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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CHAPTER 12
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CHAPTER 12
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