replied, it might be a year later.
Perhaps he should seek out some saplings. They might be more responsive.
But at last, this very old and beautiful oak was singing in return. A modal song, the Myxolidian, sad and sweet. The tune resembled ‘Long A-Growing’. He stared into the trunk, playing the syrinx, a high, sweet piping, harmonising with the tree’s voice, and a figure began to emerge from the dark, wrinkled, iron hard bark. Man-sized, a man-face and head, long hair blown back, high nose, deep eye sockets, coming into being like a dark grey cloud picture. Phillip played, the tree sang, and gradually the man emerged, a hamadryad, a tree spirit.
Phillip longed for a male creature to love him, to stay close to him, to lie next to his heart. Legend said that the people of the trees were faithful, beautiful, and kind. His human lover had died young of a fever in Germany. He could never love anything mortal again. But he burned and wept in his solitude. He was virtuous, and cautious, enough not to consort with the dark powers. But he was so lonely in his great house, with servants and relatives and nothing at all to do, since he had lost the Queen’s Favour for not marrying the woman of her choice. Her Majesty had icily advised him that his presence was no longer acceptable in her court.
It would not have been right, to marry poor Bess. She was a kind girl and deserved a good husband.
But the tree was singing and the spirit was almost separate from it, gaining colour as his flesh struck the air. He was beautiful, pale skin, waist-length, oak-bark coloured hair, eyes as green as new oak leaves. But his mouth was as red as a holly berry and he wreathed his new arms around Phillip’s shoulders and kissed him, breathing his first breath from his lips.
Phillip sobbed, kissed, and slumped to the ground. The tree man followed, kissing, and then somehow Phillip was naked, too, and they were lying together on a previously unsuspected purpl cloak, and Phillip and the tree man were making love so sweetly and generously that they cried out together and lay snuggled into each other’s embrace.
Then the tree fell silent. The tree man lay back, chuckling, staring into Phillip’s eyes, and stroked his cheek with one smooth forefinger. He was young, perhaps, his body was muscular and unscarred, his face unwrinkled. But there was a depth of age and wisdom in his eyes which made Phillip almost afraid.
‘You freed me,’ said the tree man. His voice was deep and rich and strongly accented. ‘What is your name, my love?’
‘Phillip Beckford,’ he stammered. ‘Do hamadryads have names?’
‘Not generally,’ replied the tree man. ‘I, on the other hand, am not a dryad, but a prisoner, and you have freed me. A very long time ago a wicked woman sealed me into this tree, and it and I have grown old together. When I was a man I was called Myrddin Ambrosianus.’
‘The wizard Merlin?’
Merlin raised himself a little on one elbow and bowed. ‘The very same.’
‘They said that Nimue sealed you in a cave because you threatened her virtue,’ said Phillip.
Merlin reached across, slid a hand around the back of Phillip’s neck, and drew his head towards him. There he kissed the young man’s mouth until he was close to swooning, as bees swoon in midsummer in the clover fields, so sweet, so sweet!
‘Do you think I am a threat to any woman’s virtue?’ he laughed. ‘Yours, perhaps, but it was your longing that brought me forth, and your tune. No, Nimue wanted power. And with me gone, she got it. And, I have no doubt, misused it and brought ruin on the kingdom and the death of the King.’
‘Yes,’ said Phillip.
‘Thought so,’ grumbled the wizard, pillowing his head on Phillips naked chest. ‘A long time ago?’
‘More than a thousand years,’ Phillip told him, stroking the silky hair back from the sorrowful face. Merlin sighed.
‘How did my poor Artos die?’
‘His bastard son Mordred killed him – or so they say,’ replied Phillip. ‘But he ordered his knight to throw Excalibur into the water, then three ladies came and took him away in a boat, to the Isle of Avilion, to wait for a change of days.’
‘Ah, yes, the prophecy,’ murmured Merlin. ‘I made it myself. Rex Quondam et Rex Futurus. The Once and Future King. So, Artos will be at rest, then. So many years gone past. Lie down with me again, my Pip,’ he said gently. ‘It has been so long since anyone loved me.’
‘Yes,’ breathed Phillip, as wise hands slid and touched. Merlin tasted sweet, like oak flowers, and the scent of his skin was mossy and woody, deep and musky. Phillip sank into the magician’s embrace, already bewitched, and almost weeping with delight.
Phillip woke and turned drowsily in the young man’s arms. He had been half afraid that Merlin would have vanished, but he was still there, lying on the purple cloak in the warm dappled shade under his parent oak.
‘I listened, you know,’ said Merlin in his woody, tenor voice. ‘All the time I was enclosed. In the winter I and the tree slept, we woke alert in the spring, enjoyed the summer, and fell asleep again in autumn. And although I was captive I was not in pain: I had no body but the tree’s. Mostly I drowsed. But I listened to humans, I heard men making love under my boughs.’
‘What did you hear?’ asked Phillip, kissing the chest on which he was pillowing his cheek.
‘I heard the Saxons coax ‘hunig’ to their lovers, then the Normans. They had more words. ‘Mon brave, mon ame, mon amour, mon cher, mon p’tit chou’, and then came the English you speak, my honey, my heart, my dearling, myn lyking. I would say them to myself, thinking that if ever I was released and found a man to love, I would say them all. I would never stop saying them.’
‘Sweeting,’ said Phillip. ‘Will you stay with me?’
‘Oh, yes,’ replied Merlin, ‘if you want me.’
‘Never doubt that,’ said Phillip. He stretched. ‘Suddenly I am very hungry,’ he added. ‘Will you come into the castle with me? I would show you your new home. And perhapsI can give you some clothes?’
Merlin laughed, sat up, then stood with his hand against the tree. He made a small gesture, and was clothed in his long white robe and purple cloak. He watched as Phillip re-assembled his own wardrobe. Stockings, breechclout, trunk hose, codpiece, belt, shirt and doublet.
‘What are those?’ he asked.
‘Trunk hose,’ said Phillip.
‘Your clothes are strange and interesting,’ commented the wizard. ‘I shall have to examine them more closely before I can produce copies. But this will do for now?’ he asked.
‘Certainly,’ said Phillip. ‘You look very beautiful. Take my hand, or I shall believe that I imagined you.’
Merlin took his hand. It was a definite clasp, fingers and palm. Phillip’s imagination was good, but it was not that good.
At a late dinner, Merlin tasted new fruits and complimented the cooks and drank a little red wine of Portugal, well diluted with spring water. Phillip had never had such an interesting guest. He found himself telling Merlin about the court of the Great Queen Elizabeth, by Grace of God, Queen of the English. Merlin chuckled.
‘Women,’
