Since the death of her parents in 1791, Lily McEvoy has lived as a recluse in her isolated manor with her two maidservants and Titus, the farmhand who has become her whipping boy. But tonight, the heiress is expecting company. Her guest will be Master Anselm, the legendary stonecutter who has transformed the estate's abandoned salt mine into an immense funerary monument to the memory of the McEvoy family, sculpting bas-reliefs in the chapels, crypts and tombs he has carved out of the rock salt of its cavernous walls.