Chateau D’If – 2017The 8th ‘Bayko Baron’ Musketeer adventure

• Queen Anne’s Regency is about to end – she fears for the future and has summoned the Four Musketeers

• The gallant four find quarters at the Debarry Inn, from where they can catch a glimpse of their distant objective

• Chateau D’If, once guardian of Marseilles, now guardian of a single prisoner

• Re-supplied only twice a year the fort is completely isolated

• Inside its impregnable walls the prisoner is denied all human contact and trapped in a savage device

• He is known only as – ‘The Man in the Copper Bottomed Underpants’

• An abandoned cask attracts no attention – but merely confirms the musketeers worst fears

• The only ray of hope is that once a day the prisoner is allowed out to take his solitary exercise

• The Musketeers retire to the Debarry Inn to drown their sorrows

• Where they are accosted by Cyrano De Bergerac, failed lover and adventurer. His latest project is a ‘lune boat’ which he has built in the Debarry barn, but the inn-keeper has now taken his clothes for non-

payment before he can train the geese to pull it.

Intrigued despite themselves the four accompany De Bergerac to the barn and find themselves starring at the answer to their prayers

• Thus it is that a few days later the freighter La Jolie bears down on the fortress

A warning shot is fired and the guard ordered out to repel boarders – only to be hustled back in as the true nature of the threat becomes clear

• La Jolie is carrying a cargo of ‘seamstresses’ who have swung by to see if any of the lonely, isolated soldiers need their nightshirts

repaired

• Meanwhile the ‘lune boat’ slides silently down the North Wind

A ladder is lowered and the prisoner clambers aboard

• While beyond the eastern wall…..

• Unseen and unheard the fantastic vessel sails on into the clear blue yonder

• Task accomplished La Jolie also heads for home

• Leaving the garrison commander to discover his loss and launch an enquiry into the parentage of the duty officer