“God is angry at Sybil,” he had said, “and if you go near her, God will be angry at you too.” Isaac, Eleanor, and Everard had not questioned this. They could not question the man who came to their house and spoke of the will of God. If He so commanded it, so it should be. The man’s black robe and black gloves and the tiny holes where his eyes bulged from his masked face frightened them. From his white mask protruded a long, beak-like structure that looked as though it had been sharpened. Looking at this man was like looking at the Devil himself. He looked like one of the creatures that would appear in Everard’s nighttime terrors. The man also told them about miasma, about how Eleanor’s mother was now surrounded by bad air, which the rest of the family would die from breathing in. The man stuffed his mask with rosemary and sage and bits of dried flowers. This, he said, would keep him safe from that bad air. Eleanor could only imagine the scents wafting together, the sweet herbs interspersed with the bits of rotting flesh and the mixture of blood, pus, and tears on the ground. She shuddered at the thought. The masked man took Sybil away.