Sir Richard Palliser, of Prince Rupert's Horse Regiment, had only just succeeded in drawing his sword when a musket ball smashed into his left shoulder, the impact knocking him from the saddle. Lying winded and half-broken on the field, he was unable to defend himself when a Parliamentarian pikeman skewered him savagely in the side, chopping his liver in two. This much is known. What is unclear, however, is what possessed Sir Richard, then in agonising pain and weakening fast, to divest himself of his leather coat, gauntlet, red sash, and bandolier, and clamber inside the rift of a nearby large oak tree; in which odd resting-place he curled himself into a ball, and promptly died.

Nobody saw Sir Richard go into the tree, but the creatures that lived in and around it were soon aware of his presence, and they made short work of his remains. His putrefying corpse attracted all manner of fungi, insects, and small mammals. Within two years he was a virtual skeleton, grinning through his cage of living wood. On the third anniversary of his death a pair of leather-loving foxes tugged the boots from his withered feet before depositing them, chewed and mangled, in a neighbouring field a hundred yards apart, much to the confusion of the local farmer.

Although the tree was as insensate as dead Sir Richard, somehow, over time, it took on an impression of the soldier. His essence pulsed through its wooden chambers, from the tips of its roots in the dark earth to the heights of its green canopy, touched by the bright sunlight so beloved of Sir Richard. Over decades the oak grew around the cavalryman and closed upon him, so that he became locked in, rolled up, an embryo in a womb of shining oak.

Sir Richard found that, although he could not walk, his many toes were cool in the moisture of the deep soil. He remembered - or at least, the tree was moved with something approximating a memory, a dim vibration in its heartwood - how he had once played with his young daughters on a beach in Kent, the three of them paddling in the cold surf. A sensibility similar to nostalgia, which to a tree is akin to the memory of acorns in winter, manifested in his trunk, although by this stage of his decomposition his daughters had been dead for generations.

The sap rose in Sir Richard's body. With every slow season, rings of wood grew around him, pulling him deeper and deeper into the tree, embracing his remains. He enjoyed reaching upwards with his many arms, feeling the warmth and light flowing through his leaves, making food and energy. Carbon dioxide filled his woody lungs. He had never felt so alive.

Every season Sir Richard's arms were weighed down with a multitude of acorns. He relished the sensation of the acorns detaching themselves from his branches, his seed tumbling and bouncing in his great shadow. In his previous life, he had gained pleasure from releasing his seed; this feeling was similar, although much, much slower. The musket ball that had lodged in his shoulder found its way out of the tree too, rolling beyond the rift and into the sunlight, bumping against Sir Richard's litter of acorns as it did so.

Sir Richard creaked and arched and blossomed. In the winter his leaves browned and fell sadly with regret and the winds rocked his branches. During a particularly hard storm one of his upper arms was ripped off, splintering at the shoulder. The lightning that struck his higher regions cracked through him and briefly revived the ancient pain of the silver pike blade. For a moment it was enough to wake Sir Richard, before slumberous fibres pulled him back into his dreams again.

The tree enjoyed children playing and climbing upon it over many seasons. The children made rope swings and dangled from its branches. Sometimes they spotted human faces in the contours of the rough bark and pretended to be scared. They told tales of the old soldier man who had been glimpsed many times, high up in the oak, staring down on them from the upper branches. He wore a big floppy hat and smiled through his thick leafy beard.

One day soon, the old tree will die, and split open, and Sir Richard's mortal remains will spill out into the view of the world, as if hatched from a great egg of memory. But until that time comes, the tree will stand proud upon that hill of battle, living the dreams of its entombed warrior, blessed with the name that generations before had given it, without understanding why: the soldier's oak.