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after his travels. Mark thought it was strange that a story about travels should begin with the coming-home part.
    The stone arch was carved with circles of flowers, shields, figures of lizard-looking beasts, and something with the head of an eagle and the body, hind legs, and tail of a lion.
    Mark went over and stood under it. He stretched out his arms and measured the opening. It was four stretched-out-Marks wide. “Marco says he and his father and his uncle arrived with a donkey and a bigdog,” he explained. “I’m just checking to see if they could all have fit through. I guess they could.”

    He turned and looked around the small square. “Do you think it looks the same now as it did then?” he asked.
    His mother nodded. “Pretty much.”
    “That must be where he went to get water.” Mark pointed to the wellhead. It came up to his waist and looked like the top of a column, only it was hollow. It was the length of a man across.
    “If you run your hands over the stone,” his mother said, “you might be able to feel where the lion’s head was. It says in the guidebook that in Marco’s time all the wellheads in Venice had carved lions’ heads on them, but then foreign soldiers came and knocked them off.”
    Mark’s scalp tingled.
    Maybe I’m touching what Marco Polo touched.
    “Was the water salty?” he asked.
    “It wasn’t a well,” his mother explained. “The space under this paving was a cistern, maybe still is. The paving was laid on a slant, so rainwater drained into it, water from the roofs too.”
    “Did they drink it?” Mark asked.
    His mother nodded.
    Mark scrunched up his face. “Along with dead pigeons and all the other stuff that must have fallen in?”
    “I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe they boiled it.”
    There was an iron grating over the top.
    “They don’t use it anymore, right?” Mark asked, leaning over and staring down.
    “I don’t think so,” his mother replied.
    Mark called down, “Hi!”
    He waited a long moment.
    “I heard back!” he said, straightening up.
    They headed back to their hotel, twisting along canals and stitching over bridges. On the way they passed the big museum. It was open.
    His mother pointed to the sign.
“Mondo di Marco Polo
—Marco Polo’s World. Want to go in?” she asked.
    Mark sagged. “Maybe later, Mom,” he said. “I’m tired.”
    “Come on,” she urged. “A quick walk through. Five minutes.”
    The rooms were large and dark, with tall ceilings. The first was filled with huge dark globes of the world mounted in gilded frames. Some of the globes were as tall as a man. There were cases of books laid open. Pictures and maps were hung all the way up to the ceiling. Staring up, Mark felt woozy. His legs were heavy.
    The next room had a scale model of a black Venetianwar galley with manikins on the benches—two to a bench, twenty-five benches on each side, with an ax and spear beside every one, sharp and ready for battle. The figure of a boy in a blue jacket sat in the stern with a drum, beating time for the rowers. The prow ended in an iron beak shaped like a dragon’s head.
    “They were paid,” his mother translated from the sign. “These rowers weren’t slaves like the Roman galley slaves. For the Venetians, being a rower was a good job. It says the point at the front was for holing the enemy.”
    “What’s holing?” Mark wanted to know.
    “Ramming—poking a hole in the enemy boat to sink it,” she answered.
    Mark pointed to the figure of the boy at the stern. “That kid’s been beating his drum for a long time.”
    In the next room there was the standing figure of a Mongol warrior in quilt armor and a metal helmet with broad gold wings. He stood holding a spear beside a pony.
    Mark went and stood beside the warrior. They were the same size. “Those soldiers were grown-ups, right?” he called to his mother.
    “Yes,” she answered. “People are bigger now. Better diet.”
    On the walls there were racks of