Aevum of Itero

Chapter 21

Considered the elites of Beverly Hills society, Jack and Iris McKay had never reached a level elite enough to mingle with royalty.

Their son certainly never expected to mingle with royalty; if he had, he would have anticipated it to be one of the Windsors.

Not the daughter of a Plantagenet.

Dylan permitted Mackay to do most of the talking, utilizing Mackay's words to figure out the amount of vernacular that would allow him to get by in the situation.

The daughter of Edward I and Eleanor of Castile, the princess Eleanor had been all but thirteen years of age when she had stumbled upon the then-fifteen-year-old Brenda le Waleys caring for an injured Mackay following an attack by a monoceros. Already close with Mackay herself, Eleanor had come to think of Brenda as family, which made it all the more difficult at the start of the following decade when Eleanor's father, the king, issued an edict expelling all Jews from the country.

For Brenda le Waleys, the wife of Mackay, came from a long line of prominent Jews.

Eleanor had persuaded her father to make an exception for Brenda, on the king's condition that Brenda remain in the Tower of London.

Mackay had been forbidden from seeing her and, though he had tried to defy that rule several times over the past three years, he had failed each time.

On his last attempt, Mackay had been informed that Brenda would be put to her death if he continued to defy the king.

Despite her preoccupation with her upcoming nuptials to the Count of Bar, Henry III, Eleanor had devised a plan with Mackay to help Brenda escape the country. If their plan failed, it would result in grave consequences for both Brenda and Mackay.

Upset on their behalf, Dylan spoke not a word until Eleanor had left the room with a sweep of her dark blue camello sleeves and Mackay had been dismissed to his home.

Dylan barely looked where he walked as he took in the sight of what he called Trafalgar Square and Mackay corrected to the hamlet of Charing.

"Is that -" Dylan started to ask, but waved off Mackay's curious brow.

"Do you know the story of the Eleanor Crosses?" Brenda had asked as she stood bundled in Dylan's arms on a biting night of their second shared winter in London.

"Edward I, right?" he had asked in reply.

"Why am I not surprised you know?"

"I know they were put in place by a grieving husband and only three remain today. I don't know much beyond that."

Always pleased when she could inform Dylan of history she knew and he didn't, Brenda had walked them forward.

"There were twelve," she said. "This one isn't the original." She had pointed to the cross that towered over the square. "It was reconstructed by the Victorians because the original was destroyed during the Civil Wars in the sixteen hundreds. Can you imagine loving someone that much, Dylan? Marking every spot where their body rested with twelve elaborate crosses?"

"I can," Dylan had said, smoothing a hand along Brenda's hip.

She had closed her eyes in apologetic grimace and had shaken her head. "Of course you can. Because Ton - fuck, Dylan, I wasn't thinking. I got caught up in the moment. I didn't mean to be so insensitive."

"Baby." He had tilted her chin up to reassure her with his lips. "I wasn't thinking about Toni."

It stood before him now: the original Charing cross. Dark-hued marble proclaiming a king's unyielding love for his late wife.