Alex had handed her a large envelope before taking off with his son, and she now drew out a beautiful A4 illustration. It was of a crystal sphere with mountains depicted at its heart, the whole embraced by the arms of a great tree, like a transparent globe. The text underneath captioned it the Axis Mundi, something she’d asked him about before going to New York. She hadn’t understood his reference to it, but now became engrossed by the image before her. It was the center of the world, the place where heaven was believed to meet the earth. On a second, smaller sheet she saw his own pen-and-ink drawing of the symbol of medicine, the caduceus, with a note in his distinctive hand explaining that the rod was a depiction of the axis itself, and the serpents the channel by which the healer crossed the axis from this world to bring back knowledge from the higher world. Number thirty-four was connected to it according to various attributions, and Alex’s note briefly explained how Dante had chosen it to complete his Inferno precisely because it represented this crossing point, the middle of the earth, the brush with hell—and then the emergent point for spiritual realization, “back to the stars.” Into the center and out again, she thought, while Henry was pruning some bushes: the road to Jerusalem. The labyrinth.

Late in the day Henry took Alex into the library, and though they didn’t at all close her out, she felt they might appreciate some privacy. She went to look for Max, and decided to give this time to him, learning all about the Sims on his computer. She listened to the boy’s talk of his adored grandmother—who had taught him some French—and his uncle, whom he missed so much. She was still occupying this special, private space with him when Alex and Henry emerged from the library to check on them. Neither wished to be dislodged from his or her spot at the desk, so, as Simon and Grace were due tomorrow, and Siân would be arriving on Easter Sunday morning, the senior Stafford men departed to rearrange some furniture upstairs.