"Click go the shears boys, click, click, click," hummed Jack as he tramped along the winding path. His lips curled into what only charitably described as a smile. Smirk was a much more appropriate term. A fight always got his blood up, better proof against the cold than a fur cloak. Oh he'd be hurting in the morning, but he figured he was doing better than the battered Hun he had left bleeding in the snowbank. With a flutter of his leather coat he hoped over one of the low stone walls and into a pear orchard. In the distance the lights of the manor blazed. He was going to be late but then if they wanted him on time they shouldn't have set the bloody meeting on Boxing Day.

Even without leaves, the closely packed pear trees acted as an impediment to the snow and he made much better time. The owls hooted as he trudged down the row, large duffel swung over his right shoulder. The bag wasn't that heavy, containing only a few changes of clothes and a worn but well cared for lee-enfield rifle. In his life time Jack had won and lost more than one fortunes on goldfields and gaming tables, but he never felt he needed much more than a pair of boots and a hat to keep the sun, or snow, off his head.

"Broad is his stroke and his hands move quick," he muttered as he vaulted another wall to enter the manor grounds proper. Even with its coating of snow the expensive landscaping was obvious. The English were bloody crazy for gardening and manicuring every tree it seemed to him. He circled the big house and passed a potting shed and some other out building, he dimly remembered it being described as a carriage house, to reach a rear door. He knocked firmly on the oaken pannel and swore caustically as his bruised knuckles protested the action. 

It took a minute or two but eventually the door creaked open and a timid looking woman peered out at him, backlit by the light of several electric lamps.

"Jack is that you?" called a lilting irish accent.

"Aye Molly, mind if I come in?" he replied, belatedly sweeping his slouch hat of his head respectfully. The door swung fully open and a plump matronly woman ushered him in. Molly Fisher was in her late thirties. She had been an aurburn haired beauty when she was younger, but years ruling Lord Cornack's kitchen with an iron fist had swathed her in a comfortable layer of fat. Jack tipped her a wink and pinched her rump as he passed, eliciting a decidedly girlish giggle.

"You are impossible!" she giggled before her eyes fully took him in and she grew serious.

"You've been fighting, are you hurt?" she asked, reaching gingerly up to touch the bruise on the side of his face.

"Ah Molly I've gotten worse falling out of bed," he protested.

"You're not drunk are you, Lord Cornack won't be too pleased if..."

"Peace woman, I'm not drunk, no more than usual anyway," he assured her as she led him into a small washroom and sat him down on a bench. She took a basin of cold water and began to wipe the caked blood from his face with a coarse cloth. Head wounds always bled like the devil, even if they didn't do any real damage.

"You had best run and get the Colonel for me Molly, I had a visit from some Germanic friends at the Speckled Hen," Jack told her seriously. He didn't know what interest the strange men had in Cormack's expedition but he had better let the old man know before things went any further.

"I think M'lord is about to attend the gathering in the main hall," Molly explained. Anything Molly said about the workings of the great house could be taken as gospel. She had an almost preternatural knowledge of every detail of her domain as Jack had discovered during previous attempts to penetrate the Colonels liquor cabinet.

"I suppose I can meat him there then," Jack replied wincing away from a particularly energetic swipe of the cloth. Molly looked up at him in alarm, her eyes roving over his battered khaki shirt and trousers and his snow covered combat boots and leather cloak.

"In that?" she asked in obvious horror. Jack settled his hat back onto his head and his face split into a grin that took a decade off his apparent age.

"Sorry Darlin' left my suit in me other swag."