Looking for Marco Polo by Alan Armstrong Read Free Book Online Page B

bite people?” he whispered.
    “Do you?” asked the rat.

7
M ARCO’S H OMECOMING
    Mark pulled the quilt up to his chin. He was uneasy about the rats being so close.
    “Okay,” whispered Boss in his husky, rumbling voice. He kept it low so as not to awaken the doctor.
    “When Marco left Venice with his father and uncle, they expected to be gone four or five years. They were gone more than twenty. People thought they were dead. In those days if no one heard from you or got word about you for a long time like that, your name got entered in a book and your property was given away.
    “Put yourself in Marco’s place. Imagine leaving home today and not returning for twenty-four years! You’d look different. Everyone you saw would look different, and they’d only remember you the way you’d looked the last time they’d set eyes on you.What would you say? How would you identify yourself?”
    “I don’t know,” Mark murmured. He felt the anxiety of it in the pit of his stomach. He realized he had no way of proving who he was. If you’re not recognized in a place, who are you? Where do you belong?
    “What would you do?” the dog asked. “Nobody knows you. Nobody has reason to trust you. You’re at the mercy of others. Maybe they’re scared of you just because of the way you look. I know about that! You saw how it was—that clerk out there would have kicked me down the stairs if he could have.”
    “Which you would have deserved, coming in here stinking and muddy, shaking your dog wet all over,” Count Leo scolded. “But as for looks scaring folks off, the boy beside you shivers just looking at us rats.”
    “Silenzio!”
Boss growled.
    “What would you do?” he asked Mark again. “You’ve come home and nobody recognizes you. What’s so special about you that you could use to get people to remember who you are?”
    “There’s nothing special about me,” Mark whispered, shaking his head. “I guess I’d ask if they remembered the boy who couldn’t breathe.”
    “That’s it!” the dog exclaimed. “That’s exactly how Marco proved who he was.”
    “What happened?”
    “We’ll get there,” Boss said. “Right now it’s dark and silent at Ca Polo, just after midnight on a moonless foggy night. These three tough-looking guys show up with this big dog at the family palazzo: Marco, his uncle and father, and my great-great. Marco looked nothing like the boy he’d been. The Polos looked like greasy beggars, hair oiled and tied back under filthy turbans, skins stained an odd color from the grease and juices they’d rubbed on for disguise and protection against the desert sun. Their boots were wolf-skin galoshes with the hair inside.”
    Boss’s ruff was up. “They looked like bandits or worse,” he said. “They’d been gone so long they’d forgotten Venetian manners. Even their speech was strange with Persian and Mongol thrown in. Like Mongols, they spat every time they finished speaking. They smelled.”
    “Spat?” Mark interrupted. “They spat when they talked?”
    “Listen,” Boss whispered, “that was the least of it. Their personal habits would have shamed a rat.”
    “Maybe even a dog,” the count hissed.
    Boss acted as if he hadn’t heard. “They crowded under the entry arch,” he continued, “three men, a gray donkey, and the great Tibetan dog—the biggest dogever seen in Venice—my great-great generations back. He’s the hero here.”
    Mark sat up. “I know that arch,” he whispered. “I saw it earlier today. I stood under it.”
    Boss nodded. “It was a dangerous time. Venice was at war with Genoa. Spies lurked. The place was full of secrets and enemies. Every stranger looked suspicious. Were these guys thugs? The only baggage they had was what was on the back of Marco’s donkey. Their stuff from China was still on shipboard. They had no papers. Who were they? They had no keys. They were locked out.”
    Hornaday erupted in a loud snore. Boss froze. The doctor