Free Mistress of the Vatican by Eleanor Herman Page B

Roman citizens, living on the street as they did, was gossip. They were quick to note who was going in and out of which house, how long they stayed, and what they looked like when they came out.
    As comfortable as the Romans made themselves on the streets, they had to be ready to run at a moment’s notice. In some ways, seventeenth-century Rome resembled a Hollywood version of the American Wild West. Street fights would erupt between the armed entourages of two feuding families or two dueling ambassadors. Shots would ring out, swords clash, and all those who had been lounging, working, or selling on the streets would vanish in an instant behind bolted doors and shuttered windows. Only once the violence had stopped would the Romans come out to gape at the dead bodies littering the pavement.
    Worse dangers lurked in Rome than the spontaneous eruptions of baroque cowboys. Until 1875, when flood banks were built, the Tiber River was level with the streets and houses around it. Floods were an ever-present problem, and every decade or so a raging torrent killed hundreds of Romans in low-lying areas. In a few hours entire sections of the city could be flooded to a depth of ten or twelve feet. The Jews suffered most of all, as they had been crammed into the lowest-lying part of Rome right next to the river by papal decree.
    Sometimes when the river surged suddenly, inmates incarcerated in Rome’s Tor di Nona prison drowned in their cells as water poured in the barred windows and rose to the ceiling. During the two or three days the waters remained at their peak, Rome resembled Venice. Red-robed cardinals canoed through the streets offering blessings and— more important—bread to the starving, who lowered baskets from their second-floor windows.
    When the waters receded, houses, roads, and public buildings were filled with sewage and mud. Sometimes typhoid broke out. And with
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    M i s t r e s s o f t h e Vat i c a n
    each new deluge the ruins of the ancient forum disappeared a little more into the twenty feet or so of silt, deposited there by centuries of floods. The jagged tops of triumphal arches and colossal temples stuck out of the mud, tombstones commemorating the glories of a vanished race.
    Fires, too, were an ever-present threat. Logs rolled out of fireplaces; untended candles shed sparks on straw-covered floors, and suddenly a whole city block was ablaze. As residents ran naked into the streets, dragging out chairs and tables, the volunteer fire brigade passed buckets of water from the nearest fountain, which was often quite a distance away. Since water thrown from a bucket had little effect on a raging inferno, most fires were simply allowed to burn themselves out, while “firemen” doused the roofs of buildings across the street to prevent sparks from igniting.
    Even the ancient stones themselves posed a threat. In Olimpia’s time most of the buildings were hundreds of years old and had been patched together from parts of imperial Roman baths and basilicas. The city had no salaried building inspectors, and every few months a house, a tower, or a wall would groan in pain and come crashing down with very little warning, killing everyone in its path. Even the most exalted Romans were not spared the dangers of falling masonry. In 1499 the ceiling of the Vatican audience chamber fell on Pope Alexander VI, knocking him unconscious and killing the servant standing next to him.
    Casting a penetrating gaze around her new city, Olimpia must have realized it was dirtier, noisier, uglier, and far more lethal than Viterbo. But it was here, in Rome, where she would finally realize her lifelong dream of working in politics. Her new husband, Pamphilio, would surely want her advice.
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    The Brother-in-Law
    q
    I have a man’s mind, but a woman’s might.
    — Portia, William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar ignor Pamfili her husband, like most Italian men, conducted his business affairs without asking his wife’s opinion or