The Last Letters of Francis Leopold (A Prisoner) - Letter Three

6th March

My dear reader, I am almost tempted to call you friend as I have almost no one else to call so anymore, save dear sweet Marcey.

I humbly beg your patience once more, in my distraction while writing my last letter I utterly failed to mention the last of my family.

My elder brother, you may recall is a partner in my father’s law firm, yet I -when listing the members of my family did not list brother Bartholomew. I am not partial to him these days, and he always seemed to have a dislike for me. I shall not dwell on him longer than necessary.

Now as you may recall, before my disastrous tangent enlightening you to the relevant parties in my family I was explaining the events at the market in regard to that now almost mythical apple of which I spoke to you.

Marcey and I were, as I said, enjoying the market and all its exotic wares and colourful participants. Following our father’s strict regulations for market browsing and purchasing, when we bumped into an old school chum of mine, Percy.

He, as was customary amongst my friends, called out to me, “Tarquin old boy, how the dickens are you!” and after some time spent with pleasantries and how-to-dos the topic turned to the business venture that Percy and I were undertaking at the time. “You must see it, Tarquin! It’s a thing of beauty. Quick, follow me!” He cried to me and was off like a shot. Marcey and I followed him at speed, then we came to it, and Percy was right. It was simply magnificent.

The sign read it bright gold lettering carved into a green painted wood sign,

TARQUIN’S TREASURE TROVE

-Oh! But again, and again my friend, I leave you with only partial information, earlier I mentioned the business venture I was undertaking. To explain, I must, I think, first tell you the story of the name ‘Tarquin’ bestowed to me from Percy and my other friends. Which if memory serves, I did promise to tell you and once supposes that now is the time for that very story.

Now it actually is a story that takes place back in my schooling years. I was in the final years of my education and talk was beginning to become more and more about what we would do after we left school. This of course was when mother was still with us, and I did not have as many duties in the house, looking after little Marcey who was eleven at the time.

All my friends had plans to go into their family businesses. Some planned to become doctors like their father, others bankers, and some like myself whose fathers were lawyers. Such as Godfrey Lockehart, whose father was in business with mine.

I never felt any great passion for the field of law, and always wanted to be an explorer or archaeologist so I can travel to far reaches of the earth and find lost treasures to bring back for the world to see.

This in part is how the name ‘Tarquin’ developed, there was a series of short adventure stories a few of us used to read in our younger days, The Adventures of Rathskeller Forke, you may recall them.

Well the sidekick was named ‘Tarquin Warburton’ he was always getting lost, and setting off booby-traps which the hero, Rathskeller Forke, would have to solve or fix. Eventually my friends all grew out of this phase of adventure stories and dreams of adventures. I did not, and somewhat foolishly said as much to my friends as we discussed future vocations, “I’m going to be an adventurer, uncovering lost treasures, just like Rathskeller Forke’ I explained to my friends, who all just laughed and one of them-

I think it might have actually been Percy come to think of it-

“You? You’re too clumsy for that, it’d be more like Tarquin… What's his last name?” He said and that was basically that, from then on it became a running joke to refer to me as Tarquin - the boy that wanted to be an adventurer but would never be one.

So That is why I was called Tarquin, and why the shop bore the name too, Percy and had the idea a few years ago, after it became clear I wouldn’t be actually finding treasure in real life. We decided to open a store dealing and trading in rare artefacts, maps, coins, and essentially anything someone might consider treasure.

I had no clue the shop was ready to open, but there in front of me was the sign… TARQUIN’S TREASURE TROVE. Alas, as will certainly become clear my friend is that I never got to see the inside of the shop, as it was on the return through the market after seeing the shop complete, that I knocked over that damn (pardon my language, but it riles me so much when I think of it) apple!

By this point, you may have preempted by coming apology, as you may have noted for yourself, the page is coming to an abrupt end, so my story must wait for the next letter writing chance I have. Apologies once more dear reader.

Yours, Tarquin …(blast now I’m doing it)

-Francis