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When his armor was off, the next task was to do something about her clothes. She glanced around, but the only thing she could think of was the last thing she wanted to do.

Take off a dead Saxon’s clothes and put them on.

Cathy winced at the thought, but she had no time for squeamishness if she wanted to save Andor’s life.

She moved to the bush. The monks were further away, bending over a man on the ground. Cathy ran towards the first man Andor had injured, the one who’d had the raven banner she had used to bandage Andor’s head. For what felt like the hundredth time, she dragged a grown man behind the bush.

She grimaced at the sight of his pale face and the opening on his neck. How could she touch the corpse? Undress it? Wear its clothes?

Cathy didn’t feel it coming, but the contents of her stomach rose, and all she could do was turn and vomit. She shook, as though she had a fever. All her instincts told her to pull away, to run.

She would gladly do that.

But she loved Brad too much, even if this version didn’t know her.

She had to be strong for him. Not the weak coward she had been a year ago, when she should have insisted that Brad stay with his friends, that she could open the school without him, rather than wallowing in her insecurity and relying on Brad for courage.

Look where that had led her.

She couldn’t make the same mistake again.

She briefly closed her eyes, took a cleansing breath and found her center. That helped her to let go of her fear and disgust and gain at least some strength.

She wiped her mouth, which still tasted sour. “Forgive me, whoever you are,” she whispered to the dead man in front of her. Forbidding herself to think of what she was really doing, Cathy began undressing the man. Removing chain mail from a grown man was hard work, but, slowly, she managed. It must have weighed at least twenty pounds, and she was soaked in sweat and breathing heavily when she was done. Taking off the rest of his clothes was a piece of cake compared to that.

With regret, she removed her wetsuit—thankfully she wore diving shorts and a vest underneath.

Then came the hard part: putting the dead man’s clothes on. The tunic smelled like unwashed body, old male sweat, and blood. The neck and the breast of the tunic were soaked in blood, and she swore the material cracked when she put it on.

Vomit rose again, and Cathy firmly decided to breathe through her mouth.

That helped. Then came the pants, which she refused to smell at all. They were made of a coarse material like hemp, but they fit her fine. In fact, all the clothes fit as though they were made for her. A depressing fact she decided not to dwell upon at the moment.

She even took off the man’s wool socks and then his shoes, which were made of surprisingly soft leather and were the most comfortable thing she was wearing right now.

If she wore a man’s clothes and was about to ask the monks to take her and Andor in, she couldn’t do so as a woman. Thankfully, her bun was still up. If she put on the weird linen cap the dead man had on, could she pass for an overgrown teenage boy? Her breasts and hips were not that visible under this large tunic.

Maybe for the first time in her life, her height and weight would actually come in handy.

The last thing was to hide Andor’s sword. She took it and went into the cave. There was a long crack in the back, and she placed the sword there, then put rocks and scattered shingles where the metal was visible.

Satisfied, she grabbed Andor and dragged him out of the cave, placing him next to the bush. She threw one last, critical glance over him and noticed an amulet around his neck, with a pendant that looked like a hammer.

This was probably for Thor or Odin or one of the other Norse gods. If it wasn’t a cross, she should probably take it off of him, which she did and put it around her neck, under the tunic. Whatever it was, it made her feel closer to him in some way.

She glanced in the direction of the monks who were now quite far away, almost on the other side of the beach. But she noticed three more carts like the first and ran to the nearest one.

When she was close enough, making her voice low, she said, “Fathers.”

She then realized she spoke yet another foreign language. It was different from Andor’s but similar to English in some way. Was it Old English or something?

How could she speak not just one but two ancient foreign languages she had never learned? What kind of craziness was going on? And what if she suddenly lost the ability or the monks realized she was not a boy, not even a person from this time? Didn’t they burn witches back then? The urge to run and hide sent her heart racing.

The two monks turned around. Too late to run.

Their heads were shaved on top, the rest of their hair in a bowl cut. Big, wooden crosses hung on their necks. One was older—he was examining a man lying on the ground—the other one was younger and looked stronger. They both eyed Cathy up and down, suspicion in their eyes.

“Yes?” said the older one.