The other remained silent. He was tall, a dark cloak draping his broad shoulders and his face shadowed by the wide brim of a hat.

The gentleman marched forward. “I daresay that kerchief is too fine for the likes of you, boy,” he said, his breath wheezing, as if he had walked up a long flight of steps rather than just across the close. “Where did you steal it?”

“It’s mine,” I said. “My mother gave it to me.” It was not exactly the truth, but close enough to it.

“Liar,” the man spat, and before I could move he snatched the cloth from my hands. A new emotion cut through my fear: anger.

He pawed at the cloth with thick fingers. “This is fine indeed. I’d warrant you pilfered it from some noble lady. It’s malefactors like you that are ruining this city. I’m a barrister for the king’s court. I’ll have you hauled up to the castle and thrown in the dungeon.”

I started to push myself off the wall, but then the other—the tall, shadowy one—stepped closer. He raised a gloved hand.

“Let him go, Brody,” he said, and I froze. His voice was deep and resonant, and for some reason it sent a shiver up my spine. “Let us go inside.” He gestured to the back door of the pub. “I would see to our business.”

Although the other spoke to the barrister, Brody, I felt certain it was me he was watching, even though I could not see his face.

Brody glanced back at his companion, and I knew this was my chance. I leaped down from the wall and snatched the cloth from the barrister’s hand. He moved faster than I would have guessed for one so large, whirling around and grabbing for me. I let out a snarl and glared at him. He stumbled back, his face pale in the gloom, and I knew at that moment my eyes flashed green just like my mother’s.

Clutching the cloth to my chest, I ran for the archway. I was forced to pass so close to the barrister’s companion that I brushed against his black cloak—the fabric was heavy and soft—but he did not stop me.

I pounded barefoot over the stones of High Street, dodging horses, coaches, and people, expecting a hue and cry to rise up behind me at any moment, but it did not. I careened around a corner onto Candlemaker Row, then ran on, down toward the Cowgate and the fringes of the old city. I had left the throngs behind; there were no people to observe me as I scrambled up a stone wall, then dropped down the other side.

The noises of the city receded. A hush closed around me. Pale stones shone in the dimness.

This was Greyfriars cemetery—though at the time I did not know its name, only that it was a graveyard and that it suited me. The living would not bother me there, and I feared them far more than I did the dead. I moved deeper into the cemetery, shivering as the sweat brought on by my flight evaporated. Even in summer, nights in Edinburgh were cool.

I suppose I surprised the grave robber as much as he surprised me. I came from around a large headstone topped with a Celtic cross, and there he was, hunched over his work, muttering to himself as he pried at the door of a mausoleum with a pickaxe. He had already broken away a corner of the stone door.

Startled, I let out a gasp. The grave robber dropped the pick and turned around, his eyes like saucers in the gloom.

“Mother Mary, save me!” he said, clutching a marble column, his face a mask of dirt and fear.

I reached out a hand and tried to tell him it was all right, that I wouldn’t hurt him, but he let out a strangled cry and turned around to flee. As he did, his cloak caught on a hawthorn bush. He jerked free of the garment, then ran away through the graveyard.

I suppose he thought I was a ghost, pale as I was, scabbed with blood and dressed in rags, and that I had risen from the grave to punish him. Quite the opposite, I was grateful for his actions, as now I had discovered where I could spend the night.

I retrieved the cloak from the bush, then squeezed through the gap the grave robber had made—too small for a man, but perfect for a thin boy. Only the faintest light followed me into the mausoleum. There was a musty smell, from the rats that had long ago built a nest in a corner, but the odor was faint and old. Crypts lined the marble walls; one of them was open and empty, awaiting a body.

I gave it mine. Bruised, aching, and tired beyond imagining—yet strangely pleased for a reason I couldn’t quite name— I wrapped myself in the robber’s cloak and lay down inside the cold crypt. The stone seemed to me the softest feather bed, and there I slept like a corpse, born and dead in the very same day.

Perhaps it was from dwelling among the dead for so long that I came to care so little for the worth of my own life.

Over the course of those next few years, I slept many nights inside the mausoleum, and in time I came to think of its denizens as my family. I could read a little; my mother had taught me, writing with bits of charcoal on the walls of our niche in rare, peaceful times. Thus I was able to make out some of the inscriptions on the marble crypts.

There was Lord John Gilroy, surely a fatherly figure, stern of face, and demanding of obedience, but kindly in quiet moments. Old Lady Gilroy had lived a generation earlier, to the ripe age of ninety-two, and so she became my imagined grand-mother, comforting me when all seemed cold and bleak. Then there was little Jennie Gilroy—deceased at the tender age of nine, according to the writing on her crypt—a little sister whom I would fiercely protect, and in whom I could confide when I was lonely and afraid. Sometimes when I lay down inside the crypt to sleep, I would drape the robber’s cloak over me like a burial shroud, then fold my hands together on my breast and pretend I was dead as they were, and at peace.

Only I was neither. And like some restless and unholy spirit, I would rise from the crypt each day and slip out of the mausoleum to prey upon the world of living men.

I had no name besides that which my mother had given to me—James—for my bastard-making father the judge had not deigned to lend me his appellation. Nor did it matter. One made one’s own name on the streets of Edinburgh, and I came to be known among the people who dwelled there, in the gutters and in the shadows, as Jimmie Golden—for my fair locks, which were the only inheritance my father had granted me.

Early on I learned that my hair—thick, yellow as wheat, and curling about my thin shoulders—was my greatest asset. Though my clothes were invariably grimy, I kept my golden locks as clean as I could, dunking my head in one of the city’s fountains even on the coldest days and using my fingers to comb through the ringlets. I knew they fancied it—the gentle ladies who fretted over me.

I would stand along High Street, positioning myself in a shaft of sun so that the light would shine upon my hair. As a fine carriage passed by, perhaps on its way from the castle down through Canongate to the palace of Holyrood, I would affect a look at once placid and forlorn—a beatific expression I had copied from cherubs painted inside St. Giles cathedral, which I had seen once when I sneaked in through the doors.

Most of the coaches would clatter on by, but eventually, if I waited long enough, a carriage would stop and a lady would emerge. Sometimes she was young and fresh-faced, dressed in a gown sewn with ribbons, at other times older and motherly. Either way, while I gazed up with plaintive eyes, the lady would cluck her tongue and fuss over me. She would murmur that she had never seen hair so gold, and how I had the face of an angel, and that surely God had touched this poor, wretched orphan.

Quickly enough, a man—sometimes her husband, sometimes her attendant—would leap from the carriage and race after the lady, gently but forcibly pulling her away from me. The lady would protest, the man would give me an angry look, then he’d pull several coins from his purse, toss them at my feet, and tell me in gruff tones to be off. Not needing to be told twice, I’d snatch up the coins and run.