“Yes. We lack certain facts about the pre-Druid past, but we do know that Chartres’s orientation curiously resembles Stonehenge, following the midsummer sunrise almost perfectly. This is different from the eastern orientation of all Christian churches: it’s seemingly unique to Chartres. There are two different axes in the cathedral, just as at Stonehenge. The heel stone and causeway post holes there mark the longest day in the solar calendar, and the distance between that and the lunar calendar. It’s a mathematical equation, called the Pythagorean comma—”

Alex interrupted her with energy: “Yes, the slip between solar and lunar cycles. And, if the architecture incorporates the two axes of the skies, then the number thirty-four has to be significant at some key place in the building too. Because it’s regarded as the ‘axis mundi’—the axis of the world.”

Grace looked at him sidelong. “I don’t know about that, Alex, but in Chartres the ‘comma’ is clearly built in. The building tilts slightly—you can see it from the great west door, if you face east.” She turned to a view of the floor plan in the guidebook. “You can’t quite see it here, but the longer and shorter axis have been twisted, and there’s a visible ‘wiggle’ right across the transept. It’s deliberate. Every other measure is precise.”

“A blend of masculine and feminine time?”

“Clever, isn’t it? Both spires above the West Face have different styles and heights, which seems strange until you realize one carries a weathervane of the sun, and the other…”

“…of the moon.” Alex filled in. He put down his food. “That must have excited my mother. She thought of herself as the moon. The building was designed to express a symbiosis of male and female energies.”

“That’s an interesting way to put it. A marriage of the masculine and feminine pulses. It’s been described as a ‘vibrato effect.’ And to underline the importance of the light, a tiny hole made in the aptly named window of St. Apollinaire focuses a ray of sun on a nail in a paving stone, at noon on June the twenty-first!”

“Like Stonehenge!”

She nodded emphatically. “But of course, there’s no photo of it here—it’s not even mentioned in an official guide like this one. It would emphasize the layers of worship across centuries and faiths—maybe like the labyrinth?”

Alex had torn off a piece of naan bread, but was too absorbed to eat. “I had lunch with Amel today, Grace—Lucy’s surgeon.” She nodded familiarity at the name. “He’s a Renaissance man—speaks seven languages, loves the arts—gives doctors a good name, a true ambassador for humanity. We talked about Chartres, and he told me about the Sufis. Are you familiar with them?”

“They’re a mystical Muslim sect, I think?”