The men were red-faced and hard-eyed—I felt no qualms taking their money—but I liked the ladies, especially the younger ones. They smelled like flowers, their voices as gentle as the calling of doves. I liked that they could imagine God had touched me, even though I knew it wasn’t true.

“It’s the devil in ye, Jimmie, not our Lord, that’s for certain,” Deacon Moody said to me as often as the pretty ladies spoke otherwise, and with greater conviction in his voice.

I could find Deacon Moody almost any day, fair or foul, along the Grassmarket, the hem of his black robe dragging in the muck, speaking the gospel to all who would listen to him, and taking any alms—coin, food, or preferably ale—where it was given. No one seemed to know for sure if Moody had been a real deacon once, but a few times I heard it whispered he indeed had been one, only that he had committed some heinous act, and was ejected from the Church years ago.

Whatever the truth, the folk who lived on Edinburgh’s streets—and in the dark ways below—often came to Deacon Moody, asking him to speak a rite of marriage, or to baptize a newborn babe, or to grant forgiveness when the supplicant feared death drew nigh, for the doors of the city’s churches were closed to folk such as they. Nor did Moody ask for any recompense for these acts, much as he sought handouts at other times, and that was what made me think the stories about him were true.

“Where are you off to, lad?” Deacon Moody said to me one autumn evening as he caught me dashing through the Grassmarket. For nearly four years I had been living on the streets of the city by day and dying by night in Greyfriars cemetery.

“Nowhere,” I said.

It was true enough. It wasn’t where I was running to that concerned me, but rather where I was running from: a stair that linked the Grassmarket to High Street, where I had just lifted a man’s purse. I didn’t usually resort to such brazen thievery, but the purse had been full and heavy, dangling from the man’s belt like a ripe fruit ready to be plucked.

“If it’s nowhere you’re going, then you’ve time to indulge me in a bit of conversation,” Moody said, his voice and breath thick with drink. A falling mist beaded on his black robe and dampened his gray hair. “Now tell me, lad, have you given any further thought to your salvation?”

I gave him a pert grin. “I sleep in a crypt, Deacon, you know that. So you can’t save me, seeing as I’m already dead.”

The deacon’s expression, previously jovial, became grim. “No, you’re not, lad,” he said, laying a rough hand on my shoulder. He gazed around the Grassmarket. “There are many on these streets who are dead indeed. They keep on walking and eating and breathing, but they’ve forgotten what it’s like to be alive, and their hearts have gone cold as iron. All they care for are hard things, like the weight of gold in their pockets, or the feel of a gun in their hands. Beyond grace, they are. But not you, Jimmie Golden. Not yet. Do you hear me, lad?”

I reached into my own pocket, feeling the heavy purse. Perhaps the man I had stolen it from had planned to use the money to settle an account. Perhaps now he would be thrown in debtor’s prison to rot.

Dread grew in me, and my own heart felt cold, but I quickly traded the feeling for anger and directed the full force of it at Moody. They had cast him out of the Church for his sins. What did he know? I was a thief, that was all. Grace was not for the likes of me.

I glared at him, and I know not what he saw upon my face, but he jerked his hand from my shoulder, and a soft word escaped his lips. It might have been, Mercy.

Moody stumbled back against a wall, and I pushed past him, racing down the Grassmarket. I reached the square where witches and criminals were hanged, then veered right, heading down toward Greyfriars.

Dusk was thickening to dark, and the mist clung to my eyelashes; I suppose that was how I did not see him standing before the iron gates of the graveyard. I rounded a corner of the wall and ran into him headlong. He was tall, and solidly built. I glanced off him like a bird striking a window and fell dazed to the cobblestones.

Strong hands picked me up and shook me out, standing me back on my feet.

“Sorry, my lord,” I said, keeping my eyes down, then started to move past him.

His hand touched my shoulder, stopping me. “Perhaps you can help me,” he said, his voice deep and thrumming. “I’m looking for someone.”

I kept my eyes on his black boots, but a shiver coursed through me, for I recognized that voice, though it had been almost four years since I had heard it last, in the confines of Advocate’s Close.

“I’ve been looking for this person for some time,” the man said. “I recently heard that he lives here, in Greyfriars.”

“No one lives here, my lord,” I said. “ ’Tis a graveyard.”

“Is that so?”

A strong finger touched my chin, tilting my head up. He was even taller than I remembered. As before, a wide-brimmed hat shadowed his face, but I caught two glints of gold light in the darkness. His eyes were locked on me, and they were yellow like a wolf’s.

“Who are you?” I said in a hoarse rasp.

“Someone who can help you.”

My fear receded a fraction, and I felt a spark of anger flicker up in me again. First Deacon Moody, now this stranger in black. Why did they want to help me? Couldn’t they see it was no use?

“Leave me be,” I said, jerking away from him.

“As you wish, James.”

These words stunned me so much that I stopped in the act of turning away. I looked over my shoulder. A stray shaft of light fell from a window above, illuminating a strong mouth framed by a dark beard.

“If you change your mind, come to Advocate’s Close at twilight on the first day of any month. You’ll find me then, just as you did before.”

I clenched my hands into fists. “I won’t come.”

The man said nothing. He turned and walked down the street. When I could no longer see him, I gazed up at the gates of the cemetery. I was weary and longed to lie down in the crypt to sleep. Only I did not dare—not now, not ever again. Somehow he had learned that I made my home there. Someone on the street had told him, and that meant I could never sleep in Greyfriars again. No more would I know the peace of the Gilroy mausoleum, or the comfort of my imagined family. A pang of sadness pierced my heart.

I crumpled the feeling and tossed it away, like refuse in the gutter. Deacon Moody was an old, drunken fool, but he had been right about one thing. Sorrow was not for the dead. I straightened my bony shoulders and passed into the night.

After that, I put all thoughts of Greyfriars and the stranger in black out of my head. A change had come over me, as sudden as a storm sweeps out of the Highlands. While before I had been quick to laugh or make a jest with other folk on the street, now I was grim and silent, and I spoke to no person except out of need. I no longer slept in a crypt, but all the same I had died, just like the people Deacon Moody had spoken of.

It was not simply temptation that had caused me to steal that man’s purse on the stair below High Street. Desperation had factored in as well. As the years passed, despite the wretchedness of my diet, I had sprouted. My breeches had become knickers of their own accord, and my shirtsleeves reached barely past my elbows.

The taller I grew, the harder it became to compel the ladies to charity. Fewer carriages stopped, and when they did I received smaller coins for my troubles. Then, for a long time, no carriage stopped at all.

I had all but given up on winning alms by the time I robbed that fellow. However, the day after I fled the dark stranger at Greyfriars, I tried one more time, cleaning myself up as best I could and standing beside the road. To my surprise, it was not long before a glossy coach stopped in front of me. To my further surprise, it was not a woman who opened the coach’s door, but a man: a barrister or other well-to-do gentleman, edging on toward middle years, but still handsome in his fine attire.