Arguably, as Spencer might say, chewing on his pipe, I have already paid the price for the crime, and God has decided to give me a second chance. I could put back that coffin lid and make a run for it. To Leith Port and get on the next ship out. Find a smuggler and go wherever he is going. Wouldn’t be the first time I’ve made a run for it. But here I am, stood in horse-shit in nothing more than a thin smock, with not a penny to my name, and I can’t risk being caught like this. Imagine what would happen to me if a band of rogues came along. Worse if they realized, from my rope-mark, where I had come from. And there are plenty of rogues on the roads into Edinburgh. So I walk, my neck throbbing, with stones piercing the soles of my feet, into the inn.

Later, in the weeks that follow, they will talk of this day same as they talk of ghosts and highwaymen and grave-robbers and murderers. They will say how I leapt from my coffin and appeared at my own wake, and how everyone nearly died of fright themselves. Ma sobbed and took me into her arms, and Da choked on his mouthful of ale, and Joan shrieked and shrieked and dropped her bowl of sheep’s-head soup on her lap and ruined her brand-new mourning-dress, and some men took me straight back to Edinburgh to be hanged again. They will say that, at first, my family took me for my own ghost until Joan said, ‘We can all see your privies through that smock, Maggie. Will someone cover her up?’

But that is all to come. For now, on Hanging Day, in the courtyard of the Sheep Heid, there is only this: my name is Margaret Dickson, though everyone calls me Maggie. I am two-and-twenty years of age, a fishergirl who never became the fishwife I was supposed to. I did not want that harsh sort of a life. I wanted better. I was supposed to be executed, but I am still alive.

I was hanged for the death of my baby.

Chapter Two

I open the door slowly and stand at the entrance, wondering how long it will take for someone to notice me. My legs tremble. A ram’s skull is mounted onto a plaque next to my head and I wonder, briefly, what the anatomists might have done with my skull if they’d had the chance. Ma is the first to see me. She screams, a piercing scream that could shatter glass, and clutches her chest. Da sees me next and his mouth falls open and he shakes his head over and over again. Some men I don’t know, who are sitting in a corner at the back of the inn, slowly put down their ales.

‘God save us all, she has risen,’ cries Da.