Essex Dogs


 
 
 
 Also by Dan Jones
 
 Summer of Blood: England’s First Revolution
 The Plantagenets: The Warrior Kings and Queens Who Made England
 The Wars of the Roses: The Fall of the Plantagenets and the Rise of the Tudors
 Magna Carta: The Birth of Liberty
 The Templars: The Rise and Spectacular Fall of God’s Holy Warriors
 Crusaders: The Epic History of the Wars for the Holy Lands
 Powers and Thrones: A New History of the Middle Ages
 
 The Essex Dogs Trilogy
 
 Essex Dogs
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 VIKING
 An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
 penguinrandomhouse.com
 First published in hardcover in Great Britain by Aries, an imprint of Head of Zeus Ltd., a part of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, London, in 2022
 First United States edition published by Viking, 2023
 Copyright © 2022 by Dan Jones
 Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.
 Map design by Jamie Whyte
 Cover design: Holly Ovenden
 Cover images: (wolf emblem) Ricky Saputra / Getty Images
 Adapted for ebook by Molly Jeszke
 library of congress cataloging-in-publication data
 Names: Jones, Dan, 1981– author.
 Title: Essex dogs / Dan Jones.
 Description: First United States edition. | [New York] : Viking, 2023. | Series: The Essex dogs trilogy
 Identifiers: LCCN 2022054874 (print) | LCCN 2022054875 (ebook) | ISBN 9780593653784 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780593511756 (ebook)
 Subjects: LCSH: Hundred Years' War, 1339–1453—Campaigns—France—Fiction. | LCGFT: War fiction. | Historical fiction. | Novels.
 Classification: LCC PS3610.O6229 E87 2023 (print) | LCC PS3610.O6229 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23/eng/20221209
 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022054874
 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022054875
 This book is a work of fiction. Apart from the historical figures, any resemblance between fictional characters created by the author and actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
 pid_prh_6.0_142459014_c0_r0
 
 
 
 For Violet
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 . . . and nothing was left unburnt.
 The Chronicle of Geoffrey le Baker
 
 
 
 PART 1
 WATER
 12–19 July 1346
 
 
 1
 
 This is to let you know that on 12 July we landed safely at a port in Normandy called La Hougue, near Barfleur . . . many men at arms at once landed . . . On a number of occasions our handful of men defeated large numbers of the enemy . . .
 Letter from the chancellor of St Paul’s to friends in London
 
 ‘Christ’s bones, wake up!’
 ‘Loveday’ FitzTalbot jerked his head up. Father had dug him in the ribs with a sharp elbow. Despite the cold saltwater spray that whipped his face, the rocking of the landing craft had lulled him into a moment of sleep.
 He had dreamed he was at home.
 But now his eyes were open again, he saw that he was not. They were still here. Out at sea. As far from home as they had ever been. Getting further from it every second.
 There were ten of them crammed into the little pinnace: himself at the steerboard, Millstone, Scotsman and Pismire further forwards, the priest they called Father beside him at the stern and the archers Tebbe, Romford and Thorp in between them.
 Two more archers, Welsh brothers who had been added to the company on the eve of their departure from Portsmouth aboard the cog Saintmarie, were pulling the oars.
 Loveday scanned the horizon. Normandy. France. As far as he could recall, only he and the Scot had ever been out of English waters. And neither of them knew the coast that loomed half a mile distant, darkest grey in the dawn. What was more, their orders aboard the Saintmarie, handed down from Sir Robert le Straunge, were troublingly vague. They had only, Sir Robert had said, to storm up the beach and cut the hairy bollocks off any Frenchman who stood in their way.
 When Loveday had asked what Sir Robert – and the great lords and the king above him – knew as to how many Frenchmen might be minding the beach, with crossbows cocked and lances couched and their bollocks unsevered and hoping to keep them so, Sir Robert had waved airily at him and told him there would be plenty enough to make good sport. He said he had this directly from the Marshal of the Army, Lord Warwick, who had it from King Edward himself.
 Noble men. Knightly men. Men who knew best.
 If I had wanted good sport, thought Loveday, I would have stayed home in Essex, playing dice in the inn near Colchester and paying a penny to lay my head of a night between the thighs of Gilda, the alewife’s girl.
 But he had held his peace with Sir Robert. The man was a fool, but he was the fool who had recruited them for this campaign. Who would pay their wages for the next forty days. The Dogs hired their sword- and bow-arms to anyone who paid – in any sort of activity where brute force and sharp steel were needed. That summer the business was war. Sir Robert’s recruiting agents had promised he was a man who paid on time, and who did not interfere too much. Long experience told Loveday other paymasters were not so easy-going.
 So here was he: forty-three summers old, still fit and strong, but grey at his temples, with fat settling around his middle and age creeping into his bones. And here was his company: the Essex Dogs, men called them. Some of them being from Essex. All of them having sharp teeth. Packed into a tiny pinnace, heading towards a French beach at dawn.