The convoy emerged from the quivering tunnel of sandy rocks, began to cross the hedged, labyrinthine olive farms, and the air became dry and suddenly they couldn't feel the sea breeze anymore. On the narrow path parallel to the road there were mules basketed with purple clusters of olives. Beyond the path, at odd intervals amongst the orchards, rose the miniature uncapped mountains with white adobe houses at their slopes, dried–up wells, and gardens with tables and patterned metal chairs set between dusty cypresses and bougainvilleas. It was eight in the morning, and the heat had not yet begun.

"We're going to get out and meet the diplomats soon," Ariel said. "You'd better fix your hair."

Melody tried to, but the loose strands wouldn't stay down.

They were the only passengers in the dark upholstered cabin, part of a larger column that went into the distance. Since Melody kept on struggling with her hair, Ariel took a comb out of her purse and after she had helped her knocked on the wall behind where she sat. The daughter stared at her mother and received a pleasant expression in return. The carriage began to dribble and slow down. A moment later it stopped.

There was no–one but the guards and the horses outside. They stood waveringly in the gravel, in bright corduroy uniforms and breastplates, and sunlight weighed on the road like a blanket. Ariel was informed the diplomats were coming in separate carriages but were both going to be late, so she sat under the shade of an olive tree and gave the order to let the soldiers do the same. Just as the sweat dried on her neck she saw a lone cart appear on the horizon.

"Who is that?" asked Melody.

A red–and–white flag had been hung on the bonnet. "The Monégasque," Ariel replied; the demonym of one from Monaco.

Myburgh, with no first name, stepped down from the carriage and looked at them. He walked behind a guard with an air of mild discontent. Perhaps this was not the way he wanted to come – and the coat too heavy for the weather was the way he concealed himself. His boots were unpolished, and his blue clothing was against the landscape: there was a string of wool where a button should have been. Perspiration made his eyes shine; the tone of wet seaweed. Ariel stood slowly to greet him. Melody, afterwards, much quicker.

Courteously, Ariel said, "Thank you for coming on such short notice."

"But it'll be a long time before we reach your country, won't it?" Melody asked.

"Then I hope," Myburgh replied, "that me being here won't bother you before then, Your Majesty." He turned to Ariel. "…Your Highness." A discreet frown crossed her face. Melody reddened.

A sergeant announced it: the second carriage had arrived. It approached and halted nearer than Myburgh's, and a scorching wind blew the Italian tricolour up against Calabria's ensign. They saw the man in the dull poncho step down, the pastel blouse bunched in layers above the belt, the service shoes, the ivory sheath that clapped on the thigh. A soldier threw his arm in front of him: he pulled his poncho aside: the sheath contained no sword. He plodded on and bowed neatly to the women, and the glimmering blonde hair drooped stiffly to gravity.

He apologised for being late.

"Never mind that," Ariel replied. "I should apologise for forgetting: but what's your name, again?"

The man barely hesitated: "Caro Els." His secretive eyes reflected the sky, but the clouds had in them melted away. The soldiers stared from the background distrustfully.

Ariel made the diplomats stand next to one another and in front of her. Myburgh was far taller. "You probably already know, but at the moment, we're still in Calabria…" Caro ran his gaze up and down the dirt road. "…before we reach the border, we'll have to attend a banquet in a town north of here. They want to ask for an imbursement…" He allowed his opinion to slip.

"In this country, the dowager meets her diplomats on the roadside?" Caro murmured.

Only Myburgh heard him, gave an offended expression, and he hastily apologised to no–one. Ariel finished. "…we'll stay in Pellegrina tonight, just before the border. But it's a convent. So a place outside will be readied for the men." A minor concern, thought Caro inside. Fitting of the regent of the minor country. Melody watched him as he ruminated, and finally he thought: she's totally left this all up to her mother, hasn't she?

The distant castle of Reggio Calabria, from where they came, floated in the temperature. "Will we be going?" Ariel said. The heat there was swiftly encroaching in, and everyone agreed yes.


Despite the warning against any public demonstrations to mark their arrival, a high–spirited troop of horsemen had ridden out to greet them as they entered the town of Scilla, and rode prolifically by their side until they reached Mayor Juvenal Giuffrida's estate who had prepared for them there an outdoor banquet of the region's most exquisite foods. He and Ariel had known one another since his appointment four years prior. By the table a band played a tune for the pair of daughter and mother, who shared the seat of honour, but the impenetrable heat wilted the performance. The sunlight detonated on the whitewash; the shade was useless. In the welter of festivities, Myburgh finally took off his coat, and looked up as Ariel gave an unwilling speech holding a glass of port with both hands, thanking the mayor for his hospitality: "…and it is a shame the weather won't coerce with it." He pinkened obesely. Then they brought the food.

"Sardines, poached in olive oil from our farms, with parsley from the mountainside," announced the mayor. "Is it to your liking?"

One answer was enough: a yes from Caro, who ate comfortably. The mayor failed to notice the queen and queen mother – and Myburgh – picked everything naught the fish from their plates.

A lounge was readied inside the house to escape the vile heat. Ariel took Melody by the shoulder before they went in.

"You were slouching before," she said. "So pay attention to your posture. Don't forget the importance of body language."

Whenever she was with her mother from that point onwards, Melody always sat with her spinal cord braced firmly against the back of the chair. She wondered not for a moment the origin of her mother's maxim: she had been doing the same when the mayor lowered himself into a sofa opposing them and, wiping his dripping forehead with a serviette, submitted his request in–between sips of wine because the heat made his throat crack.

"Your Highness, you may already know, but this area is currently in the clutches of drought. Because this town is by the coast, it has not affected the people here too much – but I have farmers inland under my jurisdiction. Their farms are their whole livelihood. Any bad harvest will be disastrous. Your Highness; Your Majesty. I wish to ask for an imbursement from the Treasury to aid these people. Any amount we would be grateful for. The return then, I promise, will be formidable. Please consider this."

"Juvenal, there's no need to be so formal, and so worried." Ariel was twenty years his junior, but she spoke to the mayor like they were comrades who had bloomed in the same military school. "You'll get your aid. I'll give you my blessing in writing – but you'll have to courier it to the palace yourself. We're not returning."

"May I ask," the mayor said, "how much it will be?"

"Two–hundred piastra."

Melody felt the dropping feeling in her guts, then the evaporation of tension in the room, replaced by amazement. A servant gave a low reproach: "Your Highness…!" She vaguely understood the reaction: because what her mother had just granted was a huge amount. Myburgh sat at the edge of the room and watched the conversation unfurl with a dubious and half–hidden expression.

Three o'clock struck and the town was in siesta. In the nostrils the heat coagulated; Melody had a small nosebleed, and when she had returned after stifling it in the bathroom her mother and the diplomats were standing and ready to go. The diploma–esque warrant for two–hundred piastra had already been written out and the mayor held it with great tentativeness between his big hands, smiling beatifically and massively. He made a joke: "The blood that just left your nose, Your Majesty, is equivalent to the imbursement to this municipality your mother has just given." He had only been trying to revive an atmosphere which had by that point been nullified by drowsiness, just like the town.


In the caravan, Ariel's head nodded and she sank into sleep, and they passed several towns that were smaller but more tired than the one they had just been in. When she awoke, the sky had become a dim electric blue, and the heat and dirt outside the convent of Pellegrina were immigrating back into the setting sun. A labourer drank his water from a calabash bottle under a sign: Santi Cosma e Damiano, and Melody recognised the name.

"When I just married your father, I came here to learn to read and write the human language," Ariel said.

"Who taught you?"

"There."

She chewed a mint leaf to mask the lace of port on her breath and they stepped out of the carriage. At the gate, a nun was waiting to receive them with a vibrant bouquet of purple irises. She seemed too old to be anyone but the Reverend Mother, because of the blue veins on her eyelids and her small, soft, and shapeless body, wearing a rosary longer than her own neck. Though she could only have been waiting, her eyes widened in amazement when she saw Ariel. She opened her arms and the two of them embraced on the pavement, and she stepped back with the flowers.

"Lady Miranda!" she said.

"It's me," Miranda replied, "although I'm still the same."

The marbled, grave voice rippled like a cello, and awakened unrepeatable memories within Ariel. With a wave of her hand she eased the soldiers on the road, who went down to the encampment that had been prepared for them in the opposing valley. They sat inside a lobby facing each other, so near that their knees almost touched, and another nun brought tea as they began to speak.

They had met twenty–one years ago, during Ariel's first human winter, on that same dusty street under the escort of the royal herald named Grimsby. It was he who said that no future consort could be illiterate. Despite the duty to impart literacy being normally delegated to a male scribe, Grimsby decided that another woman would be more suitable, and also because that was going to be the first time she would be apart from Eric since marriage.

Miranda would always remember the first week the girl spent at the convent, in miniature heartbreak after being separated from her husband, a little bit naïve, young, fragranced by camphor, but then, gradually radiant and enchanting, as the reading lessons they commenced under the olive trees began to consummate beneath the ones that preceded it and they grew open in each other's presence.

She had the whims of an oblivious girl who tried her best to be attentive. Miranda would guide her through the books with a steady finger, tracing each line on the page, stopping on request for words that were alien, explaining the cadence of phrases, what italics and bolds were, translating the difficult fonts, and eventually, when simply reading became too infantile, the intricacies of the plots and the characters' behaviours using a prophetic biblical tone that she had acquired in her twenty–seven years at the nunnery, interpreting psalms to the novitiates. Between lessons, she withheld her own maternal urge to teach the girl ladyism, which she to some degree lacked: once, she had seen her use a candelabra as a comb.

For better or worse, because it excluded the Books of Testament, she remembered Ariel's enthusiasm had remarkably detonated when they transitioned from fiction to non–fiction. They finished swiftly the remainder of the Italian books at the convent: the final one was a volume of Marco Polo's diaries written in the court of the Yuan emperor. Afterwards, Miranda led her down to the dried cistern where generations of nuns had stowed works deemed unsuitable for a sanctious environment but innocent enough to not be destroyed, and she pointed to the foreign–language section cladded against the wall.

"Pick one, and I'll do my best to teach you," she told her.

The girl's choice was an encyclopaedia, compiled by one of the first Dutchmen to reach the East Indies. But when Miranda opened it on her lap in their same spot under the olive trees it was Ariel who read out the first line, and with the assuredness that one only possesses if they understand their own words.

She said, "This is a Dutch encyclopaedia." That was the first time she knew; she had chosen it because of the gilded earth on the cover.

"How did you know?"

"I can't say. I just do," Ariel replied. "I don't know the language. I just know what this is." Her voice had become soft and ruminative, but she never seemed confused.

Miranda tried to inquire about her royal ambitions too. It was after one of their final lessons. Ariel had heard the newly–hatched ducklings were taking their first swim, and they hiked out to the lake to watch…

She was entering that age where the mastery of her own legs was beginning to wane, and though she was often no more bipedal than Miranda was, Ariel attempted to assist her across the rocky groves behind the convent and they reached the lake just as the ducklings were beginning to march in file under a forest of thawing reeds. If one observed them from ground level they might have looked like yellow soldiers, the mother afront spearheading them like a general: there was an inglorious soldier–king in the north who she likened that general as. But the moment they touched soft marshland they skittled: Ariel was uncertain whether to giggle or make a fuss: impassively Miranda watched until they found water, and as they stared doubtfully at a dragonfly casting ripples trailing its abdomen tip on the surface.

The boldest one dipped his feet, and sailed laboriously off.

"Do you know how to swim?" Miranda asked Ariel.

"I used to. But I've forgotten."

"How did you forget?"

"Swimming," Ariel abstractly replied, "is so different as a human."

Miranda had heard her make connotations along those lines before: I don't walk so well because I'm used to floating … I'd never eat fish; I won't betray a friend … being a royal up here is much more work than down there. She remembered the lattermost and said then, "Do you have anything you want to do, now that you're a princess?"

"I'd send you any new book you want."

Miranda blushed. "No, be serious."

Ariel went into a deep stupor of thought: she appeared to even withdraw interest from the ducklings, who did not quack to get it back. When she lifted her head again, they were flapping in confident rings on the water and she smiled faintly towards them. "No, I haven't got anything. I haven't thought about it. There's infinite time to think, isn't there?"

Miranda shook her head. "Then," she asked, "do you have any dreams that don't involve being royalty?"

"Two. To see all that the world contains, and to see what lies on top of the highest mountain in the land."

Ariel cupped her chin in an expression of wonder.

"And if what lies on top of the highest mountain is a panorama of the whole world, wouldn't that be amazing!"

Three days after that, Ariel was due to leave, and Miranda secretly hoped that her dream would become an afterthought among the rest of her flowering life, filled with vivacious consulate galas and waveless, iridescent seas. The newspapers which she hiddenly read had given the brazen label: unknown beauty, presumably of common origin, newly betrothed to the crown prince, and though that common origin was between them disproven, she still wished that a sense of urgency would eventually befall the girl. "You've ascended to a position of royalty, so immerse yourself in it, and get rid of those fantasies!" She had come close to saying it many times, and though the message she always wished to convey, she could not find a tone for it that was not cruel: and to Ariel she never wanted to be cruel.

That was why she could not understand the disappointment she felt when she met her again twenty–one years later, suddenly mature, ladylike, maternal, steady–on–the–feet, two hands atop her lap, a comb in the bag, a daughter beside her, the scent of port in the mouth failingly hidden with mint … the residue of respect and piety and the authoritarian presence which diffused in the room like a gel. Miranda's logic told her to be congratulative – and yet, she could not avoid feeling as though the winsome junior she once had was gone and sitting in its place was something menacing and different.

Ariel spoke. "Earlier, you told me you were still the same. What did you mean by that?"

"I only said that," Miranda replied, "because you seemed to have changed so much."

The two women took scorching gulps of the tea and Melody tried to imitate them, but it was too hot for her tentative tongue. On her face the steam made a lulling feeling and her eyes began to close.

"It's been a long day of travel," Ariel said. "Melody, greet Lady Miranda and you can go to sleep."

She did that. The nun who had brought in the tray led her to the bedchambers afterwards.

"If I were a bishop, I would've wanted to be the one to baptise her," Miranda fondly said.

"We would have definitely called you."

The note of we struck cold and sharp. "Ariel, I'm sorry about what happened."

"Thank you."

"I'd do anything if it makes you feel better. You just have to ask."

"Thank you. There's one thing."

"Then, that expression…"

"Yes. We'll be crossing into Italy tomorrow. I wanted to ask for your blessings on our journey before then."

Miranda sat back. "I'll give them. But why? This trip doesn't seem like it'll be dangerous."

"Dangerous, maybe not. But the end result is very important, and I'd like it to be insured."

"You wrote that it was something about making your girl worldly."

"There's another one."

"Another?"

"The result, or rather the other end goal," Ariel said, "of having the journey finish up on the highest mountain of the Alps."

"You mean to climb…"

"Yes, I mean to climb it."

"Then, that's what you wanted my blessing for?"

Miranda's old throat split with a chuckle. She averted herself from Ariel's serious gaze, and laughed a little more into her hand. "Oh, that's good."

"Why do you laugh?"

"Here, I thought you'd changed so much, but it turns out you're still seeking the same thing." Yet Miranda knew what she said was a fallacy; the flesh around a dream could change and the pit remain ever pure and intact.

She said, "So I asked you if you thought it would be dangerous, and you said no. Then – have you got any sort of plan for this climb?"

"There's supposed to be guides that can be rented, but I haven't thought about it yet." Miranda watched her lips to see if they would purse into the shape of, "there's infinite time to think, isn't there?" but they never did, and for it she was mildly pleased.

"Well, if you'd like my opinion, I do think it'll be dangerous. And I assume you want your daughter to accompany you on the climb?"

"Yes."

"Have you told her about it yet?"

"No."

"You must."

"I will."

Miranda finally said, "By the Lord, you've got some ridiculous ideas in your head."

"I can't help this one," Ariel replied.

Silence gently overturned authority in the room and soon only the sway of the olive branches in the dry breeze could be heard. It was the same sound that permeated their lessons twenty–one years ago: it was the hiss of a noun, the voice of a verb, it was a vector of literacy and the promise of knowledge. Maybe that's what started this obsession with seeing the world and mountains, Miranda reasoned with herself, those encyclopaedias. She nevertheless decided to ask Ariel.

"Well? Do you want me to try and change your mind?"

"Not this time."

"In any case, I was the one who gave you that encyclopaedia, so I'm to blame for this."

She stared at Miranda, confused, before the arrow of realisation twanged into place. "No, it wasn't that. This is a dream I've always had…" She rambled about a ravine, beside her as she lay in algae on the seabed, and it seemed as if her youth manifested once again in the inquisition: "I was wondering where all the unfilled land must have gone!"She said that when she saw the mountain, the contrast between its summit and her bottomed life underwater was what interested her, and Miranda never stopped believing it, however false her story rang. "…and when I saw the mountain, I also thought I'd found the answer to my question. I didn't have much time to think about it, though. I was quickly discovered."

"By who?"

Ariel looked flatly at Miranda. A concentrated frown. There was no fuss, no scene, only thought – the long, discreet thought of someone who'd just been had. "It's strange: I don't remember." She enjoyed her effortless answer.


Most in the convent were now asleep, even the tireless Miranda, who had allotted Ariel the key to the cistern library before going and saying to her, "Don't get too stuck in sentimentality." She half–heartedly accepted the advice and retrieved the Dutch encyclopaedias that she loved in her past, and sat to read them in the untended courtyard because the rush of a fountain there helped to bury the inward noise of her turmoil.

But the patter of the water was slightly disturbing: whereas some droplets fell into concave lilies with a leathery and heavy tap, others connected sharply with the pool, at sparse intervals and rates, and that was why she was able to detect through them the discrepant presence of the masculine footsteps behind her, innocuous as a fern, but entirely unindigenous in its approach as it came to halting and was at last still.

Ariel turned around: it was Myburgh. She closed the book on her lap and he read the cover from where he stood, before smiling benevolently.

He asked, "Is that a Dutch encyclopaedia?"

"How did you get in here?" Ariel said.

"It doesn't matter. There's something urgent I need to tell you, Your Highness."

"I'm not Your Highness," she replied, "and men are not allowed here, but be out with it."

Myburgh raised his hand over his heart, she recognised the pose from that fateful evening, and she grimaced. But he lowered it abruptly: a seeming taunt. Ariel decided to say before he could speak, "Yes, this is an encyclopaedia. And it is Dutch. How did you know?"

"I know a little bit of the language. My name's a Dutch name."

"Oh? How did that come to be for someone from Monaco?"

"I'm not Monacan."

"Dutch?"

"Neither that. I was born in Ostia."

"I didn't know Monaco let foreigners into their government."

Myburgh vaguely replied, "I found a way to get in. What I am is close enough to what they are."

And he supposed it helped, for his diplomatic position, that the language of Calabria was the language of the Italians, and that his bucolic features would be at place amongst the Mediterranean brunette. Ariel lost interest in what he was saying and opened the book again. "So, tell me now what you were going to tell me."

"If you will forgive me saying so, I think that the imbursement – the amount – that you gave to Mayor Giuffrida today was a mistake. It is a huge portion of what's left over in your treasury, and it could be put to better use in other matters of state."

Ariel watched him with a strained eye in the reflection of the fountain jets. "Thank you for your concern. But I made my decision carefully. At the moment I don't feel like discussing it."

"Your Highness, but it must be discussed now."

"And didn't I tell you to stop calling me that?" Ariel tightened her jaw and hovered. She made a point of feigning anger. "If that's all, you'd better go now, before I call someone."

Myburgh went on. He said, still addressing her as Highness, that as a diplomat his greatest loyalty was to Monaco, but secondly towards Calabria. Monaco and Calabria were both small and neither had any stake to find in influencing or undermining the other, and therefore the observation he was making was genuine … Ariel listened with a quiet and dictatorial reluctance as he demonstrated a surprising knowledge of the affairs of Calabria's government, of the army's domestic troubles and history, that half of them were mercenaries about to desert on the premise of being unpaid, that half of that mercenary percentage were Swiss Reisläufer anyway being recalled as the result of a new law in their country forbidding the export of their servicemen. She listened with gradual neutrality, until remembering their encounter on the eve of her husband's death, and growing irritated again. She said, "If King Urbino wanted to attack, he already would have."

"You must realise, Your Highness, that though Urbino is the symbol of Italian Unification, he is only one man with very little time left. If he is unpopular with anyone, it is with those who thinks he has failed in his mission by not taking Calabria. There is impetus within Italy to absorb Calabria, Your Highness, you must know this. And once Urbino is gone, there's no guarantee if his successor will be as content with the situation as he is."

"No matter how much we prepare," Ariel said, "if Italy decides to attack us, it's the end."

"Your Highness, look at it logically…"

"That's enough preaching!"

Her reproach echoed in the convent. She looked away and turned her ear to the corridors, and fortunately no–one seemed to have been awakened. Myburgh continued to watch her, dazed and sorrowful, but not repentant, and she sensed it within him and stood forcefully with the book glistening by moonlight in her hand. She declared that she was leaving, saying before then, "Don't forget you are just a diplomat. You'll only give advice if I ask for it, understand?"

He replied while she walked away. "No, it wasn't asked for. At this age, Ariel, you've learned to be harsh."

Ariel paused. She remembered her father's offhand recognition of Myburgh's name: Wasn't he that imaginary friend you used to have? She said, "I'm not interested to know how you know I was a mermaid, but it seems you really are someone from my past. And dementedly sentimental, the way you're chasing me. I only ask: you said the 'reason you cannot go anywhere' is because of the 'conviction' I gave you. What does this mean?"

Myburgh huffed and answered slow and intricately, as though carving out each word:

"As I pan out my days in the ocean,
you shall be the friend who will see the world for me,
from the top of the mountain I claimed as mine.
My mountain.
In the old language of the Dutchmen:
my burgh."

It took Ariel a moment to realise he was reciting the supposed conviction she had given him. She felt as though she should damn him for being imprecise, and negligent of her own confusion, but dignity held her back, just as it did seven days ago, on the eve of her husband's passing, below the cusp of his undiplomatic diplomat's confession. "I still don't understand. Will you be more clear?"

"Over twenty years ago, you thought that you would never leave the ocean, and you sent me to go and see the world for you. I was to wholeheartedly study human culture, human inventions, and human concepts." His hand was over his heart again. "And now I have returned with all that knowledge, Your Highness – and I cannot stomach to leave until it is relayed to you."

Shocked, Ariel could only ask, "You used to be a merman?"

"Not quite: you know that," Myburgh replied, his voice illuminated by wistfulness. "We had a history, and you saved me when I was a dead man. I'm not sure how you've forgotten, but for your kindness I'm determined to make you remember. It is also my personal desire. There was no command you gave me to love you. And yet, I love you…"

Ariel had to look at him sideways, like a parrot, to see him with her warped eye. She did not pronounce the four syllables so much as spit them out, one by one:

"You're goddamned mad!"

She left. Myburgh stood alone in the courtyard, waiting for nothing, until the nun, awakened and wearing the rosary longer than her neck, approached interrogating. "…and what are you doing here?" He saw her old pious eyes and dismissed her: an inconsequential woman who couldn't understand.


Caro Els, finally alone and allowed to be Urbino, entered the room and saw painted on the ceiling the vibrant sunray fresco that seemed to wheel in an axle and spin. He knew it was the illusion of sleepiness; the moving haze of dried–out eyes. He sat on the laundered bed and took off his poncho, and remembered when he was coronated as King of Italy, draped in a Carolingian velvet cloak on faded green uniform, with the peerage holding a tepee of swords over his crowned head in the same pattern as the sunrays. It was a meaningless gesture of allegiance: in the subsequent weeks of institutionalism he stripped many of them of their titles, and poisoned one in the guise of tropical disease. Numerous old men were sent into the exile of retirement and sedated with young maidenly Mariendorfs and Reuenthals; then the Mariendorfs and Reuenthals disappeared too, when adultery equivalent to bribery was unearthed and declared a sin of the state. He laughed a little, because only two days before he thought he would be meeting them soon again, surrounded with pitchforks and overturned braziers in another dimension, and they would waste no moment to redeem their anger on the despot that had taken their livelihoods.

But now he had defied them! Urbino leapt on his new feet and, revived by adrenaline, began to exercise. He put his four limbs against the floor and completed seventeen press–ups, a two–minute plank, forty lunges and ten thigh taps, all in succession, all without interruption, until he saw a beam in the ceiling and hung for two minutes, and with it performed six pull–ups, tirelessly again. He decided to test the ultimate exercise of his youth: the push–up in the handstand position: he ran his feet up a wall with his hands below him and then tipped himself slightly away until he balanced on palms alone. He dipped: the biceps, the triceps, the shoulders, trapezoids…

His arms buckled and he fell in reverse onto the floor. The sunrays looked down into his eyes, and they no longer reminded him of the peerage's tepee of swords. "You can't get it all now," it seemed to say, "old Urbino's mind and young Urbino's fitness." For now he received Caro Els – and what he received for a white–collar was reasonable. He heard the sudden words:

"It's good you're enjoying the body, Urbino."

When he jerked to standing he saw the voice had originated from a version of his head nestled on a dressing table opposite. It was his previous head, which the lack of body, dark, pitted eyes, and spirit of malevolence had not yet made indistinguishable from him.

It spoke again. "Don't be alarmed. Only you can see and hear me. I'm the one who gave you that boy's body."

"The grim reaper?" Urbino asked.

"No," the head replied. "Just an afterlife ghost. And I've decided that I want to spectate this quest of yours."

Inside the room a tree set up weeks ago for the day of Corpus Christi had shed most of its blue blossoms. They had fallen into the elbows of a Jesus crucifix. Urbino picked them out. "I haven't the foggiest what you mean. Quest?"

"Quest to unite Italy. Quest to keep that body. Or quest to kill these Calabrian royals. They go hand–in–hand."

"No, it's not such a grand thing as a quest. It's just something I want to do."

"Call it whatever you like," the head replied. "But it's going to be tough. You've gotten rid of your old body. But your old body was your prestige. Caro Els isn't anything, really. How do you plan on uniting Italy as a nobody?"

"With the knowledge I have, in this form," Urbino said, "I can easily reclaim my position. Especially in the system I created."

"You're arrogant. I don't think you have considered: people will be wondering where their king has gone. You buried your body, didn't you?"

Urbino sat in his shirt and breeches in an armchair. He crossed his legs over. "I considered that. I left a note at the villa. They'll recognise my handwriting and know it's authentic."

"Will they believe such a story as you 'just went travelling'?"

"No matter how vague, they won't doubt me."

"And you must consider, Caro – or you now – gets implicated in this. Everybody knows he's the last person who was with you before you disappeared."

"I'll climb out of that hole once I fall in."

Urbino rested his chin on his knuckle.

"You're the afterlife ghost, hm?" he said. "It's rather mischievous of you to appear before me like this. And assuming my face without consent. Will this be recurring?"

"It's not a matter of consent, Urbino. Everyone needs a mirror for a bit of introspection."

"Don't play with words."

"To answer your question: yes, this will be recurring. But, it remains that I only want to spectate you. Don't pay attention to me. Nominally, I'm not on your side, but I can't betray you, either."

His tone was reaching the inflection that one takes when they are about to leave. Urbino made no reaction. The head began to fizzle away into particulate.

"You say that," Urbino said, "but here you are, as the only one I can speak my mind to freely…" – the unfilled eyes were gazing at him with unrestrained lethargy – "…in that case, let us rather be friends. Do you have a name?"

But the head had by then vanished. Urbino stared past his knee to where it had stood on the dressing table, thinking hazily of the way forward. They would be crossing into Italy the next day, but knowing that cleared nothing. It only added the dilemma that he was returning not as a foreigner to his home but as a foreigner to himself – an interesting dilemma which he didn't mind.

Urbino awoke the next morning to the crunch of hooves on gravel, and stepped outside into the blazing sun and rising dust of the encampment. The soldiers were rearing their horses in preparation for the leg to the border: a few noticed the Italian diplomat with shabby distaste. He watched them back with his thumbs hooked on his belt like they were his own men, before hearing the door of the cabin beside his open. Myburgh came lumbering out. Unrested and still improperly dressed for the heat, he looked like the mountain herb who had mistakenly sprouted in the desert, and he supposed that left him as the indigenous acacia. Their eyes met briefly when a lieutenant made the announcement:

"Leaving, on the double!"

The diplomats, whose transports were palace property, were to have their carriages extradited back to the capital and would be completing the journey's remainder on horseback. Only the queen and queen mother kept theirs, and by the time the convoy began to move, he had not yet witnessed them board it – only the affectionate farewells towards the Reverend Mother. But the unnatural length the soldiers enforced that he ride behind them ensured in his mind that they were there.

He could only ride at a distance anyway. Urbino was sure the stallion they picked for him was the sickliest in the regiment, with its slow and stupid gait, tongue dangling out where a slot of teeth should have been, and fear of noise; even the noise of the marching trumpets.

Though Urbino imagined he would do the same thing if he were a simpleton and Calabrian; that he would spite the Italian in subtle ways when it appeared as though, over the gumminess of a tall mountain border, every Italian was a zealot for an invasive unification mandate that endangered their country. It was obvious, because the same behaviour was not demonstrated towards Myburgh, and neither did Urbino truly mind, because he in fact did mean to endanger their country.

Only one was contrary to the rest. The convoy had embarked onto an open plateau when he felt the presence of a soldier veer his horse abnormally close to his. He looked at him in periphery; it was a young man with dark popping eyes. The man glanced around, saw nobody near, and then whispered into Urbino's ear:

"I'd like for this place to become part of Italy as much as you do."

Urbino didn't reply.

"Don't try and hide it. An Italian diplomat in Calabria, of course you're a supporter of unification." The man said with more force, but using the same volume, "So I'm saying I also want this place to become part of Italy."

"You'd speak treason against your country?"

"I don't care. I'd say it again."

Urbino looked ahead and ignored the man. He went on.

"Oh, I'm not the only one who thinks this way. There's many; mostly the younger people. As with the genesis of the human race, there's no need for small nations to cling onto independence just for the sake of the rulers' pride. I want Calabria to continue existing; only not as a country."

"Are you done with your lecture? I can report you."

"Yes, the lecture is done."

Urbino quietly thought as the soldier rode off of how he would have agreed with him if he were in his true form. But there was no way of telling whether he was an informant, and that was why he remained silent.

Just as in a ballroom, a distant brass blared from the front and the column halted. Urbino had to peek past a tall soldier to see why: on the horizon a fence bisected the land, and combusting in the middle under the infinite round sun was the railway station indicating the border into Italy.

Urbino dismounted and smiled pridefully. Ten years ago, this had been the stopgap of a great infrastructure project linking the north to the conquered south, and, in this place so far from everything else, he had it purposefully built to show Calabria the achievements of Italian industry. He knew he had succeeded when he saw the two frontal women disembark to look upon the station. Melody was less interested. She focused on her appearance in the reflection of the carriage window. Ariel quietly stared at the train lodged under a sunroof of panelled iron, but wonder palpably shone in her eyes.

He approached, and Ariel asked, "When you came to Calabria, was it on that train?"

"That is correct, Your Highness."

"Did you find Calabria all that different from Italy?"

"I find that olive farms and dirt are the same everywhere."

"That's one thing," Ariel replied, "though the fact is, there's no train in Calabria, but there's a train in Italy."

Then with an in any case she pulled herself away and announced the convoy would be transferring onto the rail. The soldiers would stay behind in Calabria. The itinerary hastily made one week ago had said the same thing, but the tone in which she gave the announcement convinced everyone this was somehow the first time and that everything was determined by her commands.

They had arrived early, so in the stead of a porter Urbino and Myburgh loaded the suitcases onto the train with the soldiers, who waited afterwards on the road for the dignitaries to arrive. To remain in the station, though shaded, would be an affront to Italian and Calabrian neighbourliness: as compensation they were permitted the relief of smoking. Inside, a dark conductor wearing a keppi watched them through the grate of his booth.

Grimsby having remained in the capital, the dignitaries came quickly. Their horses galloped and kicked dust in front of their carriages. They were all short and fat, Giuffrida–types of the Calabrian diplomatic corps, who tiptoed to kiss Ariel's hand, and whisper messages of bereavement and goodwill. None of them tiptoed for Melody, though she was taller than her mother, and from their behaviour nobody was certain who was there for the sake of friendship, who to wish them a safe journey, and who to be sure that they were in fact leaving.

There were to be no Italians yet. The carriage prepared for them was the finest in a lot ordered from the United Kingdom fifteen years prior by the ruling government of the Two Sicilies for the purpose of transporting their own royalty. Melody was already inside and Ariel had her boot in the staircase when the Deputy Minister of the Army and Navy called to her: "Your Highness." She stood motionless, her foot remaining in the staircase and her hands around a banister.

"Stay," said the Minister, "and sacrifice this journey for the stability of Calabria."

"Don't bring your opinion up now, minister," she replied. "It is too late."

It was the end. Ariel d'Assisi Maria Leopoldo of Calabria and her daughter, accompanied by two foreign diplomats and five officials of government, were leaving at last. Together with her husband they had resisted against Italian domination a country the size of New York, they had led twenty years of stale and prosperous rule to keep it free and united, together all until the week before, but now when it was time to leave she did not even take away with her the consolation that the next monarch had already been crowned and was capable. The only person with enough lucidity to know what was really going on was the undersea king Triton, who deviated from a speech explaining the matter to his legislation: "My daughter is trying to make up for the dream she couldn't fulfil while ruling that country."


The train began to move, and beige country went by like a spool of linen. Urbino sat in his cabin with his latchlock briefcase set horizontally on the table like a pedestal – so that it would be a pedestal – to invite to appear the deific head which had manifested at that same time, the night before.

He sat watching the briefcase and the land. He saw farmers, and cattle, and bursts of poverty and wealth in estates and shacks scattered between tall valley crags and flat olive groves, tended to by suntanned farmers and trawling purple oxen. But most of it was poverty: a consequence of incongruent Sardinian agrarian policy placed upon the south; an incongruence he couldn't award less care to.

The day grew late and the sun fizzed away. The head still hadn't appeared – he didn't know why he waited. The same farmers on their pockets of land were bumbling into their homes holding amber lanterns, and from that distance they looked like musket flashes. Urbino's mind began to fluctuate between focus and reverie. He was brought into a remembrance of alpine conquests, of lowland charges and soldierly rebellion, in Piedmont, Lombardy, Lazio, and in sleepiness he began to drift off into the lofty visions of past warzones…

Urbino was brought out of his daydream by a knock on the door.

"Yes?" he said. He could see the black polished shoes under the slit of the door – he wasn't going to get up for a concierge.

"Mr Els, Her Highness requests your presence at supper."

"Oh. Why do I deserve the honour?"

"She wishes for every supper aboard this train – on this journey – to be shared between the diplomats and the royal family."

"Then I apologise," Urbino said. "Because I'm not hungry."

The concierge explained that the queen mother – out of her benevolence – because it was diplomatic procedure – would still want him to be there.

"Alright. I'll be ready in ten minutes."

"It must be now," the concierge said, a little, neat, obstinate voice. There looked to be no point in arguing, so Urbino got up and buttoned his shirt and walked with him to the supper carriage.

Ariel was seated at the head of a long table in a narrow and luxurious cabin. Through a lengthwise window, moonlight flowed inside and scattered across deftly–set wine glasses: Myburgh, at the middle of the table, was slowly sipping one glass of perry. A heavy silence blanketed the space between the two, and a soldier, standing guard wearing a plumed helmet, was silent too.

When Ariel saw Urbino, she gestured to an adjacent chair.

"Caro," she said. "We're actually in Italy already, so you should've been the one to invite me."

"Your Highness, my government is probably planning so many banquets for you that any invite of mine will be overshadowed." It was intended as a joke: there came no laughter as he sat. Myburgh was staring through his perry glass when he said, "Her Majesty the Queen isn't here."

"No, she isn't." Ariel looked over at Urbino. "Caro, would you please go and fetch her?"

"Your Highness, I think it would be better to ask the concierge."

"But I want to ask you." She was smiling. "She's in her room. It's in just the next carriage over. Go on, won't you break your protocol just this once?"

As Urbino walked up the hall he wondered where Ariel had learned such political savviness. He knew she was staking his loyalty by judging his reaction to such a tenuous assignment. The diplomat of a nation with an invasive unification mandate sent to retrieve the queen of the yet–ununified. And yet, half–believing that the Ariel of twenty years prior in that consulate gala retained her pure, stupid nature, he thought of ways to circumvent the fact in his mind: perhaps one of those accompanying advisors had recommend such a ploy; perhaps it had been Myburgh; perhaps she had had wine, and drunkenness made her think it up. Perhaps there was no ploy at all, and had only been suspicious because he wielded the technique for himself in the past.

Though his caution seemed to become reasonable when he reached Melody's cabin and saw no vanguard lingering by the door. He peeked his pocket watch: 8 o'clock – it was a round number, so had it been that they were changing shift? Or did they mean to lure him, with an artificial opportunity to pounce, into acting on whichever subversive accord? Urbino knocked and waited.

Then as he waited the impossible thought entered his mind. In this dark reverberating corridor, floating upon the rail he had commissioned, there was not a single pair of eyes to witness him kill the Queen of Calabria.

It was that the end of his journey was right before him. Three days prior, on the eve of his possession of the body of Caro Els, he received the sole condition from the ghost of death: you'll have this body for thirty days. If you want to keep it forever, bring me the blood of the ruler of Calabria before that time ends. It was the same thought he had in his quarters at the convent: Caro Els was young, and full of vitality, and his own intelligence was the greatest on the Italian Peninsula, nay, in all Europe. If he were to here succeed and combine the two, the new Urbino Battista Sidotti would surely be able to squash the world between his palms…

He heard movement behind the door, and had already considered Caro's physicality: Melody would never overpower him. The knob span and Urbino unbuttoned his shirt and reached inside for a knife concealed in a holster across his breast. If he had surmised Ariel's plan correctly, and were to kill the Queen now, he would be tumbling merrily into Calabria's hands. He held the knife and prepared to draw. Yet, he thought, I may never have an opportunity like this again. And he nearly acted upon it, if not for realising, when the door opened, the ungentlemanly image of a hand inside one's shirt, and him retracting his instinctively for a lady.

Melody stood in the centre of the room, fixing her collar without looking at Urbino.

"Yes, what is it?" she used an annoyed tone.

"Your mother … Her Highness … sent me to call you to supper."

"Oh?" – she had then seen him – "…Oh, you're that diplomat. The other one. From… from…"

"I represent Italy."

"Yes. It's strange she sent you. Are diplomats meant to run around for foreign queens?"

"Not meant to."

Melody said, "In fact, you caught me right when I was studying your country's history. Can you see the table?" She pointed to a dishevelled desk behind her. "Even now, they still make me to study. I'm on the chapter of Napolean's invasion."

"The history of my country of Italy, or the history of the Italian Peninsula?"

"Oh, sorry. The peninsula."

"That is an important distinction to make, Your Majesty."

"Yes."

Urbino remembered his conviction and his hand crept again near the inside of his shirt. But at that moment the guard who had been in the dining carriage appeared behind him. "Her Highness's orders were simply to fetch Her Majesty." Instantly, his chance was sapped. "You were not meant to talk to the queen."

Urbino barely façaded his irritation.

"I apologise. It won't happen again."

Melody said, "It is fine, Vincent, leave us alone."

The guard hesitantly went away and Melody's collar was corrected.

"Well, if I take long, it'll reflect poorly on you, Caro," she said. "We can go now. Come on. We can talk about Italy and peninsulas later."

It was in this brief encounter that Caro Els, should he have been Caro Els, would have gained the impression that Melody d'Assisi Maria Leopoldo emitted character and was a self–confident young woman. But Urbino's opinion remained arrogant and low.

After supper, he retired to smoke on the carriage balcony, and he heard the shutter behind him open. Without company, Melody came out and leaned with her arms folded over the bannisters. She sighed over the passing gravel. She was obviously unwell.

"Your Majesty, are you nauseous?"

"Yes, suddenly…"

"You must sit down and drink something warm. This is a common affliction of those unused to train travel."

"No, fresh air is the solution. The real question is – how did I get sick on such a slow train…?"

Urbino couldn't help but say, "It doesn't matter if this train is slow. It's one of the most luxurious in all Europe. This entire line was built by King Urbino's commission."

"Urbino, hm?"

When he looked over at Melody a dark expression had muddled her face. She was still looking over the balcony, but her gaze, set on the purple horizon, seemed distracted, and dismal.

She asked, "Your name is Caro, right?"

"Yes, Your Majesty."

"Caro, were you at my father's funeral?"

"I believe every official of government had to be there."

"So you were," Melody said. "You probably had to accompany Urbino."

"Yes, His Majesty was there also."

"Urbino…"

"Yes?" Yet already he knew what Melody was going to say.

"That salute he did," she said. "Why'd he do it?"

"Salute?"

"You know. When he hailed, 'to Queen Melody!'."

"Oh, that one…" Urbino stopped smoking. Somehow the pipe was no longer flavourful. "That one … I didn't quite understand his decision, myself. Moreover, I believe there's no purpose in trying to find out the 'why'. Only Urbino knows what goes on in Urbino's mind."

Urbino stammered on the last word; he had forgotten to refer to himself as majesty.

Nevertheless Melody appeared not to notice. "Then, Caro, can I ask what was your opinion on the salute?"

"I have no opinion, Your Majesty."

"You must have one."

"I truly don't."

"May I tell you how I feel?"

"Of course, Your Majesty."

"Ever since that day, I've felt horrible."

The grumble of the carriage upon rail fell silent, and now, Melody wore a pained and lopsided expression on her face. Her focus was no longer on the distance: her focus was inward, on the pendulum inside her chest, dangling from ashamedness to pity, tolling its cuckoo at sadness. Urbino said, "Would you like to explain the feeling, Your Majesty?"

"It's been … ten days since my father passed. Even besides his death, just the fact that I'm now queen, it's, it's…"

"Overwhelming."

"Yes, overwhelming. And it's because I'm not a single bit capable as the new queen."

Melody stood straight and began to name her shortcomings one–by–one. "I haven't the slightest idea of how economy works; I'm not even up–to–date on all the policy in the kingdom." As she named them Urbino's arrogance over the monarch grew. I don't know how to delegate. I don't even know the minister's names. He only saw a complaintful child in a slightly misfortunate position. Fifty–five years ago, when he had ascended to the Sardinian throne after the briefest conflict of succession, he had prior to then prepared his whole existence for that moment. Even if some affairs of state initially bewildered him, there was nothing that his own diligence and tigerlike ferocity in library and amongst peerage couldn't overrule; and through the valleys and summits of his reign, he had expected nothing less from any fellow monarch.

A great leader he met had given him the philosophy before: a ruler's diligence ought to surpass the sum of the diligence of all whom he rules …there was a second part to the maxim, which he had over the years forgotten. The maxim he believed wholeheartedly and infused into every aspect of his sovereignce.

Because their personalities had not been the same, that was why Urbino couldn't use the example of his accession to comfort Melody, and also because he had no intention to comfort her.

She said, "And, I've got, basically, the hardest country to take care of."

"Your Majesty, perhaps we should stop talking about this. You mustn't demean your own position."

"But it's true."

"By all accounts, Calabria is small, and relatively easy to manage. I mean no offence."

"I know. I didn't mean that."

"What then?"

"It will be strange to tell you about it. But – Italy up north."

Urbino's eyes glittered.

"…Italy up north – what, was it ten years ago? I was so young when the Two Sicilies were conquered. At the time, Calabria was some sort of independent principality within the Two Sicilies … bla bla … and when they fell, the Kingdom of Sardinia allowed us to keep our independence before they changed their name to the Kingdom of Italy."

"Your Majesty, you do know your history, at least."

"Ach, it's the minimum. Anyway, after Sardinia became Italy, and conquered the Papal States, I think, that was when it was only Calabria, and you guys left. The Vatican and Man Sarino…" – San Marino? – "…too, but they don't count. Ever since then, I've heard my parents continuously say, 'I don't trust Urbino', or 'I don't trust Italy' and that they've never dropped the prospect of taking Calabria since the fall of the Sicilies. And it's not just from their mouths. I've heard it for myself. In court, some of my friends just can't keep things to themselves. We'll be talking, and someone'll bring up Urbino, and they'll go ahead and call him His Majesty. Right there. In the middle of the Calabrian court!"

It made Urbino recall the traitorous young soldier that had ridden beside him. "Your Majesty," he said. "I'm sorry. Considering my own position, I can't contribute anything you may want to hear to this conversation."

"No, I should be sorry. I realise that." Melody quietened again.

Urbino took several puffs of his pipe and he noticed how scintillating the fragrance was in the dry air of the plateau; before remembering, in fact, that it had been he who accepted the queen's request to detail her feelings. So, in spite of the nature of Urbino who inhabited Caro, in spite of a diplomat's quiet and meant place, in spite of the emotional danger it posed to his quest, he spoke up again.

"Your Majesty, you are still young. There is plenty of time for you to grow into the capable ruler you're meant to be."

"If Calabria lasts as long as that."

"You shouldn't speak in such absolutes. King Urbino's left your country untouched so far."

"It's not just Urbino. Everyone seems to be our enemy nowadays." She sighed. "What am I even doing out here, on this tour? I should be at home, learning to rule!"

"Everyone seems to be Calabria's enemy, and by extension, Your Majesty's enemy?"

"Yes."

What Urbino replied next even he could not have precipitated:

"Your Majesty, at least for an Italian, you have one ally in me."

He was in disbelief with himself; Melody herself looked as though she had been knocked flat. He could feel he was making his most earnest expression when he continued, "Your Majesty, I cannot gainsay King Urbino's policies regarding unification, but at the same time, as diplomat to Calabria, I earnestly support you."

"Caro," Melody murmured, "what are you saying?"

"I am saying, Your Majesty, that I will assist you in any manner possible with your rule. I am twenty–one years old, I have not much experience in life and politics, but if you would allow me to tutor you what I do know – then…"

He was standing straight beside the railing, his hand over his chest, in that eternal pose of allegiance, looking directly at Melody.

"Then," he said, "it would be my great honour, and I would do my utmost."

The queen's expression, still then hesitant, finally transformed into acceptance.

"Caro, how old did you say you were?"

"Twenty–one."

"I am seventeen," she said. "We are so close in age. So instead of being my tutor, won't you rather be my friend?"

When by Urbino's prompt they shook on it, the cataclysm of that moment was as though their nations had signed a grand coalition treaty, in a Baroque hall, in one of those great cultural cities of the north. Looking back, nothing came close to the eventual spectacle – and effect – that allegiance had upon Italy, and the world.


When Urbino returned to his cabin, the head had appeared atop his suitcase. "Urbino, you really are treacherous." He unbuttoned his shirt and took the knife–holster out. "Feigning allegiance with the girl. What will it bring you?" Urbino poured out a glass of spirit and sat.

"Feigning allegiance is no different from traditional political intrigue, is it?"

"You're only going to make things more difficult for yourself."

"Head, I thought you said you weren't my ally?"

"No, I am not."

Urbino was drinking an aged bourbon and he likened it to the Bourbon monarchy, whose former territory he was in and had assimilated, ten years prior, during his unquenchable thirst for unity. "The Two Sicilies, the Papacy, Austria, France … none of them could stop me before. A small girl won't stop me now, have confidence."

He sipped the bourbon as the head gazed at him with those eternal lethargic eyes.

"It is simply – this is quite fun. Pretending to be a diplomat. Pretending to befriend a naïve queen. Let me enjoy myself before these thirty days end. When the time to kill her comes, I'll make my decision without hesitation."

"You're a scoundrel." The head chuckled, and it vanished.

Urbino thought of his final day in the estate and Caro beside him at bed, saying that no–one but him may unite the land. If he saw him today, he would surely be disappointed with the erosion of His Majesty's virtue, but there existed no desire within Urbino to look back.


In 1873, after a long and tumultuous period of unification, there remained four nations on the Italian Peninsula.

Vatican City in Rome, which was the last remnant of the former domains of the Papacy.

San Marino in the Appenines, which was allowed to keep its independence for sheltering unification heroes during that period.

The Kingdom of Italy, which controlled 98% of peninsular territory and dominated regional politics.

And the Kingdom of Calabria, a microstate on the boot–tip of Italy, formerly a principality within the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies.

When King Urbino I subjugated the Two Sicilies and renamed his nation, the Kingdom of Piedmont–Sardinia, to the Kingdom of Italy, supporters of unification around the peninsula rejoiced. Yet, it remains a mystery to those same supporters as to why he let Calabria be free.

By 1873, it has become evident that the final state of unification sentiment of 'Risorgimento' – demands a conclusion to the Calabrian matter.

Faced with it, Melody and Ariel d'Assisi Maria Leopoldo do their best to remain fast in the cause of Calabrian independence. But will it be enough, when it seems that the tide of history itself mandates their absorption?


Prelude, end