Some said later that the duchesa was a distant Montefiori herself. Some said her fortunes had fallen so low that she had no income, but to serve as nurse and caretaker to this mad old man. Whatever the truth of it, la duchesa came by boat, bringing no furniture at all, so far as anyone remembered. She came with a young granddaughter and three servants, the servants with six valises which they hired ported through the calles, and which they zealously followed afoot, as if they feared the porters were thieves. The duchesa and the young girl went by gondola to the water-stairs of the little house—such were the details afterward gossiped at the edge of the lagoon, where the gondoliers gathered, and on the Serpentine, by the offended porters. La duchesa's arrival was a moment's buzz in the city: the fact that she had leased from the odd Montefiori—that was itself a delicious oddity. But the gossip among the gondoliers and the porters was thin, beyond the fact that la duchesa had arrived with one very heavy valise among the others. Gold was the common and natural guess, and in three days thieves made two attempts on the little house, in vain; the servants were quick, and efficient. The merchants of the city knew nothing, except that la duchesa, through her servants, purchased new furnishings, a dining table and two stout chairs of classical taste, three carpets of good quality, and excellent dinnerware, with, of course, blown glass. She also, through her servants, bought extravagant fabrics, and engaged seamstresses, who reported that the young girl, Giacinta, about twelve, was a lovely if solemn child, and that la duchesa was elegant and clearly of exquisite taste.
There was early speculation as to when la duchesa might invade society, and society underwent a slight stir of preparation and a shudder of fortification. Venezia did not readily admit foreigners—anyone not born in Venezia was, by definition, foreign—least of all welcomed foreign aristocrats, who might expect to be bowed to and deferred to by the merchant princes of the Adriatic. And no one wanted to admit that an acquaintance with the mad Montefiori constituted native standing. Venezia drew a deep breath and closed ranks behind its doge and its council, its mercantile elite, and its own sense of proprieties. It waited for the assault. In vain. La duchesa did not enter society, and the mad Montefioro languished and died, taken in the black funerary barge to the sea, without relatives to lament him, only that la duchesa provided him a decent funerary procession, and watched from the windows as he was taken away, with what emotion no one could tell. She stayed quiet in her rented house afterward, engaged a gardener, and gossip about the gowns and the furnishings faded in favor of a grudging acceptance, since she never came out. The gossip that surrounded the house grew uninteresting, providing no amusement and no scandal.
So they caused no difficulties. They became a known quantity, and in their self-imposed isolation, respectable, even considered in invitations—but never quite invited, for fear of everyone else's opinion. The Montefiori house became an address, a location, an odd tidbit of knowledge. Fashionable people never saw the duchesa, except that gondoliers noted the beautiful child that looked out from the waterside windows, and from time to time merchants received requests to bring goods for inspection and purchase. The merchants thus favored reported the house as exquisite inside, and the gardener, who ate his lunch at a certain café on the Priuli, said the duchesa and her daughter spent hour upon hour in their little garden, that they had rooted out the weeds with their own hands, and discovered greenery and flowers under the neglect. Three years passed, in which more important matters than la duchesa di Milano pressed on Venezia. In the first of those three years, a far more extravagant visitor arrived, noisily, with abundant baggage and a train of servants. His name was Cesare di Verona, exiled and out from his own city in a recent coup, but, it seemed, far from penniless. In fact, he had long supported Venetian mercantile interests, through intermediaries—not quite idle enough a nobleman to rule Verona, perhaps, but an easier fit within Venetian society than the duchesa from farther west, since he spread gold about, liberally. More, Cesare di Verona owned ships. Society therefore understood how he derived his money. I was apt to increase. It employed and it built, it traded and therefore I could be traced, by those who knew such things, by those whose business it was to know.
That meant it could be courted. The dark and handsome Cesare di Verona, unlike the duchesa, was invited to the houses of merchant princes, and did attend their parties, and ingratiated himself with certain ones by means of charity, by his relief to a merchant who had lost a ship and cargo, by his support and rescue of a foundering palazzo, with its historic treasures. Such an aristocrat found his way into ancient and inner circles, paving his way with good works. Could anyone disapprove of such generosity? And did anyone notice the comings and goings among his servants?
Venezia absorbed both arrivals, and went about its own affairs in peace, its life regulated by the tides, by the arrival and departure of ships from the deepwater port, the Porto Nuovo, beyond the great sea gates—and of course by the flow of trade to and from the port causeway, and goods likewise flowing on the western causeway, the sole landward connection of the city to the rest of the countryside.
Two things disturbed that peace. First event and least likely, a great quake struck remote Cairo, and the consequent tide, as it rushed inland, had flooded the Cairo harborside, wrecked ships at dock, and destroyed almost all the warehouses.
To certain merchants in Venezia, Cairo's misfortune seemed more opportunity than disaster, since it had happened to a trading partner, not to them, and since their ships had not been in port, they might sell to a city in dire need of goods. But the debate of the Council, whether to send assistance gratis to the stricken city, was the news of two days only. On the third day, while the city was still abuzz, with disputes over the matter of Cairo, the Doge slipped on the stairs of his own house and died—a careless servant, a previously spilled tray, a spot of oil, on the uncompromising marble steps of the Palazzo Ducale.
In an instant the benevolent and honest man who had ruled Venezia for two decades now was dead. The fate of Cairo entangled itself in the debate over his succession. The Council, after loud argument and the purveying of every favor and counterfavor wealth could manage, deadlocked, and finally chose as the Doge replacement a young man, an astonishingly young man, in fact: one Antonio Raffeto, remote relative by marriage of the lamented Doge, a scholar, and reputedly honest. His election came as a third-round compromise between the pro and the con of the relief effort. The Raffeti owned no ships, nor did they trade. In fact the Rafetti of the last five generations had been respected historians, professors, and scholars of the great library, though this young man was said to be very knowledgeable in practical matters. In fact, as people about town now said, the Raffeti finally held power openly, through this quiet young man, when, through the centuries, they had only stood behind the Doges and told them step by step what to do.
Antonio Raffeto’s first official act was to send aid to Cairo. His second was to oppose Cesare di Verona in his bid to gain the long-vacant Montefiori seat on the Council—a bid against precedent, but supported by several still angry families who had voted against Antonio Raffeto. It was straight into the boiling water of politics for the young Doge, but he withstood this storm, and gained from it a reputation, when several merchant princes found their own accounts audited, and Cesare di Verona was found to have entertained them extravagantly.