's restless eyes. Sudden anger made him laugh. He dropped seven spinning balls that had been glowing brighter and brighter as he juggled them (on a good evening, he could make them catch fire), let go all his hated skills, and closed his eyes. "Do as you will," he whispered to the magic. "Do as you will."

It sighed through him, beginning somewhere secret-in his shoulderblade, perhaps, or in the marrow of his shinbone. His heart filled and tautened like a sail, and something moved more surely in his body than he ever had. It spoke with his voice, commanding. Weak with power, he sank to his knees and waited to be Schmendrick again.

I wonder what I did. I did something.

He opened his eyes. Most of the outlaws were chuckling and tapping their temples, glad of the chance to mock him. Captain Cully had risen, anxious to pronounce that part of the entertainment ended. Then Molly Grue cried out in a soft, shaking voice, and all turned to see what she saw. A man came walking into the clearing.

He was dressed in green, but for a brown jerkin and a slanting brown cap with a woodcock's feather in it. He was very tall, too tall for a living man: the great bow slung over his shoulder looked as long as Jack Jingly, and his arrows would have made spears or staves for Captain Cully. Taking no notice at all of the still, shabby forms by the fire, he strode through the light and vanished, with no sound of breath or footfall.

After him came others, one at a time or two together, some conversing, many laughing, but none making any sound. All carried longbows and all wore green, save one who came clad in scarlet to his toes, and another gowned in a friar's brown habit, his feet in sandals and his enormous belly contained by a rope belt. One played a lute and sang silently as he walked.

"Alan-a-Dale.” It was raw Willie Gentle. "Look at those changes!” His voice was as naked as a baby bird.

Effortlessly proud, graceful as giraffes (even the tallest among them, a kind-eyed Blunderbore), the bowmen moved across the clearing. Last, hand in hand, came a man and a woman. Their faces were as beautiful as though they had never known fear. The woman's heavy hair shone with a secret, like a cloud that hides the moon.

"Oh," said Molly Grue. "Marian."

"Robin Hood is a myth," Captain Cully said nervously, "a classic example of the heroic folk figures synthesized out of need. John Henry another. Men have to have heroes, but no man can ever be as big as the need, and so a legend grows around a grain of truth, like a pearl. Not that it isn't a remarkable trick, of course."

It was the seedy dandy Dick Fancy who moved first. All the figures but the last two had passed into the darkness when he rushed after them, calling, hoarsely, "Robin, Robin, Mr. Hood sir, wait for me!" Neither the man nor the women turned, but every man of Cully's band--saving only Jack Jingly and the captain himself--ran to the clearing's edge, tripping and trampling one another, kicking the fire so that the clearing churned with shadows. "Robin!" they shouted; and "Marian, Scarlet, Little John--come back! Come back!" Schmendrick began to laugh, tenderly and helplessly.

Over their voices, Captain Cully screamed, "Fools, fools and children! It was a lie, like all magic! There is no such person as Robin Hood!" But the outlaws, wild with loss, went crashing into the woods after the shining archers, stumbling over logs, falling through thorn bushes, wailing hungrily as they ran. Only Molly Grue stopped and looked back. Her face was burning white.

"Nay, Cully you have it backward;" she called to him. "There's no such a person as you, or me, or any of us. Robin and Marian are real, and we are the legend!" Then she ran on, crying, "Wait, wait!" like the others, leaving Captain Cully and Jack Jingly to stand in the trampled firelight and listen to the magician's laughter.

Schmendrick hardly noticed when they sprang on him and seized his arms; nor did he flinch when Cully pricked his ribs' with a dagger, hissing, "That was a dangerous diversion, Mr. Child, and rude as well. You could have said you didn't want to hear the songs." The dagger twitched deeper.

Far away, he heard Jack Jingly growl, "He's na Child, Cully, nor is he any journeyman wizard, neither. I know him now. He's Haggard's son, the prince Lir, as foul as his father and doubtless handy with the black arts. Hold your hand, captain--he's no good to us dead."

Cully's voice drooped. "Are you sure, Jack? He seemed such a pleasant fellow."

"Pleasant fool, ye mean. Aye, Lir has that air, I've heard tell. He plays the gormless innocent, but he's the devil for deception. The way he gave out to be this Child cove, just to get you off your guard."

"I wasn't off my guard, Jack," Cully protested. "Not for a moment. I may have seemed to be, but I'm very deceptive myself."

"And the way he called up Robin Hood to fill the lads with longing and turn them against you. Ah, but he gave himself away that time, and now he'll bide with us, though his father send the Red Bull to free him." Cully caught his breath at that, but the giant bore him to a great tree, where he bound him with his face to the trunk and his arms stretched around it. Schmendrick giggled gently all through the operation, and made matters easier by hugging the tree as fondly as a new bride."

"There," Jack Jingly said at last. "Do ye guard him the night, Cully, whiles I sleep, and in the morning it's me to old Haggard to see what his boy's worth to him. Happen we'll all be gentle- men of leisure in a month's time."

"What of the men?" Cully asked worriedly. "Will they come back, do you think?"

The giant yawned and turned away. "They'll be back by morning, sad and sneezing, and ye'll have to be easy with them for a bit. They'll be back, for they're not the sort to trade something for nothing, and no more am I. Robin Hood might have stayed for us if we were. Good night to ye, captain."

There was no sound when he was gone but crickets, and Schmendrick's soft chuckling to the tree. The fire faded, and Cully turned in circles, sighing as each ember went out. Finally he sat down on a stump and addressed the captive magician.

"Haggard's son you may be," he mused, "and not the collector Child, as you claim. But whoever you are, you know very well that Robin Hood is the fable and I am the reality. No ballads will accumulate around my name unless I write them myself; no children will read of my adventures in their school books and play at being me after school. And when the professors prowl through the old tales, and scholars sift the old songs to learn if Robin Hood ever truly lived, they will never, never find my name, not till they crack the world for the grain of its heart. But you know, and therefore I am going to sing you the songs of Captain Cully. He was a good, gay rascal who stole from the rich and gave to the poor. In their gratitude, the people made up these simple verses about him."

Whereupon he sang them all, including the one that Willie Gentle had sung for Schmendrick. He paused often to comment on the varying rhythm patterns, the assonantal rhymes, and the modal melodies.

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