Free Looking for Marco Polo by Alan Armstrong Page A

are all the same.”
    “Okay,” said Mark, “but what about when you were a kid?”
    “A.M.E. African Methodist Episcopal.”
    “What church is that?”
    “A church for black Protestants. In slavery time blacks weren’t allowed in the white churches, so they organized their own.
    “What religion are you?” Hornaday asked.
    “Mom’s a Lutheran, Dad’s a Quaker,” Mark said.“We switch back and forth. With Quakers nobody’s in charge—people just wait around until somebody gets up to say something. With Lutherans there’s a program to show how close you are to the end of the service, so I like that better.”
    They stood aside for a struggling porter wheeling a handcart heavy with jugs of wine.
    “Just like a thousand years ago,” Hornaday said. “Everything you see has been floated in and moved by hand—all the paving stones, clothes, bricks, oil, food—all of it.”
    The vaporetto stop was a gently pitching barge tied up at an opening on the Grand Canal. Across the water the sun had caught the front of a church with gold ornaments and a palace with a covered porch on the top. There was a square and docks, but no grass in sight anywhere.
    “Where do kids play?” Mark asked.
    “In the streets, the campos, but mostly on the water. The sea is their playground. Venetian kids grow up swimming, rowing, and sailing. They have boat races year-round—regattas.”
    The waterbus arrived with a lot of engine noise, splashing and slithering. Its wake sent the dock heaving as the captain worked the big tan boat up against the stop. It was crowded, big as a street bus, dirty and rusted.

    The dog hung back.
    Hornaday took him by the collar. “Okay, boy,” the doctor said as he led Boss up the heaving gangplank.
    “He had a bad experience with a boat once,” the doctor explained, “which is why we walk most everywhere.”
    Mark already knew.
    Striped poles banded blue and red and green and yellow announced intersections. In the channel therewere speed signs just like on land: 5 MPH—but most of the boats were going faster than that. As they rode, Mark pointed to the sunstruck buildings. “Did Venice look like this when Marco was here?” he asked.
    “If he came back today, he’d recognize it,” the doctor said, “but it would look worn down, because there isn’t enough money to keep things fixed up.
    “In Marco’s time Venice was rich beyond imagining. The Piazza San Marco, where we’re headed, washome to the cathedral, but it was also the biggest and most famous marketplace in the Western world. All the goods of the East came through here because the port of Venice was closest to the heart of Europe. Everything was traded in the piazza—jewels, silk, slaves, spices, soap, perfumes, ivory, drugs. Every ship brought in the choicest goods from the caravans that had opened their bundles and bags where the Silk Road ended.
    “Remember the signora saying how every merchant had to bring back something for the church? Well, much of it was booty, stuff plundered from Egypt, Greece, and Persia. Venetians looted everywhere they landed. They were called ‘sea sharkers.’
    “Their biggest haul came when Marco’s father was a boy. The Venetians sacked Constantinople, then the richest Christian city in the world. The four great bronze horses you’ll see out front, the columns inside—no two alike—most of the sculptures, all the marble, the gold in the dome of the apostles—it was all stolen.”
    Mark began walking fast when they got off the boat. He wanted to see the horses robbed from Constantinople. Doc made the church sound like a thieves’ paradise with valuables piled up in the corners.
    Boss picked up the boy’s excitement. He lifted his nose as if he were scenting game.
    “The wonder is what they made of what they took,” Hornaday was saying. “Ancient stone columns, panels of veined marble—the builders and artists turned it into something holy. Some of the gold was melted and spread thin on