Meanwhile, Sharpe and the chosen Men were finding out who the hell this Lady they'd brought back was.

'My name is…Marie-Susan'

'I love you,' Sharpe said simply.

'That's very forward of you!'

'Oh don't worry, that's just his way of saying 'hello' to anything wearing a dress,' Harper neatly fielded the comment with a calm smile.

'What, like Harris?' Perkins smirked nastily.

'I was inebriated! And anyway, Harper did it too!'

'Shut it! Ramona can hear yez!' Patrick blushed.

Everyone pointedly looked the other way as Sharpe stuttered and looked deeply into her impossibly large blue eyes, as lovesick as an armful of Cupids.

"I…I love you…'

'I know, Sor,' Harper muttered wistfully. Ramona stuck the needle in pointedly from her position, sewing the Sergeant's leg back on.

Sharpe, as docile as a puppy now that he was faced with a problem he couldn't a) shout at b) shoot, looked down at the ground feebly, and staggered off in a dazed fashion.

'Penguins and pink hearts, Oi think he likes yez!' Harper told Marie-Susan cheerfully, and hobbled off after Sharpe, testing out his newly-sewn leg.

The Chosen Men resumed their normal activities of rifle-polishing, tea-making and button-sewing (and, in Perkins' case, attempting to piece his own ear with a piece of bent wire). Perkins, eyes drifting across to the Lady Marie-Susan for no real reason, noticed a curious thing around the region of her dress-top.

'Dan,' he whispered, 'Dan, look at that! Look, what is it!' he pointed.

Hagman gave him an extremely funny look.

'How old is you, agin? I thought we'd explained ab't all that…?'

Perkins rolled his eyes.

'No, not those, I meant those funny markings...it looks like writing, or a tattoo of some sort…'

Hagman squinted, trying to get a closer look. There certainly were some very strange hand-writing looking marks just visible across her bosom.

Unfortunately, a spanner in the works was on its way, in the form of three Lieutenants who'd been watching the Chosen Men with a telescope from a distant clump of bushes for the past hour, in the hopes that they'd do something illegal so they could execute them, which would teach them be led about by an Officer who'd come up from the ranks, dammit.

'Hah! I saw that man distinctly eyeballing the young lady!' shouted Lieutenant Pringles, storming out from the bushes he'd been hiding behind with fellow Lieutenants Walkers and McVitie.

'What!' Hagman mumbled, confused as hell.

'Admit it! You were eyeing up this young lady, weren't you?'

'Eh?'

'Oh, don't feign ignorance with me, man – I can see the sinful thoughts in your eyes'

'Really?' Let me see,' Harris said, staring hard into Dan's eyes out of sheer curiosity.

'You see it!'

'No. Just cataracts'

'No matter! This man is to be court-marshalled on a charge of 'eyeballing'!'

'Hey!' protested Cooper, 'it's not a crime to be just lookin' in the direction of a young lady!'

'Yeah,' Perkins, who sometimes got carried away, piped up scrawnily, 'eyeballing isn't half as bad a sin as buggering!'

There was a shocked pause.

'P'rkins, y'stupid little sod…' Hagman gumbled out of the corner of his mouth.

'You, boy, will join your lecherous scruffbag of a friend in the court-marshalling, for swearing in front of a lady. Disorderly conduct!'

'Ere,' Cooper protested, 'that's not fair!'

'It is if you're in the 95th Rifles. Hadn't you noticed that the entire army and all its officers are out to get you?'

Cooper rolled his eyes, 'Yeah, sir, the French army is, on account of us fightin' a war with the French'

'No, twat, I meant the English. We hate the 95th Rifles so much we even made pin badges with 'Die, Sharpie, Die' written on them!'

'Why?'

'Oh, so now we need a reason? You're court-marshalled too, by the way. And tell Sergeant Harper he's court-marshalled as well, if you see him'

'Why!'

'Um…for being Irish'.

Lieutenant Pringles turned to walk away; a satisfied smile pasted on his mug, and was confronted by the peaceably-standing form of Harris.

'You've just court-marshalled the entire 95th Rifles, Sir, except for me'

'Hah! What're you going to do about it, then?' Lieutenant McVities said, blowing a provocative raspberry.

'Sod all, Sir, because I don't want to be court-marshalled too'

'Tough titty. That's a non-regulation hair colour you have there. I really do think you should be thrown in gaol and then publicly executed for it. That'llteach you not to strut about like a fucking satsuma'.

Perkins whimpered fearfully into Hagman's shoulder.

'Are we all going to die?'

'Birdbaths and bunnyrabbits,' Harpur exclaimed,' Oi haven't had so mach fun since the entire Regiment came down with cholera!'

'Speak for yourself,' Cooper muttered, slumped in the opposite corner of the filthy gaol cell and attempting to bite off his handcuffs. It was dark and gloomy in the cell, not to mention achingly cold and miserable.

'This is really shit,' Perkins muttered 'none of us have done anything wrong. I mean, ok, so they pay us to mercilessly slaughter huge numbers of people every day – but we still wouldn't really hurt a fly'. He attempted to cuddle up in the corner with Hagman, but gave up when he realised there was approximately as much warmth in the older Rifleman's toothpicky frame as there was in a large tray of icecubes.

'Unless it was a French fly,' Harris quipped.

'Hah, yes, good one, Marmaduke'

'No, sorry. Not Marmaduke. Guess again'

Due to Harris' irrational secrecy about his first name, the rest of the 95th Rifles had employed a strategy to find it out (reasoning that if it was a secret, it had to be embarrassing), and then find a megaphone and shout it from the top of the nearest hill.

They would call him whatever names came to mind at random, in the hope that he'd be caught off guard and answer to one of them.

Perkins reckoned that 'Theodore' had made his ears prick up, but Cooper felt 'Zebedee' had been a better success.

'Roight. Well. We've all been sentenced to death, so we're all going to be swinging from the gallows like a row of pretty burdies tomorrow morning (Perkins burst into tears), so we moight as well confess to each other, seein' as we'll never get another chance to speak to a living soul again. Oi'm going to shuffle off this mortal coil with a clear conscience,' Harper beamed, apparently happier than a catnip-wrapped moggy, 'Oi'll go first – hey, Harris, guess what Oi've been usin' yer face-flannel for these past few mornings?'

'What?' Harris said disinterestedly, then thought back to the curious state of the washcloth, and sat up sharply, 'Oh, Sarge, no…!'

'That's roight,' Harper cackled, 'ye deserve it, ye show-offy booger! Oi never did like ye – and that's another thing, let me tell y…'

'Psst!'

'For Christ's sake, there's no need to rub it in!' Harris moaned.

'Shut it!' Cooper scrambled up to the one little window – and found himself nose-to-nose with none other than Major Richard Sharpe, come to heroically save the day!

Yorskire tea,' Sharpe grinned grimly, motioning for Cooper to stand back as he laid into the metal bars across the window with his sword-butt. For anyone else, all this would have done would be to mangle the sword-butt, and have whoever tried it stand there for an embarrassing half-hour whilst the prisoners' smiles slowly faded and the bars completely failed to break.

However, this was Major Richard Sharpe.

Naturally, the bars turned to dust as soon as he touched them, and the edges of the window crumbled away like a piece of Wensleydale cheese beneath his heroic, manly hands!

The grinning Riflemen scrambled out of the gap, and scooted off into the cover of the surrounding woods, Harris tripping over every blade of grass he came across.

'Yes, bastards,' Sharpe smiled as he threw down a black-and-white bundle.

'You've gone panda-hunting?'

Sharpe shook his head, quickly, motioning for the Riflemen for unwrap the bundle, as he pressed himself against a tree and snooked round it to keep a look-out. Hopefully, nobody would have noticed that the prisoners had escaped yet. Actually, why bother hoping? He was Major Richard Sharpe, and if anything ever went wrong for him, it would always have been someone else's fault.

'Perhaps it's a disguise,' Harris suggested brightly.

'Pandas?'

'Oooh, I quite fancy sittin' about up a tree for a few days. Very nice'

'No,' Perkins shook his head with a squincky grin, 'it's much more fun than that'

'Sor, are you serious?' Harper held up the garments, less sure.

'Yes,' Sharpe said, hoping they'd hurry up and put them on.

'I'm not certain that this will look very convincing,' Harris slipped the shapeless black garment on over his head with an air of resignation.

'Aye, let's just get on wit' it - Oi suggest we do Major Sharpe!' Pat Harper cried.

There was a confused pause.

'…A good deed!' Pat finished, sighing with relief as everyone started cheering. It had just slipped out, 'and put on these nice disguises he's so koindly found for us'

'So,' Perkins made conversation as they added the white head-dresses, 'does anyone else think this is a ludicrous plot twist?'

'Well, it ain't half as bad as that episode wiv the Aztecs'

That's right. The Chosen Men were going to sneak about the countryside disguised as a small contingent of nuns.

'I'm a'roight as long as nobody gets a good look at me, up close'

'You mean generally, Sarge, or just in disguise?' Perkins said cheekily, and was promptly boxed round the headdress.

'Quite a'right,' Hagman was gumbling cheerfully, 'back 'ome, a lot of the Nuns had fine beards. Could've done w'th a shave, most've them – 't'll just add to the disgise'

Perkins gave him a strange look.

You never really knew where you stood with the poachy Rifleman. One minute he seemed practically on the brink of death, hobbling about mumbling to himself, limbs carried like surplus baggage – and the next he was twanging perkily away at a fiddle and tirelessly flinging Perkins in the air with beaming, stringy good-naturedness (or at least an unwholesome interest in17-year old boys). Deceptive-like, it were.

'Sir, there's something you ought to know, before we set off,' Harris said to Sharpe.

'Yes?'

'Perkins says Lady Marie-Susan has got handwriting on her. We thought it might have been some sort of Secret Clue'.

'Yorkshire pudding,' Sharpe nodded seriously, and they set off like a row of large penguins in the direction of Lady Marie-Susan's tent, trying to look pious.