Page 44 of The Twelve Days of Christmas

STAVE X.

Reunion

T EN P IPERS P IPING

Phillip Denby had long been absent from the village of Merrywake, though such an unhappy condition (it must be fervently expressed) had not been his fault.

Circumstances conspired against him, for he did not desert the army willingly.

Indeed, he had no notion of the fact that he had deserted until he woke up on the battlefield of Toulouse.

How Phillip had not bled to death he could not say – the bayonet which pierced his shoulder sliced clean through the other side.

He fell in the instant agony of it, his body soon covered by others, and there he spluttered face down in the mud until oblivion mercifully took him.

Later, when Phillip found himself at the mercy of French soldiers, he wondered what might have happened to him if he had not been so distracted.

If he had not been distracted by the sight of George Jenkins being shot in the chest, he would have seen the bayonet coming.

But see George he did, and desperately Phillip had tried to reach him, the man he had looked up to, the man he had followed to war three years before.

When Phillip did wake, he knew not what day it was, only that his fellow troops had departed.

He looked for George’s body on the field amidst the corpses of soldiers and horses but found it gone, too, and as he staggered about him – bleary-eyed and weak as wet parchment – Phillip wondered why he had been left, until he realised the bodies that had covered him were French, their navy uniforms blending seamlessly with his own.

Musicians, after all, also wore blue.

Phillip had sobbed as the truth hit him.

George, he remembered, had fallen face up.

His uniform would have been more distinctive in such a position, and so the British knew to take him from the field.

But Phillip … he they left. How many other drummers and pipers had found themselves at the mercy of a French bullet or blade?

There had been ten pipers in Wellington’s army that day – five British, three Portuguese, two Spanish – paired with George’s drum and eleven others.

He and George were not the only ones to have fallen, Phillip could be sure of that, for musicians faced the front line of enemy fire every day.

Had they been missed too, buried under Napoleon’s soldiers, as he had?

But as Phillip gazed over the battlefield, a sea of bodies and blood, he realised it hardly mattered.

The only thing that mattered was that he was somehow alive and had been left all alone in enemy territory, with no notion as to where Sergeant Harrington had taken the troops.

So he walked. There was nothing else for it.

He passed plundered villages, ragged paupers, the bodies of decaying children.

If he had not known himself to be in France, Phillip might have blamed the French for such villainy, but he could not ignore the English obscenities that scrawled the walls and realised sickly that all of them – French and British alike – were just as monstrous as each other.

Phillip did his best. He bound his wound with the ripped sleeve of his shirt, survived on water from streams, scavenged the hedgerows for berries, and slept under trees or in abandoned huts that smelt of campfires and urine.

But soon it became clear he had travelled in the wrong direction, for how could he possibly lose track of an entire army (however much of it remained)?

Miraculously, Phillip had kept hold of his fife when he fell to the bayonet, his hand somehow cushioning the crush.

Often he gripped it as a kind of comfort, and when despair began to take him he would play …

which was, on reflection, the worst decision he could have made, for that was how the enemy discovered him.

Without realising he had done so, Phillip had travelled north-west, stumbling within hearing distance of a French cavalry camp.

They mistook him for one of their own at first on account of his navy uniform, but soon discovered their error when Phillip could not understand their questions.

They bound him in irons, lashed him until he bled and marched him to the nearest prison, a fortress situated on the coast of a city Phillip later heard called Brest.

How long he remained there Phillip could not rightly say, for the days melted into one another.

He could thank God that at least the wretched stone cell which held him was his and his alone, and that he was fed daily, though there could be little to enjoy from the fare – bullock offal, a pound of bread and some pulses, all undercooked and of measly proportions.

Nothing like his mother’s cooking. Nothing like it at all.

There had been no window in his cell. Darkness became a part of him, and with the fife confiscated and nothing with which to entertain himself, Phillip often thought of home.

He would picture the lush green of Merrywake in summer, the rolling fields of Hodge Farm, the pretty village square, the boisterous assemblies he and George used to play at every month – Phillip with his tin whistle, George with his bodhrán drum.

Phillip thought too of Wakely Hall where he had lived since he was a small boy – the cosy servants’ hall, its large fireplace where often he would sit and practise his melodies, his mother tapping her foot to its time as she prepared another grand meal for the Pépin family, from which she always reserved a plate, just for him.

Dear, dear Wakely Hall, where he never wanted for anything, each day just the same and as safe as the one before it …

and Phillip had had the temerity to be bored.

To crave adventure. Following George to war had nothing to do with serving his country.

He merely wanted to experience something of the world, to say, Here now – I have lived!

How young he had been then. How very na?ve.

Too often, when Phillip thought of home, he wondered what hell his mother was going through. George’s parents would have been notified of his death – had Sergeant Harrington written to his mother as well? And if he had, what had he told her? Missing, presumed dead . Or, much worse than that:

Deserted .

The days unspooled. The seasons ebbed and flowed.

Then at length, finally, word came of the French defeat.

Phillip was released into a too-bright world, a great blue sea in front of him and no way to cross it.

He found work at the shipyard, scraped enough coin to take him home should the opportunity arise, and it had been providence that some months later a merchant vessel docked at Brest and agreed to take him to Plymouth, the very same port he had departed from five years before.

He arrived in England a different man than the boy who left it: humbled, broken.

Afraid. But from Plymouth Phillip began the long journey back to Merrywake, with only a knapsack that held a change of clothes and twelve shillings to his name.

He did not waste them by purchasing a seat on the post-chaise.

Phillip would walk the distance to Merrywake, buy food and meagre lodgings where he could, and only when he reached the Crown would he use the last of his money to purchase a hot meal and a room so he could tidy himself up before continuing his journey on to Wakely Hall.

Certainly, he could not present himself to his mother in such a state – he looked like a vagrant, every bit the deserter she must surely think him to be.

Phillip adjusted his knapsack, tightened his woollen scarf about his neck.

Deserter. That must be what they took him for, for how can anyone be pronounced dead without a body to prove the fact?

He should have written to his mother as soon as he was released, Phillip knew, but the truth of it was that he was too ashamed, too frightened.

One overheard terrifying stories, working at the docks.

One morning he heard tell of a group of soldiers discovered outside Nantes.

They were accused of being deserters and executed when they protested their innocence.

Would Sergeant Harrington believe him ? Would he believe Phillip if he were to say he encountered no outfit between Toulouse and wherever the French picked him up?

Or would he too find himself with a noose about his neck?

Phillip shuddered. No, he had not deserted the army willingly yet that meant nothing if he could not prove it.

But now, now that the wars were over, he might risk coming home and put his case to the viscount.

Surely Viscount Pépin would vouch for him?

He had always been, so Phillip remembered, a good and decent man.

Soon he found himself turning onto the long road that led to Merrywake.

For some miles he trudged through a slurry of melting snow, made brown from wheels and horses which had churned up mud three inches thick, and he winced as the heel of his boot sank and let it in through the seams. Phillip had experienced worse during his time serving under the sergeant of course, but oh, how thankful he was that he had a change of clothes in his knapsack, a suitable pair of shoes!

How wonderful it would be to be warm and dry by the fireplace at Wakely Hall, with one of his mother’s delectable mince pies in his hand.

Perhaps, too, a slice of her acclaimed plum pudding?

It was these happier and altogether mouth-watering thoughts that entertained him until Phillip saw in the distance a carriage at a standstill.

The sight made him pause, for he did not yet feel ready for company, but even so far away he could see that a problem had occurred, and such was Phillip’s sense of chivalry that he picked up pace with the intention to assist.