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 tiny pieces of glass to make the ceiling mosaics. They did the same thing with the floor, cutting and fitting thousands of semiprecious stones into beautiful patterns.”
Mark was walking faster and faster, his head filled with images of Venetian robbers staggering under sacks of treasure.
“Why did they have to steal stuff?” he asked, breathing hard. “You said Venice was really rich.”
“She wasn’t always,” Hornaday said, putting out his hand to slow Mark a little. “That’s why robbery figures so much in her history. She had a lot of catching up to do to become as grand as her rival, Genoa.
“Genoa was in her glory and Venice was nothing more than a cluster of huts when marauders came out of the north and sent people fleeing here.
“The newcomers looked around. ‘What do we have to work with?’ they wondered.
“They sold fish, made salt, melted sand to make glass, and they built boats. They were soon sailing out into the Adriatic and down to the Mediterranean as merchant raiders.”
Mark looked out over the water as if he expected to catch sight of one.
“For all its elegance,” the doctor was saying, “there’s always been an air of stealth and thuggery about this place. It was never holy like Assisi or noble like Rome, but for the sake of their religion the Venetians pulled off their greatest heist when they stole the bones of the Apostle Mark.”
“Stole his bones?” Mark exclaimed. “Why’d they do that?”
“Folks believed they’d bring good luck,” Hornaday said. “Don’t you carry something for luck?”
“Yeah,” said Mark as he felt in his pocket for the flint scraper he’d found on a trip with his dad. He didn’t know why, but he was sure it was lucky.
“The saint’s remains were buried in Alexandria in Egypt,” the doctor explained. “When Alexandria fell to the followers of Islam, it was rumored here in Venice that the sultan had ordered St. Mark’s church pulled down and his bones thrown into the common garbage pit.
“Two young Venetian merchants worked themselves into a frenzy over this. ‘Pitch the apostle’s remains into the garbage pit?’ they cried to each other. ‘We must save him!’
“They set out in a borrowed boat. The pope had banned Christians from stopping in Muslim Alexandria, and the Egyptians weren’t exactly welcoming, so the Venetians broke up some of the ship’s rigging and limped into port, pretending to have been blown in by bad weather.
“There was a long exchange with the port officials about the ancient rule that harborage and courtesies had to be afforded distressed sailors. Finally, with the passing over of a bit of silver, the Venetians were allowed to dock.
“They went ashore and bought the tools they said they needed to fix their ship. Tools in hand, they sneaked over to St. Mark’s church and bribed the old caretaker to let them in. Once inside they tied him up, barred the door, and set to work getting Mark’s bones.
“This took some doing. His bones and hair and the cape and crown and shoes he’d been buried in weren’t just sitting in a suitcase ready to go. It took hammers, crowbars, and chisels to tear down the altar and pry away masonry to get at the heavy stone box containing his body. They worked all night. Finally at dawn they cracked open Mark’s sarcophagus. A sweet smell filled the church and the neighborhood around. Nobody knew what it was.”
“Huh?” Mark asked. “Wouldn’t old bones stink?”
Hornaday laughed. “Maybe they did, but the legend has it that they smelled good. Anyway,” he continued, “the Venetians stuffed the saint’s remains in the sack they’d carried their tools in and hurried to the dock, pretending to be carrying stuff to fix their ship. The fragrance they’d noticed in the church surrounded them—an odor so pleasing, the story goes, it was as if all the spices in Alexandria had been tossed into the air.
“Just as they got the bones on board, the sultan heard that people were rushing out of their homes, singing and dancing in the street, seemingly crazed by a miraculous sweet fragrance.
“He sent his soldiers to investigate. They couldn’t smell the sweetness themselves, so they stumbled around for hours asking people what it was, where it was coming from.
“At last they discovered the tied-up watchman and the robbers’ tools. The once-fine altar was rubble. The watchman told them what had happened. The soldiers hurried to the Venetians’ ship.
“Meanwhile the robbers, knowing the Muslims’ aversion to pork, had buried Mark’s relics in a barrel of freshly salted pig meat and hung strips of pork around their ship, pretending to be curing provisions in the salt air while they fixed their rigging.
“When the sultan’s agents got to the boat, they found the sight—and worse, the smell—of those bloody strips revolting.
“‘Hanzir! Hanzir!’ they screeched. ‘Pork! Pork!’ The tub of pink pig flesh under its veil of salt made them sick. They didn’t stay to dig around in it; they fled, retching.
“The Venetians were under sail by the time the sultan’s ship heaved anchor. The robbers were blown along by what seemed a divine wind, while the Muslim sailors, a mile behind, sat becalmed in searing heat.
“It was said that sweet dreams, along with the fragrance, preceded the robbers and announced the saint’s arrival at Venice. The doge welcomed the sailors as heroes. There was a huge celebration. Money was collected. The grave robbers became wealthy men.”
“Where did the good smell come from?” Mark asked.
“According to the legend it was a miracle, proof of the saint’s sweetness,” the doctor said. “Venetians adopted Mark’s emblem as their own—the winged lion standing with a front paw upraised, jaws open. It wasn’t long before the Lion of Saint Mark, embroidered in gold on a brick red field, fluttered from every masthead, and by the doge’s order the lion’s head was carved on every wellhead.
“Get ready,” said the doctor. “We’re coming up on the square.”
10
BLINDMAN’S BLUFF
The Piazza San Marco was like a glittering box, its red, peach, and yellow painted walls studded with ornaments and flags. There were tubs of trees and blooming plants around cafés with tables outside, each place with its own little orchestra squeaking away, trying to play over the milling din of hawkers selling crosses and bottles of holy water. There were Japanese tourists in plain dark coats, Buddhist monks in capes of carmine and saffron, priests from Greece in large black hats, Russians in furs, tour groups clustered around flag-bearing guides hollering through loudspeakers in strange languages.
The great doors of the cathedral stood open. The inside glowed with gold and candlelight. Chanting and singing drifted out in waves, music of Christmas.
“You could go in alone,” the doctor said. “They won’t let me in with Boss.”
Mark was hesitant. He didn’t like crowds. “I’m fine just looking at the outside.”
“Okay,” said Doc. “We’ll skirt the crowd and get a good look from the doge’s palace, over there,” Hornaday said, pointing.
They walked to the far side of the piazza, to the pink and white building at the edge of the lagoon where the Grand Canal began.
“Here’s where they set the spring that shot Marco east,” the doctor said. “Here’s where the doge in his gold-embroidered robes and what looked like a stuffed animal on his head schemed over maps.”
Hornaday leaned against the wall. “When we were kids,” he said, “we made make-believe telephones out of two tin cans and a piece of string. We’d punch a small hole in t
he bottom of each can and run the string through, knotting the ends. With the string pulled tight, the listener would hold his can to his ear while the speaker shouted into his. You could make out something, but it was muffled.
“I picture the doge yelling into his can here while Kublai, thousands of miles away, listens to his. Marco is the string stretched tight between them.
“Squint,” the doctor suggested. “Pretend you’re Marco, sitting on that stone dock over there watching a long war galley from Constantinople approach, sails down, her sides rough and dark with bits of seaweed caught in clots of pitch and tar and loose caulking. Her deck shines like metal, freshly washed and sanded.
“Picture her entering the Grand Canal, passing the immense coil of gleaming chain they kept ready in those days to be stretched across should enemy ships approach.
“The oars flash together like centipede legs as the ship’s boy beats time on his drum and the captain bellows ‘Ohi! Ohi! Ohi!’ to warn off smaller boats. Chained to the mast, a black African and a pale Russian study the eyes studying them.
“See those two columns at the edge of the square? Those are the seamarks sailors landing at Venice looked for. On top of one a saint stands with his foot on a crocodile. Saint Mark’s winged lion is on top of the other.
“In Marco’s time strolling musicians played for money here as wealthy merchants and their wives and men and women of court paraded slowly in embroidered silks and rich velvets, flashing their jewels and lifting their robes slightly to show their fine pointed shoes. Some wore thick gold rings set with diamonds over brightly colored kidskin gloves.
“Suddenly the crowd stills. A prisoner is brought to the dock in a black gondola.
“Punishments and public executions took place between those landmark columns—flogging and branding for stealing, heads chopped off for murder. It’s said to be bad luck to walk there.
“This prisoner’s crime was not so great. He got locked in a wooden cage and hoisted partway up the gray column. People teased and threw cabbages and fruit at him until workers came and set up the gaming tables again. Within minutes the merchants and nobles were rolling dice and slapping down cards as they roared out their stories, everyone talking at once like an opera and nobody minding.”
The doctor looked at his watch. “I’ve got to run an errand. How about I drop you at your hotel for a lie-down? On the way we can look at the merchants’ palace they’d never have let Marco into—the place with books about silk growing on trees and dog-headed Chinese.”
Boss gave the doctor a look.
They caught the pitching waterbus to the Rialto Bridge. The lagoon water smelled like the ocean; it was gray, not green like the canal water.
Boss looked forlorn, head down, his paws spread wide to keep from falling as the boat plunged and yawed.
Mark moved close and hugged him. “I’ll steady you,” he whispered.
Boss licked his face. Mark smiled. No dog had ever had a chance to do that before, and he still wasn’t sneezing.
Every quarter mile or so the vaporetto would stop like a land bus, honking the smaller boats out of the way. A sailboat was luffing in the channel, unable to move. The bus swerved wide as the sailboat pitched crazily in the wake.
The merchants’ palace was white and grand like a Greek temple, with columns out front, carved gargoyles, and medallions. There was writing over the entrance.
“What’s it say?” Mark wanted to know.
“‘Let all who trade here do so honestly,’” the doctor translated.
“Did they?”
“Ha!” said Hornaday with a sharp laugh. “Caveat emptor—‘Let the buyer beware’—has always been the merchants’ rule, but the doge and his council had regulations to keep things fair and protect the reputation of Venetian goods. They checked quality, weights, and measures. It wasn’t unusual to see smoke rising in the market square when the governors discovered defective cloth or some bad spices and ordered the stuff burned. Public examples like that kept folks honest, because the doge’s men didn’t just burn what was bad; they torched the cheater’s entire stock.”
“Okay if Boss stays with me?” Mark asked when they got to his hotel.
“Sure,” said Doc. “I’ll meet you at one for lunch at the signora’s.”
Mark and Boss headed upstairs to Mark’s room. As Mark slid the Chinese pillow under his head, the dog floated up and lay down beside him, uttering a long whistling sigh of joy as he stretched out full length. But a few minutes later, Boss began to jerk and twitch in his sleep, quivering, his teeth chattering. A bad dream! Mark put out his hand to comfort him.
Boss awakened, looked up at Mark, then licked the boy’s hand in gratitude, sighed, and went back to sleep. Mark lay there watching in case the nightmare came back. It felt good being needed. He’d never felt that way before.
He was tired but he wasn’t sleepy. His mind was going all over the place, sights and images boiling around in his head like the flakes in one of those snow globes.
Gradually the swirl of ideas settled on one thing: St. Mark’s. Seeing the light shining out, hearing the music—he had to get inside to see what Marco had seen. He had to go back. He had some money, and his mother had given him a book of vaporetto tickets.
Boss was suddenly wide awake, ready for whatever Mark had in mind.
The boy tried to leave word with the hotel clerk, but when the man saw the dog again, he scuttled back into his night closet.
They caught the waterbus and rode down the Grand Canal to the San Marco stop.
The crowds in the cathedral yard were thicker than before. Mark gritted his teeth. There was a wall of people he figured he’d never get through.
Then he noticed a display of Italian sunglasses on a souvenir cart. It gave him an idea.
He went to the cart and tried on a pair. He checked them out with Boss. The dog nodded.
Mark gestured to the man and said, “I’ll take these.”
“Twenty euro,” the man said.
Mark pulled out what he had in his pockets: thirteen euros plus the book of vaporetto tickets.
“You have anything cheaper?” he asked.
“No,” said the man. Then he smiled. “What you have there—the money and the tickets—I sell them to you for that, Mister Hollywood.”
Somehow from behind the glasses the crowd wasn’t so intimidating.
Mark took hold of Boss’s collar. The dog led him toward the open tourist gates slowly and deliberately, his great plume waving, his blue tongue out and slobbering as he grinned and hooted his way through the crowd.
They got to the great doors.
Mark nodded to the dog. Boss sat down, prepared to wait for Mark for as long as necessary. Mark let go of the leash and merged with the warm, shuffling tide that sounded like silk rubbing on silk.
He was in. He pulled off the glasses and waited while his eyes adjusted to the smoky dim. There was organ music and singing far away. The space was huge, the domed ceilings soaring higher than anything he’d ever seen. The slanting winter light coming in from one side was golden, touching the mosaic pictures in the domes over his head. There was Noah tenderly helping a pair of long-necked green and turquoise birds into the ark while others just as gorgeous but azure with white dots waited their turn. And then, farther on, there were the merchants in their little black boat bringing back a long casket with the bones of Saint Mark over a vivid sea of black swirls on gold. As the boy stared, he could almost feel their boat pitching and heaving over the deep.
He had goose bumps. The hair on the back of his neck went up. “Marco,” he whispered. “You were here. You saw those sailors, you knew the story, you could feel the water. Maybe you stood right where I am now.” He shivered, but he wasn’t cold.
Moving deeper into the dusk and hush of the cathedral, it felt as if he were walking in the hold of a great ship, moving up toward her prow. He became aware of the incense and candle smoke. It was heavy to breathe. There were trays of candles in nich
es along the sides of the cathedral, their light flickering off paintings, polished panels of marble veined like old wood, columns carved like spirals and capped with bunches of leaves, relic boxes on stands—some made of crystal edged with gold, others of ivory and carved stone—each filled with a holy object or martyr remains. In one, he saw what looked like a circle of rusted barbed wire on a faded silk pillow stained with what might have been drops of blood. In the next, he saw a Bible bound in jewels with a broken blade smashed into it. In another, there was a skull with auburn hair and teeth and beside it a severed hand.
He walked slowly toward the high altar, where Saint Mark’s bones were kept.
Everything was polished stone, even the uneven floor that dipped in some places and rose in others so sometimes Mark caught himself stumbling. The stones were laid in patterns so confusing he had to look up. As he did, he saw a figure like the signora’s Madonna smiling in a niche, only there wasn’t any paint splashed on her. She seemed to be smiling at him, nodding.
“My dad,” he whispered. “Please, Lady, watch out for him.”
He moved with the hush of shuffling worshipers up the stairs to the high altar. It was covered with embroidered silks, a tall golden crucifix in the center, on either side smaller jeweled religious ornaments and a pair of tall candelabra. There were mosaic figures on the sides, glittering in vivid colors outlined in black and gold. The music was close now, men’s voices chanting from above. The light was hazy, as if pouring through fine golden dust. The incense was dizzying.
He made his way to a pew and sat down. Overhead there were images of angels. No one was sitting close by, but it felt as if he wasn’t alone.
Maybe Marco sat here, he thought, with his aunt and the cook and everyone for Christmas Mass.
Suddenly he was cold. He remembered Boss. He stumbled out. Boss had made himself small in a corner by the door beside a tiny old gypsy woman who was crouched there begging. Mark gestured that his pockets were empty; he had nothing for her. She understood.
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