Turpin's Gold

By H. Kitchener

Turpins Gold is an action adventure story with a touch of a historical novel. You will be treated to an exciting tale of today and an experience of an absorbing time past that will enchant young and old.

Our story follows the life of Adam Stone as he moves from London to York in the hope of a new life but his life is about to take a dramatic turn that will lead him on a quest when he finds an old book that entangles his life with the highwayman Richard Turpin.

Following Adam as he unravels the clues left by Turpin four centuries ago on this fantastic non stop journey that will lead him to breaking in to No10 Downing Street to discover the secret of alchemy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Aug 23, 2007
• ISBN: 9781467011150

H. Kitchener

Presently I am 38 years old and work for a company called Martin-Baker as part of a team building ejector seats for most types of fighter aircraft around the world. I have been married for 15 years to Paula and have one daughter Rebecca. I have written three books so far and am currently working on a sequel to my first book. I enjoy researching and laying out story lines then bring characters to life as they follow the path I have laid out.

Book preview

The Battle of Gaugamela

In October 331 BC the Persian King Darius III and his army, which was some forty thousand men stronger than the advancing army of Alexander, was forced into battle. The advancing army moved towards Darius’s force at a forty five degree angle driving a human wedge through it and splitting it in two. Alexander King of Macedonia led the advance sitting high on his black horse and as the attack reached the weakened Persian centre, Darius’s royal guard and the Greek mercenaries were killed. This left the left flank of Darius’s army, led by Bessus, cut off and fearing he would be attacked by the wedge he pulled back his forces, which soon fell into disorder, broke and ran. Alexander received a wound to his thigh and was unable to catch the Persian king, who in his rush to escape had to leave behind his golden chariot and bow. When Alexander returned to the battle field having given chase and lost sight of the Persian king, he inspected his troops before getting his wounds treated.

Following the battle the Persian city of Babylon surrendered and Alexander named himself Alexander King of Kings. He rested in the palace of Nebuchadnezzar, where he ordered that none of the homes of the city’s inhabitants where to be entered. The citizens of Babylon where well advanced in Medicine, Chemistry, Alchemy, Botany, Zoology and Mathematics. Their writings where in cuneiform symbols and were written on wet clay tablets which were subsequently baked in the sun until hard. Alexander had been taught by Aristotle as a child and understood these writings which he found of great interest. He ordered that certain tablets be translated into Greek and written on scrolls. Most of these scrolls were then sent back to Macedonia, but one he had sent to his old teacher Aristotle.

CHAPTER 1

30th October 1999

Adam Stone was glad to be leaving London behind him. The past six months had been hard on him and had pushed him to his limits. But even at this low point he managed to turn it around and find a new life in a new town unaware of where it was going to take him. He had always been a law abiding person but little did he know that within the next few months he would be a key person in a plan to break into No.10 Downing Street, London.

6th June 1998

Adam was thirty five years old, with light brown hair which he kept quite short. A weekly visit to the gym kept him in shape, although he was no real athlete, just an ordinary bloke who thought he had everything, including a loving wife Leigh who had met at infant school. Leigh had been brought up by her mother’s sister, after both her parents were killed in a car crash when she was five years old. It had been only her parent’s second time out together since she was born and it was to be trip they would never return from.

Leigh was three months older than Adam, a fact he pointed out to her at every opportunity, often referring to her as the old woman to friends. At five foot eight and weighing around eight and a half stone with long blonde hair, old was not the word to describe her. She always had a small crowd of followers when she went out. Adam’s mates would tease him that if they had a girl that looked as good as Leigh did they wouldn’t let her out of their sight. This would make him laugh. They had been together for so long, from geeky ugly kids with zits and braces and bad hair styles, through the eighties and even a punkish era in the nineties. They would listen to the Sex Pistols, the Damned and Stiff Little Fingers, then mellow out through college. They both trained at Westminster College in the Catering Department, where Adam had excelled as a chef coming top of his class in every subject, except business management which was Leigh’s forte. Because they had grown up together they were inseparable from each other. Leigh’s best friend Tuppance had once tried to get her to see someone else, but Leigh thought this was because her friend went through boyfriends like they were fashion accessories. New outfit, new hand bag, new man in that order. Leigh knew Tuppance secretly liked Adam by the way she would flirt with him when she was not around. That was until Adam introduced her to Dennis. It was like a light switch being flipped and Tuppance was off the market.

Adam and Dennis worked for a catering company which ran restaurants in over twenty large companies, including many government locations in London. Adam had made his way up to be a general manager and he would travel from place to place checking on the restaurants run by the company or some times he would cover while other managers where on holiday. Leigh on the other hand, after leaving catering school, turned her back on cooking and was climbing slowly up a corporate ladder of a food distribution company. That was until Leigh’s aunt died three months after their wedding, making her sole beneficiary of her aunt’s will. Leigh had only once called her aunt ‘mum’, one Christmas when she was nine. Although honored by this her aunt wanted to stay auntie to her. Later Leigh believed she had said this out of respect to her mother and partly because she had never married or had children of her own.

Leigh took her death badly. Her aunt had recently been diagnosed with cancer and died within the month. Leigh still hadn’t even come to terms with the fact she had cancer and then she was gone. Adam took a month off work to help her through it.

It was during this time they hit upon the idea of starting up a small business together. Almost ten months to the day after her aunt’s funeral, the doors opened at their small restaurant in a prime location in Richmond upon Thames called ‘Aunties Place’. Although it was not that close to the river it had a good clientele and a good passing trade. It was a small cottage property with a dozen or so pine tables and chairs. The walls were plain, except a few paintings of plants that had been done by local students who painted at Kew Gardens. The paintings were all for sale, with a small cut going to the restaurant. This was not a great earner, but the place soon became a meeting point for the artists. This proved to be more profitable, because the students drank coffee by the bucket and ate sandwiches and other hot meals, usually those on the cheaper specials board that was chalked up on the wall. Outside the restaurant window were three small tables and chairs for use on summer days. Leigh would often stand chatting to the students for ages while Adam cooked in the kitchen. She knew them each by name and remembered what they would be doing at the weekend or which exams they were taking. Adam would tease her about two of the male art students who he believed only came in to see and chat to her. She had once posed for a portrait for one of the female art students, who had painted her standing outside the front of the restaurant. The painting hung in the middle of one wall surrounded by the other works of art. She had been asked if she was interested in doing any nude modeling by a few of the more forward guys. She would just smile at them and say maybe when you’re famous.

That was until that day on the 24th May when Leigh had left early to buy some food from a local wholesalers. A white van overshot a set of traffic lights and ploughed straight into the side of the old VW Polo that she was driving. The impact to her car pushed it sideways some fifteen feet until it came to a crushing stop as it slammed into a brick wall with the noise of a cannon blast. People came running from all directions to help, but Leigh was unconscious, her head lay across the steering wheel blood running down her cheek. The van driver stumbled from his van to the pavement saying he didn’t see her. Two police cars soon came spinning round the corner with their sirens going, while two workmen from the building site opposite were trying to pull open the door of Leigh’s car, but it had been crushed sealing it closed. A minute after the police arrived, the fire brigade joined the scene. While the fire brigade fought to free her from the car, a paramedic had climbed in through the smashed window screen. He sat with her under a blanket, while the firemen where cutting the roof away with the hydraulic cutters known as the ‘jaws of life’. They tried desperately to remove the roof as fast as they could but Leigh died in the car from internal injuries.

The first Adam knew of the accident was when the little bell on the restaurant door rang as two policemen entered.

We don’t open till eleven mate.

Mr. Stone, Adam Stone, said one of the PC’s.

Yes that’s me. Is there a problem officer?

I’m sorry to tell you Sir that at 9:30 this morning your wife was involved in a road traffic incident.

Adam staggered backwards and slumped into one of the pine chairs, running his hand through his hair an empty feeling in his stomach which made him feel instantly sick. His eyes started to water and he felt so hot. When he spoke his voice was weak and with a quiver he asked, Is she dead.

I’m sorry Sir. I’m told she died instantly.

He wanted to scream. He wanted to punch out but all he could do was sit there and stare at them. He had always thought that when this type of news was given the first reaction would be denial, but this was not so. In fact it was actually the complete opposite. He understood in a second that she was dead. He could never speak or see her again and this hit him like a steam train, with the realism of the situation settling in and the long road of grief beginning.

The next few months passed by in a blur. The restaurant stayed shut and Adam locked himself away in the house where they had lived. Her clothes still hung in the cupboard, her tooth brush still stood in the glass by the sink in the bathroom. Below them was a shelf full of her shampoo, conditioners and a pink shaver that she used on her long legs. He now had no one as his own parents had both died some two years earlier.

Although he had lots of friends who dropped by, he had changed. He felt as though he wanted to die, there was nothing to live for any more. He sat in the house day after day watching daytime TV to the point where he had seen every house improvement program twice. Leigh’s best friend Tuppance and her husband Dennis kept calling, but after the first few times he started to become very aggressive towards them on the ‘phone. He knew that without them both he would never have been able to make it through the funeral and its arrangements, but now all he felt was anger. Leigh had been spared from the car crash that killed her parents, only to be killed the same way years later.

Dennis and Tuppance were always trying to come round or were inviting him out, as he had not been out since the funeral. Dennis was an old college mate of Adams, who Leigh and Adam had introduced to Tuppance. They fell for one another and married three weeks after Adam and Leigh, barely giving them time to return from their own honeymoon in Switzerland.

Dennis turned up at the house now and again, but the door stayed locked. Adam would yell at him to go away and leave him alone. Adam’s hair had grown long and with his unshaven face he was almost unrecognizable as the man who rushed round the restaurant always joking with the students and commiserating with the older clientele, who would relay their aches and pains to anyone prepared to stop and listen. He had piles of letters from the students that Leigh used to chat to on an almost daily basis. Many of the students had turned up at the funeral, although Adam didn’t acknowledge them at the time. Tuppance and Dennis had later told him they were there.

One day he was watching a program on TV where a man sold everything he owned in order to move to the country to start a new life. This stuck in his mind and he thought about it for several days. Seeing it again on a re-run he thought he needed to do something. Two days later he had the house and business up for sale. He knew he was never going to be a country bumpkin, so he picked up his map book and thumbed through the pages until a page fell open with York shown in the middle of it.

August brought a great opportunity to buy an old listed terraced house, which was a slightly run down, located in Beverley, near York. With the sale of the house and restaurant he would be able to buy the Beverley property without getting a mortgage. It even left him some money in the bank to enable him to carry out the necessary repairs and decoration. Without telling anyone, he sold up and left London planning never to return.

CHAPTER 2

16th April 1660

In Killyleagh in County Down, Ireland a baby was born whom history would know as Sir Hans Sloane. As a child he would spend hours collecting objects of natural history, becoming a keen observer of nature, which would lead him to study medicine.

After a spell of sickness as a teenager, he moved to London in 1679 to study chemistry at the Apothecaries Hall, still pursuing his true passion for botany in his garden at Chelsea. During his training he became friends with celebrated botanists John Ray and Robert Boyle.

After five years he moved to France to study anatomy and medicine at the University of Orange. His addiction to collecting continued as he traveled in France, where he met Joseph Piton de Tournefort and Monsignor Magnol. Both had a passion for seeking new plants and animals to name, which Sloane found very intriguing. He obtained his M.D. degree and was one of few people in history to receive a masters degree without first getting a bachelor degree.

His passion for collecting and botany came together when as a physician he accompanied the new Governor of Jamaica, the Duke of Albermarle, to the island. The long journey by sea to Jamaica took over three months and he spent around fifteen months on the islands, where he studied the forma and fauna making detailed notes and drawings. By the time he was ready to return to England he had collected over 800 specimens, plus numerous coins and old books, to add to his collection

When back in England he set up a successful medical practice at his home No 3 Bloomsbury Place. Among his clientele were Queen Anne and later George I and II. In 1689 he married Elizabeth Langley, widower of Fulk Rose a wealthy Jamaican planter. This new wealth enabled him to invest in his collection, which now encompassed old manuscripts dating from the 12th to the 14th centuries, covering topics such as astrology, magic and the occult

Sloane would spend hours using his knowledge of botany and science to make secret remedies and other fluxes. One of these was cocoa mixed with milk that was sold by apothecaries as medicine, which he originally concocted whilst in Jamaica. In the nineteenth century it would come to be manufactured by Cadbury as Sir Hans Sloane’s Milk Chocolate.

He started to receive artifacts from his client’s around the world, which included medals, coins, seals and cameos, often as part payment for his services. His collection covered every corner of his home in Bloomsbury, being on display in the eighteen rooms of his manor house. However, some pieces of the collection sat covered in dust because he never got around to looking at or documenting them. After a days work he would find himself inspecting and cataloguing some items before they joined the main collection. It was on one such evening when he was searching between some old paintings that had been rolled up for storage, that he found amongst them two old scrolls that he had been given years earlier, although he could not remember where they came from. The evening was upon him and the oil lamp was flickering giving off a low hissing sound as it burnt. He un-wrapped the old scrolls, which were made from parchment, and to his amazement he found that he held in his hands a scroll in an ancient Greek text.

With a large sweep of his arm he cleared the surface of the desk and various articles fell to the floor around him. The second scroll was also of parchment and written in ancient Greek in a black ink,