The Adventure of the Travertine Nose-- Part VIII

“You’re what?” Basil almost yells when you return a few minutes later, paintless and mugless.
“Scared,” you say stubbornly. Your hand rockets to your hip and instinctively you stomp your foot. When Basil finished assessing you with a series of, ‘No, really’s?’ he offers you his arm. His white shirt, thoroughly crapped up with the dirt and grime of centuries, still manages to look as trustworthy as armor in the cellar light. You hook your arm through his and he guides you back up the crumbling steps. You trip and fall a couple of times, complaining about the unevenness when you know very well, you’re still shaking like a newborn deer. Basil can’t resist pausing at the top to introduce you to a saintly tooth and the other microscopic fragments of bone. He delights in taking you back to Chaucer’s England—an England rife with unscrupulous priests selling indulgences and phony minced saints that are nothing more than pestle-ground skeletons of feral animals-- supersedes his desire to document noseless statues. He abandons his theme when he nips into the gift shop to steal you a mug and a packet of ‘The Wives of Henry the VIII’ chocolates.
“This really is more fun than anything else I could have done on my first night,” you admit, biting into Anne Boleyn.
“Can I have Catherine Howard?” he asks politely. “I mean, she’s a minor one, right? I wouldn’t ask for Jane Seymour or Catherine Parr.”
“The most married Queen in England; no, I wouldn’t give you her,” you say, handing over Catherine Howard.
Bertie, the guard, seems relieved when he stumbles upon the two of you. “I saw a lot of activity on the security cameras and I was getting worried. Glad it’s just you, Mr. Maidencroft.
Basil gives Bertie a clap on the back and practically takes Jane Seymour out of your mouth and offers her to Bertie. “No thanks,” he declines, holding up a netted bag of chocolate tuppence he’s apparently also lifted from the gift shop. “Were one of you two wearing a hood a few minutes ago?” he asks, tossing a chocolate coin into his mouth like a tiddley-wink.
“A hood?” you ask, nervously.
“I must have been seeing things, Bertie laughs.
Basil snaps back into efficiency mode and hustles you back downstairs. You begin to share his enthusiasm for the project at about 2:00am while you’re sketching what feels like your thousandth nose hole. In the margins, you begin to paint what you imagine to be the corresponding nose for each of your sketches. You can’t remember when you introduced magenta or apple green to your paintings, but your little studies look fabulous. The highlights are perfect, and the bare, incomplete faces are leaping off the page in wretched despondency. ‘Find my nose!’ they seem to be begging. You give one of the heads a laurel wreath, and the little painting seems to immediately cheer. You give one fellow—a torso really, who’s missing his arms and legs as well as his head—a brown of buttercups and a matching yellow suit that includes prosthetics. You’re getting punchy. What time is it?
Basil is lying beside you, smiling at your sketchbook. His tweed coat is balled up for a pillow. “Shouldn’t that one with no body at all get a Father Christmas hat or something?” He stands up and stretches in an exaggerated manner that reminds you of the Olympians upstairs. The stretch was probably necessary after his long spell on the marble floor. You know Roman dust-bunnies are sticking to your fanny when you finally stand, but it’s too late to care. Basil consults his watch and informs you that you’re train is leaving in five hours. The weight of the universe seems to hit you like a wrecking ball. You’re exhausted and instantly cranky.
There’s not a cab in sight when you emerge from the Museum. You see a girl who might easily be Eliza Doolittle, surrounded by her street folk friends, standing around a fire toasting nuts and tearing violets out of flowerbeds for sale in the morning. You argue as you stroll with Basil, too tired to stride. He insists that he needs you at Rackrent Castle. You argue that you have no clothing, other than what’s on your back, and add that you’re brushing your teeth with what’s almost certainly a borrowed toilet brush.
“So we’ll leave a little later, on the 10:20 train. We’ll be on Princes Street when the shops open, and I’ll buy you whatever you need—out of our money.”
“Basil,” you whine. “This is my vacation. There’s a lot of stuff I want to do. I wanted to go to see the thriller at the Lyceum Theatre.”
“The groundskeeper kills the old lady and hides her head in a hatbox,” Basil says, as you stop in front of the Sleeping Bee. I’ll be here at 8:45 to pick you up!”
You lightly slam the door as theatrically as you can at 3:00am, half-convinced you’re drunk and you imagined the whole escapade. Reality slaps you in the face when you start searching for your suitcase and remember your pajamas, along with everything else are gone. Martin is probably wearing your undies as a hat, laughing as drinking as he auctions off the contents of your suitcases. Somehow, despite your confusion, anger, amusement, worry, exhilaration, fear, anticipation, panic, dread, and general excitement—you fall asleep.
Noses and flat faces swirl like jagged puzzle pieces through your dreams. Cracks and crevices align, and the Mr. Potato Head of your dreams turns into an arrestingly handsome travertine god. A four-eyed monster appears behind him, with a spiky mace for a tail that it pounds against the trembling earth. An ogre is hiding atop the four-eyed monster, resting in the hump of its scaly bulk as if it were a camel driver. The ogre wields a flaming sword in each hand and laughs manically each time the monster thumps his mace tail and agitates the whole world. Your travertine god whirls around quickly, and cracks his stone knuckles. With one bionic movement, your travertine god punches the monster’s face. The monster rolls over atop the (not laughing) ogre and crushes him to death. The ogre gets skewered on the monster’s spiked tail and they both roll off the edge of the horizon like a monster-ogre kebab. Your travertine god turns back to you, flashes a smile—his teeth are gold for some unlikely reason—he winks and adjusts his nose before leaping into the sky.

You wake from your dream, decide that things have gotten out of hand, and descend into the breakfast room. You have no intention of going away with Basil, so it doesn’t matter if you’re late. There’s no such thing as ‘late’ on vacation anyway! Choose ‘A’.

You wake from your dream and realize you are in this thing nose-deep. The least you can do is be semi-clean for your spree on Princes Street—you’d better hop in the shower and get going! Choose ‘B’.