The Last Trumpeter

Stories for Another Day

Once there were two brothers, Zan and Denny, who loved each other very much. Zan was older than Denny and he looked after him as the best older brothers do. They were both very musical. Denny played the trumpet, but Zan, who liked things a little quieter, was a music teacher.

Denny was a very good trumpeter. He loved playing and he practised for hours every day. One day he said to Zan, “I think I’m ready to try out for the King’s Marching Band.”

Zan frowned. “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he said. “It’s too dangerous.”

You may not think that playing the trumpet in a marching band could be dangerous, but Zan was right, and this is the reason why.

The king had a beautiful daughter, and the Prime Minister, whose name unfortunately was Dumm, wanted to marry her, not because he was in love with her or even liked her very much but because he had had enough of being prime minister and he thought it would be nice to be king instead, and have a prime minister of his own to order around.

The princess, Runie, wouldn’t even look at him. He was much, much older than she was, and not at all good-looking or dashing or nice, and besides, he had a bristly moustache that made her feel peculiar whenever she looked at it.

Now many years ago when Princess Runie was still a baby, a fortune-teller had predicted that she would one day marry a man who played the trumpet. This presented a difficulty for Dumm. He couldn’t play the trumpet, not a note. In fact he wasn’t sure which was the right way up to hold a trumpet, so as soon as the princess reached marriageable age, he went out and started having lessons straight away, from our friend Zan. However, his lips were all wrong, his fingers kept slipping and his ear for music was so bad that small animals ran away and hid whenever he started to play. In the end, Zan advised him to take up gardening, or embroidery, anything but playing the trumpet.

Dumm was discouraged, but he didn’t give up, which is a good lesson for all of us. He was also wicked and resourceful and calculating, which isn’t so good. He said to himself, “Predictions have been wrong before. Perhaps it is her second or third husband who will be a trumpeter.”

His first plan was to Eliminate the Competition, which meant that he would get rid of all the trumpeters in the kingdom. He went to the king and suggested that there should be no brass players in the Marching Band. “It’s unhygienic, your Majesty. All that spit everywhere,” he said.

“No, no!” answered the king. “What sort of king has no trumpeters to play a fanfare when he goes out to open a new bridge, or when he wants to announce the arrival of a new royal baby?”

“But your Majesty!” said the Prime Minister.

“No,” interrupted the king. “I don’t want to hear another word. I’m very partial to a good brass band, and mine is the best in the kingdom!”

This was true, because it was the only brass band in the kingdom, the Prime Minister having thoughtfully sent all the others on extended overseas tours, or paid them to stop playing music and become market gardeners instead. So Dumm had to come up with another plan, and after some thought, he did.

One by one, trumpeters started disappearing from the king’s Marching Band.

“I don’t understand it,” said the king, one Saturday morning after the regular Marching Band parade had finished and the players had all gone inside to change out of their uniforms and put their instruments away. “Why does the Marching Band seem to be getting smaller?”

“It’s the trumpets,” said the princess, who had noticed the same thing. “The trumpets are always last in line, and every week, there is one less.”

Dumm coughed a little. “I’m afraid there is a very worrying reason for that,” he said. “I’ve investigated the matter thoroughly, and it seems that the last player in the line disappears, every week.”

“Disappears?” said the king.

“And signs of huge claw marks, and sometimes scorched trees have been seen where the player was last seen,” Dumm said darkly.

“Claw marks?” gulped the princess.

Dumm nodded. “It’s my belief that there is a dragon – “

“Dragon?” squeaked the king.

“- a dragon,” Dumm went on, “who is disturbed when the band goes past, and has a particular aversion to trumpets. You know that dragons hate music of any kind, and brass instruments make their scales rattle and their ears hurt. And we all know what happens if something upsets a dragon.”

The king said, trembling a little, “So you think he snaps up the last trumpeter in the line as the band goes past?”

“I’m afraid so,” said the prime minister, smiling to himself. It was exactly what he wanted the king to think.

“Nonsense!” said the king, pulling himself together. “Everyone knows that the last dragons died out years ago. There must be another reason. Either those trumpeters are too lazy to get out of bed, or they have taken jobs with better pay, as cooks or plumbers. Find me new trumpeters, and pay them better!” he shouted.

This was not at all part of Dumm’s plan, but he had to bow respectfully and say, “Yes, your Majesty.”

It was just after this that Denny decided he wanted to join the king’s Marching Band.

“It’s too dangerous,” Zan told him.

“Dangerous? Playing the trumpet?” Denny laughed. “Ridiculous! Besides, the pay is excellent.”

“But what about all the trumpeters who keep disappearing?” Zan asked.

“That makes more room for me,” Denny answered. The very next day he tried out for the band, and was accepted immediately. He was a very good trumpeter, as I said, but it must be said that the band’s conductor was finding it very hard to find new trumpeters and he wasn’t fussy. He put Denny in the front line of trumpeters.

Every Saturday, Denny put on the black and red uniform of the marching band and marched in front of the king, playing loudly and tunefully. And every Saturday, another trumpeter disappeared, always the last in line.

The king gave new orders. “Let the drummers go last, instead of the trumpets.” But the drummers all got out of time unless they were right under the conductor’s eye, and everyone lost the beat and marched all over the place, so that was no good.

“Place my finest guards at the end of the parade, to protect the trumpeters,” the king ordered, but somehow the guards were always too late, or didn’t arrive at all. In fact, Dumm put sleeping powders in their bedtime cocoa, or he snipped the buttons off their uniforms and hid the needles and thread, so they couldn’t go out in public. Still the trumpeters kept disappearing.

Zan got more and more worried about Denny. One day he would be last in line, and whatever was happening to the last trumpeter would happen to him. In between teaching his music students, Zan played slow, mournful songs on the tuba while he tried to think of what to do. Princess Runie, leaning out of her tower, heard him playing and her heart was touched. She borrowed an apron from her maid and wrapped it around her satin dress, and walked through the town until she found the place where the spell-binding music was coming from. She slipped inside and listened.

When Zan stopped playing, Runie wiped a tear away and said to him, “You play so beautifully, and so sadly.”

Zan sighed deeply. “My younger brother has joined the king’s marching band,” he said.

The princess said, “But that’s wonderful! He must be a very good player.”

“He is,” said Zan, “but he plays the trumpet.”

“Oh no!” said Runie.

Zan said, “Every week another trumpeter disappears, and now Denny is the last one left. I’m afraid he is in terrible danger.”

“What are you going to do?” asked Runie, as worried as he was.

“I’m going to borrow a uniform, and walk behind Denny, playing the trumpet,” Zan said grimly.

“But then you will be the last trumpeter!” Runie said. Her heart shook at the thought of his bravery, and the danger he would be in. “But can you even play the trumpet?” she asked.

“Of course,” said Zan. “And the flute and the piano accordion and the mandolin, and the xylophone, and a little on the tenor horn in E flat. A music teacher must be versatile.”

Runie’s eyes shone warmly with admiration. But at the same time she was thinking.

The next Saturday, Dumm was ready. He climbed up to the top of a high hill, carrying a heavy crowbar. He carefully loosened a very large rock. “Now, when the marching band passes underneath,” he said to himself, “one push with my crowbar against this rock, and the last trumpeter is history! The princess will be mine at last!” He smiled to himself, picturing his wedding day, with the princess walking down the aisle all in white, while an orchestra entirely composed of strings played, with not a trumpet in sight.

He could hear the sound of the marching band coming nearer and he got ready with his crowbar. The musicians came in sight, and Dumm stared in amazement. Behind the last trumpeter there was another trumpeter in a poorly-fitting uniform, playing the trumpet really very badly.

Dumm’s face darkened like thunder. He sent the huge rock crashing down on top of both the trumpeters. Quick as lightning, he ran down the hill and loaded their bodies into a cart that he had placed there earlier. He drove the cart away to a dungeon in the castle that had a back door that only he knew about. He unlocked the door and bundled them inside. “That’s the last of you,” he crowed triumphantly.

The dungeon was full of trumpeters. Dumm was naturally too squeamish to kill any of them, so he had kidnapped every one of them. He kept them locked in the dungeon, and had his servants feed them as much bread and cheese and boiled potatoes and sardines as they wanted, but he was careful to lock their trumpets away in another room, in case someone heard them playing and came to their rescue.

The last two trumpeters began to stir and wake up. This first one, who was Denny, shook his head and said, “What happened?”

Dumm rubbed his hands together with glee and said, “Now that I have rid the kingdom of every last trumpeter, I plan to marry the princess, no matter what any fortune-teller may say. Then I will have you released, once it is too late to stop me.”

The last trumpeter, the one in the poorly-fitting uniform, took off a crushed and battered cap. “Not if I have anything to do with it,” she said. It was Princess Runie.

Dumm almost fell over himself. “Your highness,” he stammered. “How did you… what are you doing in that uniform?”

“Denny’s brother, Zan, was planning to be the last trumpeter, but I gave him some of your sleeping powders and I took his place,” the princess said.

“But you don’t even play the trumpet!” Dumm expostulated.

“No, but a princess is nothing if not versatile,” she said. “Seize him!” she said to the other trumpeters, which they gladly did.

Dumm was exiled to an island overrun with elephants whose trumpeting kept him awake day and night. Denny became head trumpeter in the marching band, and Princess Runie married Zan, of course. They had many children, who were all very musical, and every one of them played the tambourine.