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THE GRAND OLD DUKE OF PERTH
The army passed along that ridge, Bonnie Prince Charlie's men, marching down to England to claim the English throne. There were hundreds of them, fine men, strong men, brave and ready for action. There were pipers marking the march, setting the pace. Flags there would be, and tartans, a gathering of tartans, representing the flowers of the clans, joined together, united against the enemy.
Down the Highlandman's Loan they walked, those hundreds of men, marched to their deaths, to ramshackle retreat and ignominious defeat, and a little boy stood there and listened, two hundred and some years later, listened to the turn of the wind for an echo of their sound, for a reflection of their glory.
And the history books, they tell lies that turn that little boy's head. Butcher Cumberland slew the Scots, Flora MacDonald saved the life of the bonnie, brave Prince. A nation wept, saw its nationhood taken, saw its young men fallen, saw its glory razed.
And a nation waits, like that little boy on the Highlandman's Loan, waiting for the stir of the pipes, the march of the brave, waiting for the moment it can gain revenge. A nation looks back, angrily back, unforgiving, unblinking.
The little boy thinks he hears something. He looks up and smiles, sees a battalion of ghosts marching in the distance, from the foot of the Highlandman's Loan. He hears the sound of their pipes, "Scotland the Brave," finest of tunes. And they march steadily, these heroes of his mind, coming ever closer.
When they are half a mile away he sees they are walking backwards, their plaids billowing behind them and rucking round their bodies. Their step is unsteady, uneven, the rhythm of the pipes swirling and swaying in drunken accord. Above their skirl the little boy hears a steady sound, deep and resonant, a constant moan like a man in pain, but louder than anything he has ever heard. The troops are close to him now, and he is uncomfortably aware of the smell, sweet like a rabbit dead in a ditch. As they pass, one by one, the heroes of his mind, they turn and stare. Some are missing hands, arms, eyes. All are bleeding. Their moans are crystalising into a single note, a single syllable, a single word.
"No."
"No," they moan as they pass by, hundreds of dead heroes, marching, limping, staggering up the hill. The little boy waits till the last of them has passed, a boy not much older than himself, red-haired, one-eyed, dying. The little boy holds out his hand, but the boy soldier shakes his head. They watch each other, child and echo, until the cloud of soldiers reaches the top of the Highlandman's Loan and falls like rain on the parched ground.
Tom Conoboy lives in England but was born in Scotland. He has been published in a variety of journals and ezines including The Harrow, WordRiot, Mad Hatter's Review and others, and has won around half a dozen competitions in the past year.
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