CHAPTER 11.THE TREATY OF TOURS

CHAPTER 11: THE TREATY OF TOURS

Copyright: Thomas Hoskyns Leonard, Edinburgh, October 2017

                                                                                                

During early April 1444, the energetic René, Count of Provence took less than a week to ride to the City of Tours with a party of knights and courtiers. Duncan Le Cottier and Bagoas de Frêne accompanied him in their sparkling new finery on black steeds from the Asturias, either side of Sir Peregrine Flynn on his mighty war-horse Lucephalus.

The party from Marseilles stayed in a four-storey town-house on the Place Plumereau, a bustling square just south of the Loire. They were jam-packed to the walls and the sanitary arrangements were not at all satisfactory. Bagoas had to rush down to the flower garden behind the house, from his eight-person bed in the attic, whenever he needed to relieve himself in the night. But the deep, glossy leaves of the acanthus mollis plants proved to be highly convenient in all sorts of ways.

The town-house was a short ride from the Château de Tours, a seat of power where the French embassy congregated during the secret peace negotiations (which were rumoured to really be taking place in a well-guarded marquee on Île Aucard in the middle of the Loire where few outsiders could hear the secretive whisperings). Many of the French delegates also met late each evening in the Clovis et Clotilde Inn to mull over the ongoing state of affairs, and Duncan and Bagoas were made party to these intimate discussions.

One evening, Duncan and Bagoas were chewing the rag with two churlish knights from Toulon, when red-faced René, Count of Provence came bumbling into the inn, his formidable eyebrows all awry, with Sir Peregrine Flynn, who was close to shedding buckets of tears. They were both in a drunken state.

“The penny-pinching English have demanded a dowry of twenty-thousand livres,” wailed the miserly count. “My dear Margaret's captivating beauty should surely be enough. Who would really want to share a bed with that half-formed Plantagenet numbskull?”

“How outrageous!” exclaimed Duncan, while Bagoas quietly sniggered to himself. “Perchance His Highness the Dauphin will see fit to make a contribution to your purse.”

“Prince Louis's in deep doo-doo with his royal father for stirring up trouble again, and as short of lucre as almighty me. And I can't possibly sell my vineyard in the Algarve or my chalet in the Alps. They're trying to drive me to penury, that's what they're doing to me.”

“But the English desperately need peace,” explained Duncan, “because the economic situation is far worse in the regions they control than in the prosperous South of France. I'm sure that you will still persuade them to agree to this wise marriage pact.”

“But the craven monkey, William, Earl of Suffolk deserves to have his pole stuck up his nose!” fumed the much irritated count. “Jackanapes had the effrontery to imply that sweet Margaret and I are of inferior royal stock because we are only related to the King of France by marriage. Which ugly changelings spawned that jackass, I wonder?”

“Poppycock!” retorted Duncan, smacking the back of his front teeth with his tongue. “Your Margaret's the granddaughter of Charles the Bold of Lorraine, Queen Yolande of the Four Kingdoms, and King Louis of Naples.”

“Margaret follows after Yolande my magnificent mother of Aragon,” hissed Count René, through his teeth, “who was only matched by Jeanne of Domrèmy for her courageous virtues.”

Duncan raised his eyebrows in mock disbelief. “To match that, Henry's grandfathers were the despot Henry Bolingbroke and our dear King Charles's brain-shattered Papa. Stoic Margaret's sons promise to be much more full of sense than either of those witless rampallians.”

“I'll find a way of exacting my revenge, I indubitably will,” raged Count René. “I am an unscrupulous man.”

Out of his own mouth! enthused Duncan. But let's see if I can devise another trick.

“One way of taking revenge, Your Grace,” he replied, “would be to demand the return by the English of your lands in Anjou, in return for a treaty of everlasting peace.”

“A brilliant idea!” exclaimed Count René. “You are as scrupulous a man as myself, Duncan Cotter.”

“While we're on that topic,” added Sir Peregrine Flynn, sobering up a touch. “You could also demand the return to France of England's domains in Maine from the insufferable defiler of a female Chaucer.”

“Gad's zooks! You've hit the nail in Jackanapes' coffin, noble knight of Scotland!”

“If you want to be as cunning as a fox,” continued Duncan, clearing his nostrils, “you could invite the ponderous de la Pole to enter into a secret agreement to secure peace by ceding Maine and Anjou to France. If he declines then you can anyway say that he agreed to the secret agreement in the first place.”

“By the almighty Archangels of Heaven!” spluttered Count René of Provence, squeezing his pink nozzle. “That seals it! You are a man of our age, Duncan Cotter.”

Duncan and Bagoas took several boat rides to Île Simon on the Loire during the following few weeks, to savour the wine and court the sweet ladies of Tours. On one notable occasion, Bagoas craftily touched Duncan's thigh under the pussy willow tree. Duncan turned abruptly around and gave Bagoas a luscious kiss on his lips.

“When will they finally bury their war axes?” asked Bagoas, while he was reclining on the bank by the river with his toes dipped in the water.

“When they've all extracted their dues,” replied Duncan, stroking Bagoas's fair neck.

Thereupon, they saw William de la Pole himself, walking sheepishly across Île Simon. He was in his mid-forties, keenly built with a sallow, cat-like face. He, as always, wore his heraldic badge, which consisted of an ape's clog, on his cloak.

Two green-hooded monks in white robes, who Duncan took to be French agents, sidled up to the English earl and gave him three small but heavy, hemp bags, which Jackanapes promptly attached to the belt hidden around his waist.

Thereby slips the gold, deliberated Duncan. I wonder who afforded that?

Duncan learnt within a few days that the delegations representing England, France and Burgundy had confirmed the marriage pact between Henry Plantagenet of England and Margaret of Anjou, without the requirement of a dowry. He was, however, surprised that a truce of only twenty-one months duration had been arranged. The peace treaty was signed and sealed on 22nd May 1444, and Henry and Margaret were formally betrothed by William de Pole in Tours, without an iota of further shilly-shallying, two days later.

What a weird match! lamented Duncan Le Cottier. The slick princess will wear the trousers and beat the yellow-livered stock-fish topsy-turvy around the bed.

De la Pole claimed, during a later argy bargy, that he had not secretly agreed during the peace negotiations to the return of Anjou and Maine to France. But the French hotly disputed this.

“This creates the potential for all sorts of trouble during the years to come,” said Sir Peregrine Flynn, sipping his claret.

“Maybe it will rid us of the God-cursed English for good,” whispered the crafty count, with a gleam in his eye.

Duncan imagined a cauldron in England wherein Henry's royal dukes were struggling to keep afloat in the sizzling soup. He wondered how much the deceitful count had stirred the red-hot cauldron into future turmoil with his political machinations and his bland exploitation of his turbulent daughter Margaret of Anjou.

Duncan had of course been glad to assist Count René in his unscrupulous endeavours. Duncan was, when all's said and done, the erstwhile Richard de Liddell, Knight of the Sacred Orb of Jerusalem and proud defender of the Scots.

When they returned to Marseilles, Duncan and Bagoas were sent straight back to their barracks, and their courtier's robes thrown into a wardrobe in the duke's palace. Duncan was most disappointed at this outcome. He felt that the skinflint of a duke could have rewarded him better for the wise counselling which had helped to secure the peace for France and England.

Meanwhile, Margaret of Anjou was sent, raving like a spoilt delinquent, to be kept under lock and key in the Castle Angers in the Loire Valley, to protect her fine virtues until the arrangements for her royal wedding could be finalised. Over the following few months she began to lose her teenage ungainliness and to turn into an attractive-looking woman.

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