Most of England had been transformed into a winter fairyland that year, and Coltrane House, a magnificent estate located in Lincolnshire, resembled a Christmas package wrapped up in new-fallen snow.

Deer slept safely, hidden in thickets beneath tree branches heavy with snow. Foxes trod nimbly across the moonlit fields, following rabbit tracks as they hunted out a midnight snack.

In the nearby village, the cottagers had hours earlier banked their fires and were tucked up in their beds, their children asleep in the lofts, dreaming their childhood dreams.

Only Coltrane House itself, in the very center of the large estate, was still awake. Light spilled from nearly every window on the first two floors of the house, and the sound of people at play filtered out into the otherwise quiet night.

A fox that had dared the deep ditch of the ha-ha and found a way through a broken piece of the submerged fence at the bottom of that ditch warily approached the house. Perhaps it had been intrigued by the light, or even drawn to the house by the sound of laughter. But the uninvited guest didn't linger. The sound of a single gunshot split the night and the fox was on its way again, its stubby legs flying across the snow.

The fox need not have worried. The gunshot had come from inside the Main Saloon and the target had been a crystal vase once belonging to August Coltrane's deceased and unlamented wife.

There followed a loud male curse, the crack of another shot, and finally the sound of shattering glass.

August Coltrane threw back his head and laughed aloud. "God's teeth! Two shots, Grimey? Losing your touch, man, losing your touch."

"Devil take you, Coltrane," Lord Geoffrey Grimes responded, picking up yet another pistol from the generous collection of weapons on the table beside him. He waved it about wildly even as he squinted at the partygoers littering the Main Saloon. Two dozen men and their painted women cursed or squealed, then quickly dropped to the floor or scurried to duck behind any conveniently located bit of furniture.

"Cowards all," Lord Grimes scolded, then slumped in his chair. And belched.

His companion of the moment sighed, stuffed her bosoms back inside her gown, and took the pistol from him. "I'm supposin', my lord Grimey--" she began facetiously, sliding from his lap and slapping his hands away as he tried to reach up under her gown. "Like I said, I'm supposin', my lord Grimey, that you're past havin' any use for me this evenin'. Drunken sot," she grumbled as she flounced off, giving a wide smile to Baron Buckley, who was still lying supine on the floor, his trousers at his knees, his most prized possession exposed and -- gunshots or no -- still at the ready. "Ooou, ducks, that'd be a lovely thing," the woman said, dropping down beside him. "You wouldn't be mindin' little Lotte havin' a bit of that, now would you?"

The baron was more than willing to be generous, but his female companion took immediate exception. Within moments, the two women were rolling about on the floor, their hands ripping at each other's hair and clothing. Several gentlemen came out of hiding and began laying bets on the winner.

August Coltrane retook his seat on one of the couches after prudently picking up a pistol for himself, smiling as he surveyed the scene unfolding in front of him. He was having a good night, if he didn't end by having to wing Grimey in order to get the fellow to behave.

August Coltrane had been an extremely handsome man in his youth, which was now behind him as forty stared him hard in his heavy-lidded, bloodshot eyes. But if his youth had been misspent, he had every intention of making sure his autumn years would make his youthful exploits pale in comparison.

He gambled high. He drank in low places. He bedded every woman who'd have him, and some who wouldn't. He didn't give a snap for his country, his king, or even his ancestral home. Just as long as the money kept rolling in. Just as long as he could pretend he'd live forever.

And he told himself, over and over again, that he was a happy man.

Let others have their boring Christmas house parties, with caroling and hot cider and hard church pews in the morning. He knew how to make Christmas merry, by damn. "Twenty pounds on the redhead!" he called out loudly, crossing his booted ankles on the table in front of him, then lifted a bottle to his mouth and drank deeply.

"Bah! The devil with women, Coltrane," Lord Grimes shouted above the raucous jumble of noise and laughter, "and the devil with you. You promised us real entertainment tonight. Those two Irishers, remember? They were here a minute ago. Where in blazes did they go? The thespians, Coltrane? Where are they? Get 'em up here, Coltrane, make 'em speak. Don't need them both neither, just the fat one." He picked up the pistol once more. "I'd get him in one shot, damme if I couldn't."

Cluny and Clancy, of Cluny and Clancy Traveling Shakespearean Players fame (or infamy), heard Lord Grimes's boast as they cowered together behind a chair.

"Are you hearing this, Clancy?" the short, pudgy one asked even as he tried, unsuccessfully, to suck in his prodigious belly. "We came here to perform, you said. A week's work of Shakespeare in exchange for a warm bed, a bit of good food, and a fat purse. Happy Christmas to all! And now they're shooting pistols, Clancy, and I'm to be the Christmas goose!"

Clancy disentangled himself from Cluny's painfully tight embrace and, while still hiding behind the chair, attempted to straighten his dark green velvet doublet. "Hedge-born, unmuzzled snipes," he grumbled, peeking around the chair, taking a good look at the assembled guests. Lotte and the redhead rolled by, their bodices ripped, Lotte's teeth locked around the redhead's forearm. "Whoops!" he exclaimed, pulling his head back quickly, then taking a large handkerchief from his sleeve and wiping his damp brow. "Three and forty, I am, Cluny, and not old enough to be seeing the likes of that. Nothing else for it, my boy, we'll just have to stay on our knees and creep away. And don't be telling me who got us here, because I won't be hearing it, you understand?"

Cluny nodded, for he did understand. It was lowering, that's what it was, to be reduced to wasting their great talents on drunks and doxies. But so was starving in a gutter. Cluny and Clancy Shakespearean Players had been four months without a paying engagement when August Coltrane had approached them in London two weeks earlier. He'd tossed them a purse, and commanded that they adjourn to Lincolnshire. Clancy had agreed to entertain at Coltrane's Christmas house party because anything was preferable to sleeping under a blanket of snow.

They didn't belong here. They belonged on the London stage, that's where they belonged. But it didn't seem destined to be. Instead, and for the past quarter century, they'd traveled England and Ireland in their wagon, the last ten years with their dear mule, Portia, in the traces. They'd driven from village to village, performing the Bard's immortal words for farmers and shopkeepers, sleeping in their wagon, and dreaming of one day treading the boards in London.

Coltrane House was a long way from London, and although they had dodged enough thrown fruit in the past to provide them with many a meal as they raced out of town, nobody had ever before taken a shot at them. It was enough to make a man reconsider his line of work, it was. Cluny was going to have a talk with Clancy about that very thing -- if they made it out of the Main Saloon alive.

"It's a big house, Cluny," Clancy whispered to him. "We'll hide in one of the rooms until morning. Everything looks better in the morning, my sainted mother used to say. Now, follow me."

Cluny watched as Clancy, all long limbs and skinny shanks, got to his knees and began crawling toward the doors leading, he believed, to the formal dining room. His head all but butting into Clancy's skinny backside, Cluny did his best to "tiptoe" on his knees, his eyes squeezed shut as he held on to Clancy's ankles.

And they almost made it. In fact, Clancy already had his hand on the handle of the door to the dining room when August Coltrane spotted them and put a bullet into the door an inch above the handle.

"There you go, Grimey," Coltrane said genially as Clancy once more found himself enfolded by a shivering, quivering Cluny. "Never say I don't give my guests what they want. You -- Irishers -- get up on the stage and start emoting. Give us something to make our hearts sing. Unless you think you can sing for us?"

Clancy had to all but peel Cluny from him before he stood up, lifted his pointed chin, and glared at August Coltrane. "We are Shakespearean players, sir. We do not sing."

Cluny opened his eyes at last and looked across the room at August Coltrane. Their employer was a tall man, a devil-dark man, with black eyes that could pierce an iron pot at ten paces. "I sing a little, Clancy," he offered nervously.

"We do As You Like It tonight, Cluny," Clancy said firmly. "One small speech should do it, before they forget us again. Now, follow me, and we'll get this over with, then find us a chicken leg or two and a warm bed."

The next thing Cluny knew, he was standing on the small, makeshift stage in front of the fireplace. Clancy was bowing to the audience, telling them that his partner was about to delight them with Shakespeare's seven ages of man.

Seven? Cluny all but swallowed his tongue. Couldn't he just do four, then take his bow and run away? "I -- I can't, Clancy. I just can't."

"Cluny, old friend, think," Clancy whispered in his ear. "What would the Bard do?"

"Take to his heels like a rabbit?" Cluny suggested, then winced as Clancy gave him a clip on the back of the head that sent him staggering forward to the edge of the stage.

He looked out over his audience and winced again. The "ladies" had stopped fighting, and were now sprawled on the floor just in front of the stage, their clothing hanging from them in tatters as they made lewd, suggestive gestures at him. The lordship called Grimey was holding a bowl of oranges in his lap, and looking very much like he desired nothing better than a reason to toss them at the stage. The rest of the audience was not an audience at all, but seemed to be putting on a show of their own -- one that had a lot to do with bare buttocks and giggling women pretending the men were stallions and they were out for a lively ride.

And August Coltrane, the man with the dead black eyes, was sitting on the couch, a bottle in one hand, a pistol in the other. A pistol pointed straight at Cluny's head.

Cluny gulped, took a step back, and felt Clancy's hand grabbing onto his burgundy-velvet doublet. "Now, Cluny," his partner pleaded. "From your belly, Cluny -- emote!"

" 'All... um... all the world's a... a stage,' " Cluny began, realizing he had somehow lost all the spit in his mouth. Lord Grimes picked up one of the oranges, hefted it in his hand. A bullet in the brain might kill him quickly and cleanly, Cluny decided, but pelted oranges hurt. He found his voice. " 'All the world's a stage!' " he repeated quickly, " 'and all the men and women merely players; they have their exits and their entrances--'"

"Can you hear him, Coltrane?" Lord Grimes asked, then launched an orange toward the stage. "I bloody can't hear him. Speak up, man!"

"Oh God and all Your saints preserve me, and I'll never do anything bad again," Cluny whimpered, as Clancy stepped forward and deftly snagged the orange out of the air, took a bow. It was then that Cluny remembered who he was. He was Cluny, of Cluny and Clancy Shakespearean Players, by God, and he and Clancy had a show to put on!

He breathed in deeply, drew himself up to his full, unimposing height. He spread his pudgy, mended hose-clad legs wide, clapped his hands to his pear-shaped belly, and began again, his voice loud, clear, and carrying to the very ceiling. " 'And one man in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages. At first the infant, mewling and puking in the nurse's arms...' "

August Coltrane put down his pistol in order to take hold of the redhead, who had decided to help him out of his breeches. Lotte, not to be outdone, sidled up to Lord Grimes once more, her hands on her hips, loudly asking him if he'd rather be watching a play or playing himself.

"Right!" Lord Grimes said, pulling her down on his lap. "Here, grab some of these," he said, holding out the bowl of oranges. "You take the fat one, and I'll get the skinny-shanks one with the parrot nose."

"Take your bow now, Cluny," Clancy whispered as an orange whizzed past, to smash against the fireplace behind them. "Take your bow and exit, stage left. I'm close behind you."

Cluny needed no additional prompting. He scuttled fast as he could toward the doorway leading to the formal dining room, Clancy close on his heels.

He stopped just at the open door, screwed up his courage one last time, and struck a pose. " 'Sweep on, you fat and greedy citizens!' " he proclaimed loudly before hastily and prudently backing through the doorway.

"Now where, Clancy?" he asked breathlessly, pressing his back against the quickly closed door. "I don't think I can outrun them, if they mean to be nasty."

Clancy shook his head. "They're too drunk to chase us, and much too interested in their women to remember us beyond our leave-taking. Come on, Cluny. It's as I said we'd do. We'll raid the kitchens for a late supper, then find someplace safe to eat. We can finish our performance another time, if ever they remember we're still in residence."

Cluny sighed, then followed after his partner, complaining all the way. "We should leave right now," he pronounced as they rummaged, unimpeded, through the larders. The skeleton staff of servants had all gone to ground, hiding themselves from the mayhem breaking loose all over the house. "Leave, exit, run away, whatever you want to call it."

"We can't leave yet," Clancy informed him as they climbed the servant stairs. "They haven't paid us the majority of what we're owed yet, remember? On our own, we don't even have enough blunt to feed poor Portia beyond another day. She's a dear enough thing, but she won't agree to pull the wagon an inch without her daily measure of oats."

"We'll apply to that young Sherlock fellow in the morning," Cluny suggested, then sighed as Clancy headed up another narrow flight of stairs, to the topmost floor. "He's Coltrane's solicitor or man of business or whatever, right?" he questioned, huffing and puffing as he followed along. "He can pay us, and then we can move on. South, I'd say. Back to London. We can always find a friend and a bed in London."

"It's the week we promised, and the week we have to play," Clancy declared, as they came to the hallway at the top of the stairs. "I have my scruples, I do, even if our audience is none but a bunch of roynish, motley-minded snipes. Besides, there must be a foot of snow out there, if you haven't looked. Now come on, it's quiet enough up here. Let's find us a dark room and have our feast."

Clancy stepped off down the hallway and Cluny followed. It was his lot in life, to follow Clancy. Mostly, he didn't mind, as Clancy was ever so smart. Except that it had been Clancy who'd accepted the invitation to perform at Coltrane House. That hadn't been so smart, now had it?

"We'll go in here," Clancy announced a moment later, already pushing open a door to their right and stepping inside before Cluny could point out the faint light spilling from beneath the door. Someone else might already be inside. Someone who might not appreciate visitors.