The Ballad of Frankie Silver

Chapter Four SPENCER ARROWOOD had watched hours of television, eaten meals he barely tasted, and slept more than he needed to before Martha reappeared with another handful of mail and a stack of library books. She brushed aside his questions about work at the office, announced that she could get her own cup of coffee, and insisted that he look at what she’d brought.

“Nobody has ever written a book on Frankie Silver that I can find,” she told him. “But she has rated quite a few chapters in local histories. I brought you a couple of old books, Dead and Goneand Cabin in the Laurelsfor starters. I looked over them last night, by the way. They’re pretty interesting.”

Spencer smiled. “Thanks, but I haven’t been to the bank lately. Do you take checks?”

“Consider it a get-well gift, Spencer, I don’t do casseroles. Anyhow, they’re both used, so the Book Place let me have them cheap. They even marked the pages for you. How are you feeling?”

Spencer sighed. “I’ve been better. Thanks for the books.”

“I brought you something else that you might want to see.” She handed him a copy of the Johnson City Chronicleopen to the headlinePARENTS OF SLAIN GIRL DEMAND DEATH OF KILLER . Colonel Charles Wythe Stanton, older and grayer but still in charge, stared out at him from the page of newsprint. He was wearing a dark suit and tie instead of an army uniform, but his piercing expression had not changed. Spencer skimmed the article, already knowing what it would say.

“Colonel Charles Stanton (U.S. Army-ret.), whose daughter Emily was murdered on the Appalachian Trail in 1977, met today with a Tennessee victims’ organization to discuss the scheduled execution of the man who killed his daughter. ‘Fate Harkryder should be executed at once,’ Colonel Stanton told the

group. ‘His legal ploys have given him twenty years of life to which he was not entitled. I wish he had shown as much mercy to my daughter. He didn’t let her live to be twenty.’ Colonel Stanton stressed the victims’ families’ need for closure, so that they can go on with their lives.” The article went on for another half dozen paragraphs, but Spencer had heard it all before, and he didn’t dispute any of it. That wasn’t what worried him.

“Where’s the front page of the paper, Martha?” asked Spencer, noting that the part he was reading was section B.

“LeDonne spilled Pepsi on it this morning,” said Martha with a shrug. “It wasn’t dry yet.”

He heard an odd note in her voice, and filed it away for future consideration.

Martha turned her deck chair to face the view of sunlit mountains and sat down across the table from him. “I don’t know how you can bear to go inside,” she said. “I’d just stare out at these hills for hours at a time.”

He smiled. “It gets cold up here after sunset.”

“It’s always a different scene, though, isn’t it? The mountains change color from one day to the next. I can count six shades of green without even turning my head. So peaceful.”

“Most of the time.” There was a small photo of Emily Stanton accompanying the newspaper article.

Martha took a sip of coffee. “Have you done any more thinking about Frankie Silver?”

“Off and on,” he said, shrugging. “It doesn’t fit into my experience anywhere yet. She was an eighteen-year-old girl. By all accounts she was pretty, hardworking, and virtuous. Yet she killed her young husband with an ax. Why would she do that?”

“Maybe she was crazy?”

“She seemed sane enough during the trial, apparently. They convicted her anyhow.”

“Cabin fever? It was winter when it happened. I remember Mrs. Honeycutt talking about snow on the ground and the river being frozen. Maybe she just got tired of being shut up in that little one-room cage.” Martha shivered. “I know I would.”

“Yes,” said Spencer, “but you hadn’t lived in a place like that all your life. Surely Frankie Silver was used to it.”

“I guess you’re right,” said Martha. “Maybe you’ll never understand it. Times were different then. I don’t see what you can do with a case that’s a hundred and fifty years old, with not even a crime scene left to look at, but if it keeps you off your feet for a while longer, then I’m all for it. Better than thinking about that other case.”

“Fate Harkryder.”

“There’s nothing you can do about that one, either. Are you still thinking about going to the—” She didn’t want to say execution.

He nodded. “I called and told them I would. If it happens.”

“Which it won’t,” said Martha. She stood up and brushed imaginary dust from her trousers. “Well, I wish I had time to sit up here in this pretty place looking at mountains and playing detective, but I guess I have to go prowl for expired car-inspection stickers.”

Spencer smiled. “Prowling for expired county stickers isn’t unimportant, Martha. The county needs the revenue. How is Joe doing?”

“Oh, he’ll be up one of these days. You know how he is.”

“Tell him I’m not sick,” said Spencer. LeDonne would rather work twenty-hour days than visit sick people.

When Martha had gone, Spencer turned again to the article in the newspaper. He had not wanted her to see how concerned he was about the case. Martha worried too much.

The photograph seemed to be staring directly at him from out of the newspaper. Charles Wythe Stanton, still alive, still fighting the enemy. Spencer remembered him well. He had been the one to inform the colonel that his only daughter had been murdered.

On the night of Emily Stanton’s murder (and Mike Wilson’s as well, but people tended to forget about him), Spencer and the TBI officer spent the rest of that night making a grid of the crime scene, stretching twine from one wooden stake to another so that the entire area was marked off into small squares like a checkerboard. They would search each parcel of the site for cigarette butts, gum wrappers, clothing fibers—anything that might have a bearing on the case.

At last the sky lightened to a pall of gray, and the objects beyond the reach of their flashlights began to become more distinct in the haze. The TBI man glanced at his watch. “We’ll check the site again in about twenty minutes,” he said. “For now, let’s check all the approaches to this clearing to see if the assailant discarded anything.”

Spencer glanced at the two bodies, which were becoming clearer with every passing minute, and he thought of a photograph taking form in the developing fluid. “When are we going to move them?” he asked.

“Within the hour. They go to University Hospital in Knoxville for a complete workup. I’ll give you that information to pass along to the families.” He looked down at the two sprawled bodies in the clearing and sighed. “We’ll move them before the flies come out, I promise.”

“Good,” said Spencer. One side of the girl’s face looked as if she were only sleeping, and he didn’t want to see her covered in insects.

“When it gets light enough, we’ll tilt the bodies, see what’s under them. I found a tooth under the victim once. Belonged to the killer.”

Spencer nodded. He couldn’t think of anything to say. He set off on a path that led back into the forest, training his flashlight on the ground in front of it and letting the light play left and right to illuminate the weeds at the side of the trail. He saw no broken twigs or evidence of a struggle, or even of footprints, and his hunch that the killer had not come this way was confirmed a few moments later by a triumphant cry from the other officer. Spencer had forgotten his name almost the instant he heard it, and he would

forever think of the investigator as “the TBI man,” the embodiment of a faceless state bureaucracy.

He hurried back to the clearing. The officer had laid out the wallets on the log where Willis Blaine, the ranger, had sat for much of the night. The dark brown leather one was worn and scratched, obviously the property of the man. Beside it lay a small red clutch purse containing a compartment for coins, as well as a notepad and a compartment for paper money. “I found them about twenty yards down the hill,” said the TBI man with a satisfied smile. “Killer must have taken the money and thrown down the billfolds as he ran. Who knows? We might even get prints.” He pried open the two sections of leather with a gloved finger. “Can you read that? I’m no good at fine print in this light.”

It seemed perfectly clear to Spencer, who was still a long way from thirty, from bifocals, from having to read the newspaper at arm’s length, as he did these days. “Michael Wilson,” he said. “Virginia driver’s license. He’s twenty-one. There’s a student ID in there, too. University of North Carolina.”

“Yeah, I figured they were college kids. A lot of these hikers are. So they’re not from around here. That figures.”

“How so?” asked Spencer.

“Stranger killing. They were ambushed out in public land. This wasn’t some guy offing his girlfriend, or a fight between two old enemies. Somebody was hunting, and hunters don’t care about the identity of the victim. Who was the girl?”

Spencer fingered the soft leather clutch purse. He imagined it still warm from being tucked away in the hip pocket of the girl’s jeans, pressing against her buttocks. “Emily Stanton. Driver’s license says Wilmington, North Carolina.” A solemn young woman with long auburn hair and dainty small-boned features looked out at him from the license photo. He could see tiny gold hoops in her ears, and a pearl necklace against the dark blue background of her dress. Sorority type,he thought. I wonder what she made of the trail.He said, “There’s also a student ID for UNC.”

“Yep. I figured. College sweethearts, taking a little vacation together after classes ended. Rich kids, too. At least, she was.”

Spencer glanced at the body. The small figure had been wearing jeans and a plain black sweatshirt. Now they lay crumpled a few feet away from her body. “How can you tell?”

The officer smiled. “It helps to have kids, Deputy. I recognize the brand names on her clothing. That outfit may look like old jeans and sneakers to you, but she paid a couple hundred bucks for them. I probably would have known even without that, but it isn’t something I could explain.” He shrugged. “Her manicured nails. Her hairstyle. After you observe people for enough years, you just know.”

“A robbery that got out of hand then?”

“No. There won’t be any money in the wallets, but taking the cash was an afterthought.”

Spencer poked a finger inside the billfold. Empty. The TBI guy was right. “Not the motive, though?”

“Incidentally, sure. I mean, the cash is just lying there. It’s not going to do the victims any good. Why not take it? But that’s not the real reason the killer did this. He did this for fun, because he’s so mad at something that this is his way of striking back.”

Spencer said, “I am reckless what I do to spite the world.”He shrugged. “I always liked that line.”

The older man smiled. “Macbeth,”he said. “It’s nice to hear Shakespeare every now and then from an officer, instead of Kris Kristofferson, which is what passes for philosophy these days.”

“I like him, too,” said Spencer. “So you think this guy we’re looking for is more than a thief whose robbery got out of hand?”

“He’s a killer first and foremost. Have there been any other unsolved murders around here?”

“No.”

“Any disappearances? Maybe you just didn’t find the bodies.”

“No missing persons.”

“Maybe he’s not from around here then. You’d better hope he doesn’t decide to stay a while. This kind of thing is habit-forming. There should be more victims sometime . . . somewhere.”

“How do we go about looking for him then?”

“Stranger killers are hard to catch. No pool of suspects. Could have been anybody. You have to hope they do something stupid. But we’ll do what we can to help you with the forensic evidence. It will take some time, though.”

Spencer nodded. “I understand. We have to have a suspect anyhow, before the forensic evidence will do any good.”

The TBI man stood up and stretched, yawning into the gray light. “Morning already. You’re going to have a long day ahead of you, Deputy, finding out if anybody saw anything suspicious up here. Oh, and when you notify the families, be sure you get a description of the personal effects the victims had with them. They may turn up somewhere. It could be the best lead you get.” He yawned again. “Keep in touch. Let me know if there’s anything else we can do to help.”

Back at the office, Spencer worked through the rest of the dawn hours, organizing his notes, making calls to locate the victims’ families. Now it was seven o’clock. He would have to make the notification calls soon, before the families left for work. He stared at the two telephone numbers, wondering which family to call first. He had never had to notify the family of a murder victim. Nelse Miller always took it upon himself to contact the families, and Spencer devoutly wished that the sheriff were here now to take care of it. The thought of coping with weeping and hysterical strangers made him uneasy, and he wondered what questions they would ask him about the circumstances and the condition of the bodies—and what should he tell them?

The most difficult call would be to the female victim’s parents, he thought, because no one ever imagines their little girl in danger. Should he get that call over with, or should he begin with the other one and work up to it? He was so tired.

He dialed the Wilsons’ number. The phone rang four times before someone picked it up, and a sleepy voice murmured, “—’Lo?”

Spencer took a deep breath. “Mrs. Wilson?”

“Who is this? What time is it?”

He took a deep breath. You never got used to it. “My name is Spencer Arrowood. I’m with the sheriff’s department in Wake County, Tennessee. Is there anyone with you, Mrs. Wilson?”

She made a startled cry and said, “What’s happened to Mike?” He heard her say, presumably to her husband, “Lyman, it’s about Mike.” Spencer waited for a man to come to the phone, but after a moment’s silence, Mrs. Wilson came back on the line and told him to go on. He plunged into his account of Mike Wilson’s death. He repeated who he was and where the bodies had been taken, telling Mrs. Wilson that someone would have to come to Tennessee to identify the body. Spencer made her write down his telephone number, because he knew she would want it later.

At last she said, “I’ve been expecting this call for a long time, Officer. Funny, though. I always thought it would come from Vietnam.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Spencer. “My brother was killed there.”

There wasn’t much left to say after that. He told her again how sorry he was, and asked if she was sure she was all right, but she was a soldier’s mother and she knew how to be brave. She said she was fine, and she thanked him for his kindness, but he could hear the sobs in her throat.

Spencer waited five minutes after he hung up the phone before he placed the second call. He drank cold coffee without tasting it, and wondered if he’d be able to sleep when his day was finally over.

Colonel Stanton had answered the phone as if he had been up for hours, which perhaps he had. His voice was crisp and alert. He picked up the receiver after one ring and said “Stanton!” as if all the calls he had ever received at home were urgent and official.

Spencer identified himself, as he had to Mrs. Wilson, and then he’d asked, for form’s sake, “Do you have a daughter named Emily?”

Spencer heard a sharp intake of breath, and then the same calm voice answered, “I do,” and then waited. He didn’t say: What is this all about? Why do you ask? Is she hurt?—all the things that people usually said when Spencer called to break the news to the loved ones. Colonel Stanton’s military training had prepared him to meet disaster with an unflinching stare. He simply waited to hear the worst.

The silence at the other end of the phone stretched on as Spencer explained that Emily Stanton and her companion had been attacked while camping near the Appalachian Trail, and that both the young people were dead. He would need a member of the Stanton family to come to Tennessee to identify and claim the body. At this point the silence had become so protracted that Spencer interrupted himself to ask: “Are you all right, sir?”

Charles Wythe Stanton ignored the question. “Are the killers in custody?”

“No, sir. Not yet.” The authority in that voice took Spencer back to his army days in Germany. This stranger on the telephone had just taken command of the investigation.

“Is there anything you need from us, Officer?”

“Yes, sir. A description of any jewelry your daughter may have been wearing.”

The list was given in the same crisp tones as before. “Is there anything else?”

“Not at this time, sir.” Spencer felt that he was more shaken by the news than this stranger on the telephone. Perhaps he doesn’t believe it yet,he thought. He hasn’t seen her; I have.

“I will be driving to Tennessee within the hour,” Charles Stanton told him. “I shall expect a full report when I arrive.”

“Go to Knoxville first,” Spencer told him. “Identify the body, and talk to the TBI. Stop in Hamelin on your way back, after my investigation is under way.”

“Hamelin is a little one-horse town, isn’t it?”

“You might say that.”

“I hope to God you people are up to this investigation,” said Charles Stanton. “Because if you aren’t, I will find the killer myself.”

He hung up before Spencer could respond. He had no intention of explaining to Colonel Stanton that “you people” was him, working alone, with whatever assistance the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation cared to provide. He took another gulp of cold, bitter coffee. Sleep, he decided, was not an option.

Martha Ayers was tired. Running the sheriff’s department short-staffed was a tough job even on the slowest days. Now, with a homicide investigation in full swing, she was subsisting on catnaps and cold burgers. She felt as if she had talked to everybody in the county by now, classroom to classroom, door to door, truck stop to café. Had anybody seen something that would help her? She had to keep moving, keep asking. Because sooner or later Spencer was going to find out that they had a double homicide on their hands, and if the pace of the investigation was killing her, she could imagine what it would do to him in his weakened state. She had known him all her life, and he was too intense for his own good, always had been. This case would pull him off that mountain like a logging chain, and if he wore himself out trying to take charge of the case, there’d be hell to pay for it. He might be sick for months. He might even have to resign.

I don’t need him,she told herself. I’m the most recent graduate of the academy. I know all the latest methods of crime solving, and besides, the TBI is doing most of the work. All Joe and I have to do is present them with a suspect.

“Miz Ayers? Are you awake? Your coffee’s getting cold.”

Martha looked up from her contemplation of the counter-top. “Thanks, Fred,” she said to the old farmer who had sat on the stool beside her. “I guess I’m working too hard.”

“I heard about it,” he said. “You don’t expect a thing like that to happen in the country.”

“No.”

“Of course, it happened here before, didn’t it? Twenty years ago.” Fred Dayton stabbed his finger at the coffee cup. “Right near that old church it was. Another couple out in the woods, up to no good, like as not.”

“The couple in that case were hikers on the Appalachian Trail,” said Martha. “These two were grad students from East Tennessee State, studying rare mountain wildflowers.”

Fred raised his eyebrows. “At night?”

“Well, they camped out. They were making a weekend of it.”

“I saw the girl’s picture in the paper. Pretty little thing. Looked like the other one.”

“Uh-huh.” The female victim, a native of Cincinnati, had been five foot nine with long black hair and dark eyes. She was pretty enough, but that was all she’d had in common with the tiny, auburn-haired Emily Stanton. She had also been married, but the husband, a fourth-year med student, had a hospital full of witnesses to account for his whereabouts on the night of the killings. They had checked him out six ways from Sunday, but the case wasn’t going to be that easy to solve. Her partner was nobody’s idea of a wife stealer, either: a balding, chubby botanist whose interest in sex seemed to have been confined to honeybees. The case had sounded sensational at first: young couple killed on the Appalachian Trail. But they weren’t a couple; they were two botanists who happened to be of opposite sex, and they weren’t attractive enough to hold the public’s attention. Perhaps that was why the coverage of the case had been light, almost casual. That, and the lack of an advocate like Charles Stanton to keep the media inflamed, had made the interest in the case little more than perfunctory, except to those who had the responsibility of solving it.

“They weren’t from around here,” said Fred. He felt entitled to talk “shop” with her because he had helped her round up strayed horses on a road once, and since then he had engaged her in occasional conversations at the diner. This time he hoped to pick up some tidbits to enliven his trip to the barbershop. Martha was willing to humor him in the hope that something he said would be of value in the investigation.

“No,” she sighed. “They weren’t from around here.”

But the killer was,she thought.

Burgess Gaither

THE TRIAL Then let the jury come. . . .The words chilled me, familiar as they were to an officer of the court.

The trial had begun.

I duly recorded in my notes: Frances Silver pleads not guilty of the felony and murder whereof she stands charged and the following jurors were drawn, sworn, and charged to pass between the prisoner and the state on her life and death, to wit: Henry Pain, David Beedle, Cyrus P. Connelly, William L. Baird, Joseph Tipps, Robert Garrison, Robert McEirath, Oscar Willis, John Hall, Richard Bean, Lafayette Collins, and David Hennessee.

They were all upstanding men of the community as far as I knew, although I was not well acquainted with any of them. By chance, none of them came from the exalted ranks of the town fathers: indeed, I knew of no connections that any of them had to the Erwins, the McDowells, or any of the other prominent families in Burke County, although no doubt Elizabeth could have found a connection somewhere in the wide-ranging roots of Morganton’s family trees. No matter if there were connections,

of course; the luck of the draw could have packed the jury with Erwin cousins and former sheriffs, and still the trial would have been perfectly legal, but considering the humble origins of the defendant, the common touch seemed appropriate. Surely these plainspoken men could understand the humble life of this young woman better than the cosseted scions of planter families ever would.

Constable Pearson threw open the doors to the courtroom, and a horde of raucous, clamoring spectators crowded in on an ill wind of whiskey fumes and tobacco smoke. It was a prodigious turnout, even by the standards of Burke County’s ordinary court attendance, which was never sparse. Because it was a brisk and cloudy day in early spring, I did not dread the presence of so many sweaty bodies in the confinement of the courtroom, as I often did during the September term of Superior Court. The heat and the noise would at least be bearable today. I hoped, though, that when the new county courthouse was built next year, the courtroom would be larger than the present one.

I recognized many of the men in the crowd: the blacksmith, the tavern keeper, several local farmers. Shabbily dressed frontiersmen elbowed their way in among the dark-suited gentlemen and the townsmen in shirtsleeves, everyone eager for a look at the frail young defendant.

Suddenly a flash of white at the back of the courtroom caught my attention. Surely it wasn’t . . . it was. . . a parasol. I groaned inwardly and leaned forward in an attempt to discern the bearer of this feminine object among the throng of men. My eyes could only confirm what I already knew, however, and sure enough, a few moments later the crowd parted as if before the staff of Moses, and Miss Mary Erwin sailed in upon a tide of murmuring.

Of course, it was she. What other woman would dare to invade the male bastion of justice? Apart from the danger of unruly crowds, fistfights, and even more serious displays of violence, there is the carnival atmosphere of trial day, with drunken men cheering the lawyers, farmers spitting tobacco juice upon the floor, and a general laxity of decorum that should make any member of the fair sex shun this building when criminal court is in session. No doubt the fact that Miss Mary’s father had been clerk of Superior Court for forty-four years gave her a proprietary interest in the proceedings, and I knew that the friendless young woman on trial had aroused her interest and sympathy.

I glanced at Judge Donnell to see if he would order the bailiff to escort Miss Mary from the premises, but he showed no interest in the matter. Her cousin Colonel James Erwin motioned for her to join him, no doubt concluding that if the lady could not be made to leave, then the next best thing would be for a respectable family member to act as her chaperone. I made a mental note to omit this detail from the account of the day’s events that I would give to my wife, but no doubt she would know about her sister’s boldness already.

What a striking contrast Miss Mary made to the defendant! Her dress and the Spencer jacket that covered it were of the finest material, her hair was perfectly arranged under a fashionable Charleston bonnet, and although she was no beauty, Miss Mary radiated an air of assurance and good breeding that would mark her as a lady and win her respect and deference in any circumstances in which she might find herself. The defendant was a lovely, fragile creature, with a sweet, childish face under a cloud of fair hair, but if Frances Silver lived for a hundred years, she could not attain the commanding poise and aura of gentility that Miss Mary so effortlessly displayed.

Another thought occurred to me as well. Although Frankie Silver was accused of killing her husband with an ax, surely a brutal crime calling for great audacity, I did not think, were the circumstances reversed, that she could have walked into a courtroom full of men and sat down so confident that her presence would be tolerated. I wondered if Elizabeth knew about her sister’s daring venture. I resolved not to mention it at home. No doubt she would learn of it soon enough. With a rustle of her skirts, Miss

Mary took her place among the gallery and gazed expectantly at the officers of the court as if we were actors. Let the games begin,her expression seemed to say.

William Alexander would present his case first. He rose, and inclined his head toward Judge Donnell with just the suggestion of a bow. The murmuring swelled and then tapered off at a stern look from the bench. Mr. Alexander waved his fist in the air. “We are here to try a wicked and heartless creature for cruel murder!” he announced.

Full of the righteous brimstone that infuses prosecuting attorneys, William Alexander described the finding of Charlie Silver’s sundered body, dwelling on the victim’s youth and innocence. He let his voice falter as he described the life cut short, the soul sent unshriven into the hereafter, and the fatherless child left to fend for itself in the world. He ended with a thundering demand for justice. “The very blood of Charles Silver cries out for retribution. Let not his killer go unpunished!”

Nicholas Woodfin sat through this harangue, frowning slightly, as if he wondered what his colleague was talking about, his expression suggesting that Mr. Alexander had been misinformed, and that he welcomed the opportunity to rectify the misunderstanding. Perhaps we are not so far from actors after all.

Frankie Silver herself sat motionless, staring at the window beyond the jury box, as if she could not hear the tumult taking place around her. Perhaps she hears but does not comprehend, I thought. I wondered if Nicholas Woodfin had explained the trial procedure to her, and if so, had he done it in simple enough terms for an unlettered girl to understand? Surely there are more people here today than she has ever seen in her life; perhaps she is terrified of the sight of so many unruly strangers. She looked distressed only once, for the briefest moment, when Nicholas Woodfin left her side so that he might address the court on her behalf.

The prince speaks,I thought sourly, remembering the stir that his appearance had caused among the ladies of the community. He stood tall and straight in his black suit, with his classical features composed into a solemn countenance. I was loath to admit, even to myself, that he did make an impressive figure in our simple country courthouse. I wondered what the jurors would make of him.

“Gentlemen, you sit in judgment of a tragedy,” he told the jurors. “A young man in his prime has been cruelly struck down, and we compound the sorrow of the family by accusing his widow of his murder, by hauling her into open court to suffer the gaze of strangers, while we accuse her of the basest of crimes.

“My colleague has told you how Charles Silver was done to death, and that his remains were cut up with a knife, as one might butcher a deer, and that his body was burned in the fireplace as if it were refuse. Is this the crime of a woman,gentlemen? Can you see even the most pitiless female savage committing such an outrage upon an enemy? I cannot. Yet Mr. Alexander asks us to believe that this gentle young woman, only eighteen years of age, a frail girl who is the tender mother of a baby, could do this awful deed—not to a stranger, but to a man who is her own husband.”

Nicholas Woodfin turned and pointed to the defendant, who sat with perfect composure gravely watching him. “This fair young woman whose fate is in your hands is Frances Stewart Silver. Look at her. She is not mad. She is not a savage. She is an ordinary young woman, against whom no word of censure has ever been uttered in her community. She is not lazy. She is not wanton. She is not a drunkard. She is a simple young wife and mother. They say so, all of them in the place she comes from. Yet Mr. Alexander would have us believe that she had the ferocity to butcher a man—her own husband! Where is the sense in it, gentlemen? Where is the strength that would allow her to do it? And—that which concerns us most of all in a court of law— where is the proof that she did it?For I saw none. A man is dead, that much has been shown. But by whose hand he met his untimely death—that has notbeen

shown.”

It was a stirring speech, I thought, delivered in the ringing tones of an actor or perhaps a camp-meeting preacher. I wondered whether the jury would be swayed by it, or whether the enormity of the crime had moved them past the power of persuasion.

The witnesses were waiting in the hall outside the courtroom under the watchful eye of Constable Presnell, who would usher in each one in turn as he was summoned to testify. I glanced at the list of names that I had duly copied from the back of Mr. Alexander’s indictment. There were thirteen names on the list, members of the Silver clan, their backcountry neighbors who had made up the search party; the two constables involved in the arrest of the defendant; and our own Dr. Tate to provide the medical evidence concerning the cause of death and the nature of the wounds.

In my short tenure as clerk of court, I had become quite a connoisseur of witnesses. I never failed to marvel at a great bull of a man who creeps onto the witness stand and squeaks like a mouse, his eyes bulging with fright to be under the scrutiny of so great an audience. Other people give evidence in calm, measured tones as if they were ordering up a new suit, instead of swearing away the life of a fellow citizen. Some witnesses seethe with anger as they recount the misdeeds of the accused, or weep piteously if they are compelled to bear witness against a loved one. I wondered what sort of witnesses today’s trial would offer, and I was fairly certain that no tears would be shed, for on that list of names I saw not one that could be counted as a friend of the defendant. I wondered why Mrs. Silver’s mother and brother had not been called upon to testify, for when we sent them away in January it was under bond, with the understanding that they would return to give evidence in the trial. Perhaps neither attorney feels that he can trust them, I decided. One lawyer must fear that they would lie, and the other is equally afraid that they might speak the whole truth. The trial would proceed without their testimony.

Jack Collis made a good witness. He was a wiry old man with the keen blue eyes of a woodsman. He looked about sixty, and he had lived on the frontier all his life, farming and tracking animals for fur and food. His authority as a tracker could not be questioned. If his clothing was not all that one could hope for in a formal court of law, at least he was tolerably clean. Although he spoke up in a clear voice that carried well in the courtroom, he kept his answers short and to the point. Not a man for social conversation, I thought.

Yes, he had been in the search party for Charlie Silver. No, he had not seen any evidence of the missing man in the woods or in the iced-over river.

“And what did you do then, sir?”

“I figured on searching the cabin.”

“Why?”

“Because he wasn’t anywhere else.”

“Because there was not a sign of Charles Silver between his folks’ place and George Young’s, where his wife said he had gone?”

“That’s right.”

“When did you go to the cabin?”

“Sunday morning. The eighth of January, it was. While we were out searching the woods, I chanced to hear somebody saying that Frankie had gone back to her folks’ place over the river. I figured it couldn’t do no harm to look around in Charlie’s cabin.”

“Did you go by yourself?”

“Yes. It wasn’t but a long shot. I just thought I’d have a look.”

“So you went to the Silver homestead. Could you describe the interior of the cabin for the jury, Mr. Collis?”

The frontiersman blinked. “It’s just a cabin.”

William Alexander favored him with an encouraging smile. “We’d like to picture the scene as you tell your story, sir. Where the furniture was, and so on.”

Jack Collis gave the prosecutor a doubtful look, but after a moment’s thought, he obliged. “It’s an ordinary cabin. Made of chestnut logs, caulked with lime. Fifty paces long, twenty paces wide. Door in the center, front and back, and one little square window next to the fireplace. Puncheon floors. Bed in the corner between the fireplace and the door. Baby’s cradle at the bedside. Table and benches—middle of the room. Oak chest against the back wall.”

I tried to picture the little house. Surely in its entirety it could have fit into Squire Erwin’s parlor at Belvidere; yet I knew that families with eight or ten children lived in similar dwellings, not only in the mountain wilderness but among the humbler folk in Morganton. I glanced at Mrs. Silver to see what her reaction was to hearing her meager possessions thus outlined before a room full of strangers, but she remained impassive.

“It was clean,” said Jack Collis, noticing perhaps the faint distaste in Mr. Alexander’s expression.

“So you went into this one-room abode to look around, sir. And what did you find?”

“Well, I couldn’t see much to begin with. The fire was out. It was almighty dark in there. And cold. I went over to the fireplace to see about starting a fire, so’s I could see better, and when I knelt down it struck me that there was too much ash in the fireplace.”

“Could you tell us what you deduced from that?” I suspected that the prosecutor’s bewilderment was not entirely feigned. William Alexander had never cleaned out a fireplace in his life.

“Somebody had burned up a lot of wood without cleaning out the fireplace. Seemed like a lot of logs had been burned in a hurry, and I wondered how come, so I commenced to sifting through the ashes.”

“What did you find?”

Jack Collis told how he lit a new fire to heat the water in the kettle, and how the grease bubbles told him that flesh had been burned upon the logs, which prompted him to make a more careful search of the cabin.

“Once the room warmed up, the smell told me something was wrong.”

“What smell, Mr. Collis?”

“The smell of butchering,” Jack Collis said, scowling at the memory. The courtroom shuddered with him.

“What did you do then, sir?”

“I went and found Jacob Hutchins with the search party, and took him back to the cabin. He helped me take up a plank of the puncheon floor next to the fireplace.”

“And what did you find, sir?”

“Blood. A dried-up puddle of blood in the dirt underneath that plank.”

William Alexander smiled indulgently. “A rabbit, perhaps, or a deer?”

“You butcher animals outdoors.”

Several of the jurors were nodding in agreement. Most of them had hunted in the deep forests of Burke County at some time in their lives, and they knew the truth of Jack Collis’s words. William Alexander looked pleased with himself as he nodded to Nicholas Woodfin and returned to his seat. “Your witness.”

I was watching the defendant. She sat perfectly still, staring past the jury as if she were so deep in prayer or meditation that the words did not reach her. I fancied, though, that I saw her wince when Jack Collis spoke of butchering.

When Nicholas Woodfin stood up to question the old man, Mrs. Silver’s blank stare wavered, and for a moment she regarded her lawyer with shining eyes, but the look was gone in an instant, and she resumed her pose of indifference to the proceedings around her.

I wondered what Mr. Woodfin would make of this witness. The legal strategy would be to discredit Jack Collis, if he could, by questioning the old man’s eyesight or establishing Collis’s close ties to the Silver family and his animosity toward the young widow. I would have hesitated to take such a course of action, though, for I had seen what a forthright fellow the witness was, and I thought that he had won the respect—and therefore the trust—of that simple jury. They would view with disfavor any attempt by a town lawyer to impugn this man’s testimony.

Woodfin must have felt as I did, for after one or two perfunctory questions concerning the circumstantial nature of the grisly discovery, he dismissed the old woodsman with grave courtesy.

I looked about the courtroom for familiar faces. Charlie Silver’s family was represented by his uncle Mr. Greenberry Silver, himself a prominent landowner in the western reaches of Burke County. One of the constables had mentioned that Charlie’s stepmother had a new baby, born only a few weeks ago, and I surmised that either Jacob Silver had chosen to be with his wife, or else he had not cared to venture down from the hills to hear the particulars of his son’s murder detailed before uncaring strangers. Other Silver relatives waited in the hallway for their own turn as witnesses.

I caught sight of Isaiah Stewart midway back in the throng. His face bore that look of composed grief that one often sees at funerals, and I wondered whether he had accepted his daughter’s guilt or if he thought that she was doomed despite her innocence. I could not decide which burden would be the more terrible for a father to bear.

At Stewart’s side was a husky, sandy-haired fellow who looked like a twenty-five-year-old version of

his companion. The younger man’s emotions were not so well controlled as those of Isaiah Stewart, for I could see rage in every line of his face. His eyes were narrowed, his jaw set in a clenched scowl, and his body put me in mind of a coiled spring as he leaned forward, straining to catch every word of the testimony. I hoped that he had not managed to smuggle a weapon into the courtroom. This is the elder son, I thought. The one who was away on a long hunt with his father at the time of the murder. What was his name? It was not written in any of the court documents, for he was not involved in the proceedings in any way, but someone had spoken of him. I had it now! Jackson. Jackson Stewart, married to a Howell girl, who was surely some kin to the Thomas Howell on my witness list. Surely that would cause dissension in the ranks of the family. I felt that regardless of the outcome of this case, the ripples of pain and ill will would course through that community for years to come. In one sense, a trial is the end of a crime, but in another way it is only the beginning of a protracted torment more cruel than the hangman’s rope. The survivors suffer at leisure.

Mr. Alexander took charge again, asking that Miss Nancy Wilson be brought forth to testify. Gabe Presnell opened one of the great oak doors at the back of the courtroom and ushered in a sharp-faced young woman in black. She moved in no great haste, serenely indifferent to the stares and murmurs that arose as she passed. Her head was held high, her countenance white with anger. I noticed that the jurors sat up straighter when they caught sight of her. This is a personage, I thought. She is no older than the defendant, but this is a lady who knows her own mind, and woe betide the traveling drummers, bears, or Indians who get in her way.

On her way up to testify, the stern young woman passed little Mrs. Silver, and I could feel the enmity crackle between them. They glanced at each other, scorn on both sides, and quickly looked away.

When Nancy Wilson had been duly sworn, William Alexander began his questioning with a reassuring smile. “Now, Miss Wilson, speak up. There is no need to be afraid.”

She flashed a look at him that said foollouder than I could have shouted it, but she made no audible reply. I glanced at the defendant. She did not direct her gaze toward the witness, but her face no longer bore the vacant stare that she had effected for most of the morning; now, although she would not look, she was listening.

“You are Miss Nancy Wilson of the Toe River section of western Burke County?”

“I am.”

“And, for the record, are you any relation of Mr. Thomas Wilson, an attorney in Morganton.”

This question caught her off guard, for she had been stoking herself up to talk about the murder. She blinked once or twice while she got her bearings, and then said, “I don’t believe so. My brother is named Tom Wilson, but he’s no lawyer. We don’t know any Wilsons in town.”

There was soft laughter around the courtroom at the lady’s confusion, and I saw Mr. Wilson the attorney shake his head, smiling.

“Well, now we know where we are,” said Mr. Alexander cheerfully. “Let us proceed. Are you acquainted with the defendant Frances Silver?”

“I am,” she said in a low voice. “She was married to a kinsman of mine. My mother is the sister of Charlie’s father.”

“Did you hear Mrs. Silver speak of the disappearance of her husband?”

“I did.” An emphatic nod. “Last December I was visiting at Uncle Jacob’s cabin when Frankie came in to say that Charlie had not yet come home.”

“Did she say where he had gone?”

“She had already told the family that Charlie was gone the day before. She just came to say he wasn’t back yet. A day or so earlier he had gone over to George Young’s place. To get his Christmas liquor, according to her. Which was a lie.” Her tone spoke volumes about the insolence of one who could foully murder a man and then besmirch his memory with cruel falsehood. I saw the jurors glance at one another, though, and their expressions convinced me that all the men in the courtroom had thought in unison, “Maybe Charlie Silver didn’t go to George Young’s for liquor this time, but he had been on that errand often enough before.”After all, the family had accepted Frankie’s story without question. The neighbors had spent days searching the paths between the Silvers’ land and the Youngs’ homestead. It rang true. Charlie Silver was by all accounts a handsome, high-spirited young man, and it had been Christmastime, a season especially conducive to the imbibing of spirits. Going off to a local distiller for a jug of whiskey would have been a likely custom for an idle youth, but because Charlie Silver was dead, Nancy Wilson must stand up before God and Burke County and deny the possibility of such a thing. Saints had to be dead, according to the tradition of the ancient Church; now ordinary folk have gone them one better, and deem that all dead people have to be saints. It makes for considerable confusion in the courts of law, trying to sort out all the transgressors when no one will admit to any sinning.

“Did Mrs. Silver seem concerned about her missing husband?”

“I suppose she was. She looked like she had been crying.” Young Miss Wilson tossed her head. “She kept saying that she wished he’d come back, and then she would cry some more.”

“Did Mrs. Silver suggest that the family begin a search for her husband?”

Nancy Wilson nodded. “She said she was worried about him being out in the snowdrifts. She was afraid he’d catch his death, and said would we please ask the men to go and look for him.”

“Who was present when Mrs. Silver appeared to report her husband’s absence?”

Nancy Wilson ticked them off on her fingers. “Charlie’s stepmother and sisters, his brother Alfred and the rest of the young ’uns, and me.”

This testimony had been covered at the previous hearing by Miss Margaret Silver, the young sister of the murdered man. I wondered why she had not been called upon to repeat it at the trial. Mr. Alexander had not excused her in deference to her youth, because her cousin was not much older. More probably the prosecutor thought that Margaret would be cowed by the proceedings, and that she would not make a good witness. She might waver upon cross-examination. I remembered her rambling testimony at the earlier hearing, and the frightened look on her face as she stared out at the sea of strangers. Nancy Wilson, the iron maiden who took her place today, was a stronger witness, so armed with self-righteous indignation was she that the devil himself could not have made her falter.

“Did Mrs. Silver ask any of the women to accompany her back to her own cabin, since she was now alone?”

“Well, she may have asked Margaret and me, but we said the snow was too deep. We told her to bide

a while with us, but she went on back.”

I stole a glance at Nicholas Woodfin, who must have known as well as I did that this was the chain of words that would hang his client, unless he could somehow dispel the power of this testimony. Frankie Silver had lied about her husband’s whereabouts, and the testimony of this young woman bore witness to that lie. I barely listened to the rest of the interrogation, so occupied was I in second-guessing Mr. Woodfin’s next move. I had not long to wait.

Nicholas Woodfin was courtesy itself to the state’s witness, but he stood perhaps a shade farther from her than he had from the old woodsman Jack Collis, and something in his expression conveyed the faintest distaste for the lady before him, as if he found her anger vulgar. “You were related to Charles Silver, I believe you said?”

She nodded.

“And no doubt you were quite attached to your handsome kinsman.” Something silky in his tone conjured up images of laughing adolescents chasing each other through blackberry patches and stealing kisses beneath a thicket of laurel. One could almost see young Nancy Wilson’s ardor turn to bitterness when Charlie’s roving eye fell upon the pale loveliness of little Frances Stewart. But Nicholas Woodfin said none of this in plain words, and what had not been spoken could not be denied.

Nancy Wilson looked away from the lawyer’s mask of respectful attention. “He was a good boy,” she said. “Too good for her. She was nobody.”

“And had you ever quarreled with Frankie Silver?”

The witness hesitated. “Not to say quarreled,” she said at last. “Frankie Stewart thought a deal too much of herself, that’s all.”

“Was she hardworking?”

“And didn’t she let everybody know it, too? As if we’d feel sorry for her.”

“Was she a good mother?”

An impatient sigh. “She was tolerable.”

“And she was a faithful wife?”

A long pause. “I never heard different.”

Unlike Charlie.The unspoken words hung in the air, suggested only by a clever lawyer’s knowing smile. Nicholas Woodfin let the silence echo long enough to get inside everybody’s head, and then he dismissed the witness with a casual wave, indicating that he had no more use for her than Charlie ever did.

Had they been lovers? This dark, proud woman and the handsome, careless Silver boy? Perhaps, perhaps not. We would never know. Mr. Woodfin had no interest in letting us know. It was the seed of doubt he had meant to plant, and he was satisfied that he had done so to his client’s advantage. Still, I thought, the fact that Nancy Wilson had a metaphorical ax to grind did not mean that Frankie Silver had not used one in a more literal sense.

One of our own Morganton physicians, Dr. William Caldwell Tate, was the last witness before the recess. He is an affable young man, only just graduated from the South Carolina Medical College in Charleston, and back in Morganton to practice medicine alongside his older brother, Dr. Samuel Tate, who is not the Sam Tate that had served as foreman of the grand jury last week. The two Sam Tates are first cousins, and to the eternal vexation of future genealogists, no doubt, one Sam has married the sister of the other. (Anyone who can keep Morganton bloodlines straight can do square roots in his head.) Of young Dr. William Tate, suffice it to say: his mother was an Erwin.

In the cheerful, impersonal tone of all his kind (as if hedid not have a skull, or brains to leak out, or a life that would be all too brief), Tate commented on the injuries as they were reported to him by Constable Baker. The young doctor had been chosen to make that arduous two-day journey over the mountains to examine the corpse because the more established physicians could not have been spared from the care of their own patients in the vicinity of Morganton. “We cannot neglect the living in order to see to the dead,” his brother had once remarked in another court case.

After establishing Dr. William Tate’s identity and medical qualifications, Mr. Alexander said, “Constable Baker described the nature of the injuries sustained by the victim, did he not?”

“He did, sir. I was able to examine the remains for myself, and my opinion tallied with that of the constable.”

“How were the remains found?”

“Some, of course, were burnt, and of those I was able to examine only fragments, but the others had been buried in the snow or concealed about logs in that frozen wilderness, and those parts were tolerably well preserved. The skin had been blanched and shriveled from the cold, but there was no decay or invasion by insects.”

I looked at once at my sister-in-law Miss Mary, hoping to see her swooning in the arms of her cousin, but she was as alert and attentive as if a quadrille were being performed. I put it down to a want of imagination on her part, for I felt that the room had suddenly become unseasonably warm.

The doctor continued, “I have taken the liberty of producing a sketch of the placement of various wounds.” He drew a sheet of paper out of his coat pocket and handed it to the attorney, who examined it and passed it on to the judge, to Mr. Woodfin, to the jury, and lastly to myself. Dr. Tate had sketched the head and limbs unconnected to a torso, and he had labeled each part with the size and nature of the wound. Many of his notations read: Sawing marks, made post-mortem.It was not those wounds that concerned us.

“Were you able to determine the cause of death, Doctor?”

“Any of a number of strong blows with an ax would have served to dispatch the victim, but the one I judge most likely to have done so was a head wound—a gash of several inches’ width along the right side of the skull. That blow would have so incapacitated a man that he would be unable to defend himself.”

William Alexander considered the matter. “One quick blow to the head—probably delivered without warning—and poor Charles Silver is helpless before his murderer. Would it require great strength to strike a man thus with an ax?”

“Well, sir, a child could not have done it,” said Dr. Tate, “but nearly any able-bodied adult could have

managed it. It would take more force than cracking an egg, but less than chopping kindling.”

“Would a woman be able to manage it?”

“Oh, easily, I should think. Especially if she was accustomed to doing farmwork.”

The prosecutor smiled. “Thank you, Doctor.”

The courtroom was a hive of murmurings for a few moments thereafter, and I distinctly heard one man

say, “I knew she done it!” before Judge Donnell scolded them into silence.

Nicholas Woodfin took his time approaching the witness. “Dr. Tate,” he said slowly, “I know that you have stated that it is physically possible for a woman to have struck this fatal blow. Let me ask you to consider another aspect of that possibility. Have you ever, in all your training and experience, heard or read of a woman killing someone with an ax?”

The physician seemed to be staring straight at me, but I knew that he was not seeing, merely searching

the memory behind his eyes for some tale of a murderess. “Poison is a woman’s weapon,” he muttered at last.

“Yes. Poison,” said Nicholas Woodfin. “The ladies don’t like untidiness, do they?”

“Not generally, no. But if you were angry or desperate, and you had the weapon to hand . . .”

“But—let me repeat—you know of no case everin which a woman dispatched anyone with an ax. Is

that correct?”

“I can’t call one to mind. No.”

“Such a thing would be unheard of then, in your experience?”

“Well, Charlotte Corday killed Marat in his bath with a knife. Of course, she was French.”

When the laughter subsided, the attorney said, “Mademoiselle Corday was not a young girl of eighteen,

either, was she? She was a political fanatic killing a stranger, was she not?”

“I suppose so.”

“Hardly a parallel to this case, would you say, sir?”

“Perhaps not.”

“Doctor, if someone had come in and told you that a young man’s head had been split open with an ax, and his body parts strewn about the yard, would you have told the sheriff to look for a slight young woman of eighteen— working alone?” He sounded the last two words louder than the rest, and I heard answering gasps from the spectators.

Mrs. Silver stopped staring at the window and blinked. I saw her slender form stiffen within the shapeless mass of that faded gown. Her blue eyes met mine; I was first to look away.

Dr. Tate cleared his throat. “Well, not to expect a thing isn’t to say it can’t happen.”

Nicholas Woodfin shook his head. “Again, Doctor: Would you have expected such a thing?”

The physician glanced at the prosecutor and shrugged before responding to Mr. Woodfin’s question. “No,” he said at last.

A few moments later Mr. Donnell dismissed the buzzing court for the noon recess. I was generally the last person to leave, for I had to gather up my notes and tidy my desk. Beside, I didn’t care to be jostled by the rabble in their haste to reach the taverns. Nicholas Woodfin rose, murmured a few words of encouragement to Mrs. Silver, and then took his leave of her. I hoped that he was spending the noon recess in study and contemplation, because things did not look well for his young client. Then I saw Thomas Wilson lingering in the doorway, obviously waiting for his colleague so that they could confer about the events of the morning.

At last the prisoner stood up, preparing to be led back to her cell by Mr. Presnell, but I could see that she, too, was loath to go. She kept looking back at the departing mob, and once she whispered something to the constable, who looked annoyed but gave a grudging assent.

Finally, two men, moving against the tide of humanity, emerged at the rail within arm’s length of Mrs. Silver. They did not reach out to her, though. Her father and brother, for it was they, stood together grim-faced and almost shy before this young girl who had suddenly become a presence. They fingered the brims of their hats and shifted uneasily from one foot to another. The constable took a step back from the family gathering, eyeing them warily, his hand on his weapon. I lingered over my papers, straining to overhear what was said.

“Well, Frankie,” said Isaiah Stewart.

“How are they treating you?” her brother Jackson asked.

“I get enough to eat,” she said. Her frown was directed at the floor. She had appeared anxious enough to see her family, but now that they had appeared, the meeting seemed to afford her no pleasure. They made no move to embrace the girl or to clasp her hand. The three of them stood in awkward silence until finally Frankie Silver asked, “Did Mama send any word?”

“Only that she is praying that God will spare you,” said her father.

The sullen look returned. “I see,” she said softly. “She didn’t come.”

“No. We thought it best.” Her father would not meet her eyes as he said this, and I strained to hear her reply, but there was none, until after some more leaden silence, she said, “And my baby?”

“She’s over to the Silvers’ place,” said Jackson. “We ain’t seen her, but I reckon she’s doing all right. Miz Silver just had a new baby boy herself last month, so likely it’s as easy for her to do for two as for one.”

Frankie Silver’s eyes sought those of her older brother. “When you get home, Jack, I want you to ride over there and see she’s taken care of good,” she said, and as he replied with a shamefaced nod, another thought struck her. “Where’s Blackston?”

“We left him home to look after your mama. It’s still cold yet up the mountain, and she wanted him to tend the fire and see to the livestock.”

I thought that the Stewarts had been wise to keep the other two suspects well out of Morganton, since tempers are apt to run high on court days, but Frankie Silver’s eyes filled with tears. Perhaps she wishes to see her dear mother and brother one last time, I thought.

“Alone, then,” she murmured.

“We’re right here, Frankie,” her father said.

“We’ll do what we can.” The voice of Jackson Stewart carried more conviction. “We’ll do allwe can.”

Brother and sister looked at each other and nodded as though an understanding had passed between

them. “I’ll say no more then,” she said, and she turned to Mr. Presnell. “We can go now, mister.” As the constable led her away, I heard her say, “Can we stand off by ourselves on the lawn for a little

bit?”

“It’s time to eat, ma’am.”

“I want to look at the mountains. Can you see them from here?”

I made my way out into the now deserted hall, intending to fortify myself at one of the taverns if space

and congenial company could be found, when a shrill voice halted me in my tracks.

“Mr. Gaither! Brother!”

I froze. My wife’s sisters generally employed the term “brother” only when prefacing a favor, and since I recognized this sister’s voice as that of the redoubtable Miss Mary Erwin, I turned slowly toward her with a smile of greeting and a soul of dread.

“Miss Mary,” I said. “How are you enjoying the trial? May I take you home to dinner?”

“The trial is a travesty,” she informed me, ignoring my pleasantries. “And I do not see how anyone of good conscience could eat after having witnessed it.”

I determined not to take this slur personally, even though it was in a sense my court and my trial. I wonder if she would have said such a thing had her dear father continued in the position of clerk of court. “Are things not proceeding to your liking?” I asked politely.

She did not quite reach my shoulder, but she stood there glaring at me, with her parasol perched musket-like on her shoulder, looking for all the world like an Amazon maiden. At my question, the warrior’s scowl gave way to a look of womanly pity. “Oh, Mr. Gaither,” she sighed. “That poor lost girl. I cannot make sense of it at all.”

“We think she must have killed her husband because she lied and said that he had not come home, and

of course . . . he had.”

“Not that!” she said, frowning impatiently. “Of course I have followed the trial procedure. I understand perfectly what the witnesses have sworn to. But what we want here is some plainspeaking.”

“How so?” I murmured. I looked about for her cousin James, but he seemed to have made good his

escape while she waylaid me.

“The girl is the only living soul who knows what happened in that cabin, Mr. Gaither. Put her up in front of the court and askher.”

“That we cannot do, Miss Mary,” I said.

“Why not?”

“Because defendants may not testify in felony cases. Surely you know that. It is the law of the land, handed down to us from English common law. A venerable tradition that goes back centuries.”

“To the Dark Ages, no doubt, where it belongs,” she replied. Her gloved hand touched my arm. “Can you not waive the rule in this case? I feel sure there is something we ought to hear. Let the girl speak.”

I smiled gently at the flattery implicit in her request. Could I, as clerk of court, set aside codified trial law and age-old tradition because an Erwin wished it so? I shook my head. “Even if I were to attempt such a thing, Miss Mary, neither Judge Donnell nor the prosecutor would allow it. You might even find that the lady’s own attorney would wish to keep her silent for fear that with her testimony she might inadvertently condemn herself. She will not speak.”

“Then how can we get at the truth?”

Although I had questioned that very stricture in my own mind often enough, I found myself defending the no-testimony rule to my sister-in-law. “There are those who say that hearing a felon’s sworn statement would not avail the listeners of the truth. Such a custom would merely give the accused an opportunity to perjure himself, and to put his soul in further peril by breaking his oath before God.”

“You think she would lie under oath and be damned for it?” said Miss Mary.

“So it is argued.”

“Is it better that she should say nothing and be hanged for it?”

I had no reply to this, and Miss Mary did not wait to hear one.

When court resumed that afternoon, the prosecutor called more witnesses from the search party that had scoured the woods for Charlie Silver’s remains. No new revelations came to light. The only purpose of the afternoon sessions was to hammer home the two themes of William Alexander’s case: that the murder was pitiless and horrible, and that the defendant had repeatedly lied.

At last, as the afternoon light thickened into evening, he announced that he had no further witnesses to call. Mr. Nicholas Woodfin might now present his case.

I had doubted that Woodfin would call any witnesses of his own. What on earth could they say? No one had said anything to the detriment of the character of the defendant. Those who took the stand had all admitted, however grudgingly, that young Mrs. Silver was hardworking, sober, altogether a dutiful wife and mother. There were no past incidents of violence or wanton behavior to explain away.

Was she mad, then? I could not believe that anyone present in that courtroom would think so. Frankie Silver had sat solemn and silent through the day’s grim proceedings, her behavior unmarked by fits or

laughter, and her person as seemly and fair as a maiden in a church pew. He had nothing to deny then, except the sworn testimony of half the frontier community: Frankie Silver had lied. I saw no way around it unless he put her on the stand, and that he was not permitted to do. A bitter outing for a newly minted lawyer, I thought. God help him.

Nicholas Woodfin took a deep breath as he rose to face the judge. “Your Honor,” he said, “the defense rests.”

Burgess Gaither

VERDICT By the time the shadows were lengthening on the lawn outside the courtroom, both attorneys had concluded their closing arguments. I had spent much of the afternoon gazing out the window at the trees and the clabbered sky above them, letting the words wash over me, as they would surely drown Frankie Silver.

Judge Donnell delivered his own ponderous summary of the evidence and the jurors’ obligations, and then he sent the jury out to deliberate. They would report back promptly the next morning to deliver their verdict. Court was adjourned until then. I wondered if His Honor would sleep any better than the rest of us, awaiting the morning’s decision. Mrs. Silver was led out of the courtroom to return to her cell for a night of dread that could scarcely be worse than the gallows itself. I watched her square her thin shoulders as she paced along in front of her jailer, head high, sparing not a glance for the crowd, and I resolved to murmur a prayer for her that night.

The jurors trooped off to be sequestered in the courthouse jury room, which was little bigger than the wooden table contained in it. For the duration of their deliberations they would be “without meat nor drink nor fire,” as was the custom from time immemorial. Men who are without food or drink will be more likely to reach a prompt decision. While the jury was thus deprived, considering the evidence against Frankie Silver, the rest of Morganton repaired to the taverns to retry the case in a dull roar over whiskey and tankards of ale. This convivial court of tipplers argued and analyzed the fine points of the trial in preparation for a later recital of the events before the ladies at dinner that evening.

I found the attorneys at McEntire’s, all seated together at a table in the far corner. They had been accorded this semblance of privacy out of respect for the solemn nature of their task, and the revelers at the bar had thus far not intruded upon the members of the bar.

No doubt a layman would have been surprised to see these men who had been bitter adversaries two hours hence conversing over tankards of ale with genial complacency, but as a fellow attorney, I expected nothing else. The battle was over now; the matter was in the hands of a jury, and the rival lawyers would live to fight another day. They left their animosity, as always, within the courthouse walls, for legal careers are long, and today’s opponent might be tomorrow’s colleague, or judge, or influential friend in the legislature. There is no graver courtesy than the respect born of ambitious self-interest.

Even so, Nicholas Woodfin was poor company that evening. He showed no rancor toward his companions, but he sat before an untouched glass, and stared at nothing, answering only in monosyllables if one addressed him twice—loudly.

“I thought you did well,” I told him, as I settled into the empty chair beside him. “You spoke eloquently and with great conviction. Altogether a moving performance.”

“But not enough,” Woodfin said, resting his forehead on the heel of his hand. I saw how tired he looked, and how careworn. There was a stubble of beard on his normally clean-shaven chin, and his clothing was more full of sweat and creases than a fastidious gentleman would permit in ordinary circumstances. No doubt he would change before the dinner hour, but just now he seemed too cast down to care about how he looked. Anyone would think that he had been the one on trial today, rather than merely a learned laborer doing the job for which he was hired.

“Come on, Woodfin, give over, won’t you? The lady is in God’s hands now,” said Mr. Wilson, who was considerably more sedate than his colleague. When this bracing speech brought no response, Wilson remarked to the rest of us, “In legal matters, our young friend has not yet learned to keep his heartstrings as tightly drawn as his purse strings.”

William Alexander, whose joviality was tempered only by his courtesy, raised his pewter tankard in a toast. “No, no,” he said heartily. “Don’t scold my colleague for his sensibility, Uncle Wilson. I like a man who believes in his causes. His loyal heart does him credit. To his health—if not that of his client!”

We all laughed politely at his jest. Even Woodfin managed a wan smile, but I could see that he was still troubled. “She may escape the gallows yet,” I told him. “The evidence is purely circumstantial.”

“So is the evidence that the sun will rise tomorrow,” Mr. Alexander drawled. “But I believe it all the same.”

Mr. Wilson laughed at this flippancy, and the two of them bent their heads together to talk of other matters, concerning family, I believe, for they were related by Mr. Alexander’s marriage to Wilson’s niece.

I turned my attention to the anxious young defense attorney. I thought it would be useless to try to cheer him up with a change of subject, so I resolved to be a sympathetic listener to his woes about the case. Besides, the conversation I’d had with Miss Mary Erwin that afternoon hovered in my thoughts. “Has your client told you anything about the death of her husband?” I asked Woodfin. “People feel that there is a great deal to the story that we do not yet know.”

Nicholas Woodfin groaned. “I wish she had told me something. I could have used it in her defense. But Frankie Silver keeps her own counsel. She is a brave little thing. I cannot look at her without thinking of the little Spartan boy with the fox in his tunic, gnawing out his innards. She will keep silent if it kills her. And it will.”

“Still, you represented her well. You cast what doubt you could. Do you wish that she could have taken the stand herself?”

Woodfin assumed the blank gaze of one who looks at events unfolding in his mind’s eye and sees nothing of the world around him. “I wish she could have testified,” he said at last. “I’m very much afraid that she would have chosen silence, but by God I wish I’d had the opportunity to let her speak.”

“It is a strange case,” I said. “She looks like an angel, but her neighbors tell such tales of the crime and her coldhearted lies about it that I hardly know what to think.”

“It’s what the jury thinks that matters, Mr. Gaither. And I’m very much afraid that I know that already.”

I slept so fitfully that night that Elizabeth declared that I was taking sick from overwork and the uncertainty of the spring weather. She bundled a woolen scarf around my throat when I went off to court

that morning, which kept me warm against the March winds but did nothing for the chill at my backbone that told me death was even nearer than spring. The road was thick with crowds surging toward the courthouse to hear the verdict, but I spoke to no one. I bundled my coat tighter about me and trudged along in silence, wishing that I could spend the day in the cold sunshine instead of in a rank-smelling courtroom.

I took my place at the front of the court with only a few minutes to spare—quite later than my customary time of arrival, for I had lingered over an indifferent breakfast and loitered along the road to work like a wayward schoolboy reluctant to begin the day. The jury looked as if they, too, had passed a turbulent night. They shuffled into the jury box with rumpled clothes and that solemn expression of neutrality that jurors all contrive to maintain, perhaps in defense of their privacy, knowing that a hundred strangers are searching their faces, looking for the verdict.

The attorneys came into court together, solemnly, as if they were deacons in a church processional, and I was pleased that they did not laugh and chat among themselves, as lawyers are sometimes wont to do, distancing themselves from the harsh proceedings. Woodfin and Alexander took their appointed places with somber nods to Mr. Donnell and myself, and we waited for the prisoner to be brought in.

She appeared in the doorway, looking small and lost, and I felt a ridiculous urge to stand up, as one does when the bride enters the sanctuary. She wore the same faded blue dress as before, but now she had an old black shawl draped about her shoulders, for the wind was brisk today. The murmur of voices in the courtroom fell away to silence as she made her way to Mr. Woodfin’s side. He bent down and whispered a few words to her—encouragement, perhaps, but I saw no emotion in Mrs. Silver’s face. She held her head high and looked toward the front of the courtroom; perhaps she, too, was aware of the stares of the multitude.

“Gentlemen of the jury, may we have your verdict?” Mr. Donnell’s dour Scots countenance seemed perfectly in keeping with the tenor of the day, and I fancied that I saw the jury foreman blanch under the old justice’s withering stare.

“Ah, well, Your Honor . . .” The small man’s eyes darted left and right, seeking either support or a way out, but neither was forthcoming. He cleared his throat and began again. “That is to say . . . we don’t have one yet.”

Judge Donnell waited in a deafening silence during which nobody breathed.

The hapless juror licked his lips, but he resolved to tough it out. “We cannot agree on the matter. We’d like to question some of the witnesses again, sir.”

This statement elicited a burst of noise from the gallery, and an answering clatter from the gavel of John Donnell. “This is most irregular,” he told the jurors.

“Yes, sir,” said the foreman, but he was more confident now. The judge may be the piper of the court, but the jury calls the tune. “We’d like to hear some of the testimony again, sir.”

Mr. Donnell sighed wearily, perhaps at his own folly in having left the marble halls of Raleigh to come out to the uncouth hinterlands, where juries didn’t even know how to reach a proper verdict. No doubt the judge had wished to get an early start on his travels east, but it was not to be.

One of the other jurors handed the foreman a piece of paper. “We have a list, sir.”

The bailiff conveyed the paper to His Honor, who read it twice over with an expression of increasing annoyance. At last he motioned for William Alexander to come forward and take the list of persons to be reexamined. Judge Donnell looked out toward the gallery. “The witnesses are reminded that they are still sworn. They may now exit the court.”

Gabriel Presnell gathered up the little band of folk from the mountain wilderness and marched them out into the hall to await their turn on the witness stand.

Over the hum of murmurs from the gallery I heard the upraised voice of Nicholas Woodfin. “They have not been sequestered!”He stood up, waving a hand in protest. “Your Honor, the witnesses were not sequestered last evening.”

He was right. In trials, those who will testify in the proceedings are kept separate from their fellow witnesses so that they may not compare their stories, and thus, wittingly or not, influence one another’s account of the events in question. On Wednesday night before the trial began, the witnesses were indeed kept apart according to procedure, but last night no one bothered about them. We thought they were finished, that the trial was over. We thought the jury had only to deliberate for the evening and then return in the morning to deliver their verdict. Instead the twelve jurors had come back demanding another round of testimony from the witnesses, except that now this jury would be hearing people who had been at liberty to compare notes, to exchange their impressions of the case—in short, witnesses whose recollections were now tainted by the opinions of their fellows. I wondered what Judge Donnell would do about this breach of custom. Suppose a witness’s new and altered version of the circumstances affected the verdict?

We waited in silent consternation while the old judge considered the matter. Nothing about this trial was going to be easy for any of us. An unlikely defendant, an unheard-of crime, an inexperienced attorney, and now obstacles strewn in the path of a swift resolution. Henceforth no doubt the very name of Morganton would cause the judge to shudder. At last, having contemplated all the possible ramifications of the extraordinary request, Mr. Donnell turned to me for the first time during the proceedings. “Clerk of court,” he said, nodding for me to come forward, “what say you in this matter?”

I stood up. “Well, sir,” I said faintly, “I have not seen it done before, but there is nothing in the law books specifically prohibiting the reexamination of witnesses. They have been sworn.”

Mr. Donnell’s eyes narrowed. “So they have.” He leaned forward, addressing his remarks to the two attorneys. “I will permit this, gentlemen.”

Woodfin paled. “But, Your Honor, the witnesses may have conferred—”

“They have been sworn, counselor. They have taken God’s oath to tell the truth, and we must assume that they will continue to tell the truth as they see it. As they now recall it.” His tone brooked no argument, but even so Mr. Woodfin remained standing for a moment or two longer, wide-eyed and gasping, as if he were casting about for some straw of legal redress. It was one of the very few times during the course of the trial that I saw him look around for his cocounsel Thomas Wilson, but that worthy gentleman offered him no help; he merely shook his head as if to say that the point was lost, and that no good could come of arguing about it.

Judge Donnell turned to the prosecutor. “Mr. Alexander,” he said, “you may begin, sir.”

He consulted the list and nodded to the bailiff. “The state calls Miss Nancy Wilson to the stand.”

In the short interval during which we awaited the arrival of Nancy Wilson, I had time to scan the crowd, and I noticed that Miss Mary Erwin was not present among the spectators. Perhaps she had seen her fill of legal chess games on the preceding day, or more likely, she had anticipated an unfavorable verdict, rather than the unexpected continuation of the trial that took us all by surprise.

Nancy Wilson entered the courtroom for her second turn on the witness stand looking uneasy. Wearing the same black dress as yesterday but not the same confident demeanor, she kept close to the bailiff’s side, making her way through the spectators with a worried frown, as if she were wondering what the jurors wanted from her now.

When the preliminaries were settled, William Alexander approached the witness with a perfunctory smile intended to calm her fears. “The jurors would like to hear your testimony again, Miss Wilson. Let us begin again. I will ask you questions, and you must answer truthfully to the best of your knowledge. Do you understand?”

She nodded. “Go on, then.”

“State your name, please.”

“Nancy Wilson.”

“You reside in the Toe River section of western Burke County?”

“That’s right.”

“No kin to Attorney Thomas Wilson of Morganton.”

“No. Not that I ever heard.” She shrugged. “Maybe back in England five hundred years ago.”

William Alexander permitted himself a genuine smile. “There is no need to deny Mr. Wilson so thoroughly, madam,” he assured her. “We are merely establishing that you have no ties to the court that might affect your testimony. That aside, it is no crime to be related to such a worthy gentleman as my learned colleague.”

“Even if he is a lawyer!” someone called out from the gallery.

This jest proved too much for Judge Donnell, and his own smile vanished as he banished the levity from his courtroom with the oak gavel.

“Miss Wilson, are you acquainted with the defendant Frances Silver?”

“I know her.” An emphatic nod.

“Are you related?”

“Her husband Charlie was my first cousin.” Nancy Wilson looked as if she intended to say more, or perhaps she meant to remind the prosecutor that he already knew these things, but something in Mr. Alexander’s expression must have counseled patience, for she contented herself with that brief reply, and the questioning continued.

“How did you come to hear about the disappearance of your cousin Charles Silver?”

“Last December I was visiting at my uncle’s cabin when Frankie”—she nodded contemptuously toward Mrs. Silver—“ shecame in saying that Charlie was gone.”

“Did the defendant know where he was?”

“Frankie had already told the family that Charlie was gone the day before. She just came to say he wasn’t back yet from a visit to the neighbors over the ridge. We began to think that Charlie had come to harm on the walk home through the snow. He might have fallen through the ice and drowned in the Toe River.”

“Did Mrs. Silver seem concerned about her missing husband?”

“Not her. She was angry, more like.” Nancy Wilson tossed her head. “She was put out about Charlie being gone, in case he was having a good time without her. And she was all-fired mad about having to do all the chores herself. She wanted the cows fed, as if a big strong woman like her couldn’t do it perfectly well herself. And she kept saying that she was going to run out of firewood, and would one of the boys come over and chop some for her.”

“Did they?”

She shook her head. “There wasn’t no need. Alfred said he had seen a whole cord of oak and kindling already chopped and stacked, sitting right there by the side of the cabin a day or two back. ‘You can’t have used it all up yet, Frankie,’ he told her. Of course, now we know what happened to that wood.” Nancy Wilson looked defiantly around the courtroom, as if daring anybody to come up with another explanation for the missing woodpile.

“Did Mrs. Silver suggest that the family begin a search for her husband?”

“She did not,” said Nancy Wilson. “She knew it wouldn’t be no use. She kept saying that there was a party over to the Youngs’, and that Charlie would be along home when the liquor ran out, same as always. It wasn’t no use to go after him, she said, because he’d rather lay around with those no-account friends of his than do any work anyhow.”

“When Mrs. Silver appeared to report her husband missing, who was present in the Silver cabin?”

Nancy Wilson ticked them off on her fingers. “Besides me, there was Mrs. Nancy Silver, Charlie’s stepmother; his sisters Margaret, Rachel, and Lucinda; his brothers Alfred, Milton, and Marvel; and the baby, William.”

“When she was ready to leave, did Frankie Silver ask any of you to accompany her back to her own cabin, since she was now alone?”

“She did not. She didn’t want anybody going near her place at all. That was plain. Charlie’s sister Margaret offered to walk back with Frankie, on account of she had the baby with her, and I said I’d go along to keep Margaret company on the way back, but Frankie said she didn’t want any visitors. She said she’d go alone. She had an odd look on her face, too. Like she was a-skeered we’d follow her.”

This testimony was completely different from the account Miss Wilson had sworn to on the previous day. I had not made notes of the witnesses’ recitals, for it was only my job to see that legal procedure was correctly followed, but I remembered it well enough. Nancy Wilson spoke with conviction in a clear,

carrying voice, and her words had impressed themselves upon my memory. Frankie Silver had been weeping, she had said. The young wife had been worried about her missing husband. She had asked Margaret Silver and Nancy Wilson to come back to the cabin with her, but they declined, saying that they did not wish to tramp through the deep snow to her cabin. This was the testimony as I recalled it; surely the jury would remember as well?

I scanned the faces in the jury box, but I saw no expressions of surprise or alarm. One white-haired gentleman with cold eyes and a mean-spirited mouth was nodding with satisfaction, as if this story dovetailed perfectly with—with what? His memory of yesterday’s proceedings, or his imaginings of the conduct of a guilty murderess? The other jurors listened to the tale with equal equanimity. Had I misheard? I found myself looking about the courtroom, searching for a countenance that reflected my own bewilderment at this turn of events. Did no one remember?

Miss Wilson’s revised version of the events of December 22 recast the defendant as a heartless monster, indifferent to the fate of her husband and transparent in her efforts to escape detection. Gone was yesterday’s image of the weeping young girl, worried about her lost Charlie and begging his kinswomen to come home and keep her company while the men searched the woods. With a few words, only half a dozen denials, Nancy Wilson had evoked the image of a cunning and cruel killer, someone who deserved no mercy and no pity, and who would surely receive none from those present in the court. The Frankie Silver that was described today deserved to die.

I had no way of knowing which version of the tale was the true one, though of course I suspected that the first telling was the real remembrance. At least I wanted the jurors to realize that they were hearing a vastly different account from the one that had been previously given and sworn to before God.

Surely someone else in this crowded courtroom remembered the previous testimony. Someone would want to know why the facts had altered so completely from the first testimony. Someone. . . I found the astonished face I sought at the defense table: it was that of Nicholas Woodfin. He had gone even paler as Miss Wilson spoke, and I saw his lips twitching as if he could control the sound of his outcry, but not the movement.

For an instant our eyes met, and we read dismay in each other’s expression. I looked away first, for I could not bear to see this courageous and idealistic young man in the very beginning of his profession lose all his faith in the majesty of the law. Juries do not mete out divine justice, I wanted to tell him. They are the arbiters that we mortals deserve: imperfect, credulous, and above all fallible. He was seeing the end of his client’s hopes, and he knew it. I wondered if shedid.

Frankie Silver seemed less wounded by this turn of fate than did her attorney. Perhaps she did not understand the calamity that had befallen her; perhaps she simply expected less of her fellow man, or of this witness in particular. She huddled in her black shawl and listened with the blank stare she had effected for much of the trial to block the stares of the curious onlookers, but once I saw her smile. It was a sad, terrible smile, and I knew that the memory of it would stay with me always. Such a look might Mary Queen of Scots have worn upon hearing the death sentence signed by her cousin Elizabeth I. It was the brave smile of a gambler who knows she has lost everything, not through any fault of her own but through the treachery of her companions. For an instant I found myself wishing that Miss Mary Erwin had come back to court today. She would not have borne this in silence. I did, but I had no choice. I was an officer of the court. I could not stop it.

It was all over but the waiting. The jury had gone out to deliberate, and the rest of us awaited their pleasure, milling about inside the courthouse and out, seeking sunshine despite the chill of lingering winter. It was just past noon, but no one wanted to abandon the vigil in search of dinner. Some of us were not

hungry.

The morning had been taken up with a parade of witnesses, each of whom had shaded his testimony to reflect the guilt and malevolence of the defendant. The certainty of Frankie Silver’s conviction for murder seemed to seep into the minds of those who testified, tainting their recollections with the memory of strange looks or suspicious behavior where none had been observed before. The girl was a murderer, they reasoned: surely she must have acted like one. From one day to the next, a young woman who had spent her life in the company of these people, and married into their family, was transformed into a stock villain of melodrama. No one seemed to find it odd.

Nicholas Woodfin had tried to undo the damage caused by the witnesses’ premature condemnation. Again and again he asked, “Did you not tell this story differently before?” And always the answer was: “Upon reflection, I remembered more clearly what took place.”

At last the questioning was over, the witnesses were dismissed a final time, and Judge Donnell gave his instructions to the jury before sending them forth to begin their task anew. His summation was stern but fair, although he did not touch upon the matter of the altered testimony. He was careful to explain to the jurors that reasonable doubt did not mean conjuring fanciful solutions to the crime, and that although the defendant was a fair young woman, the law was no respecter of persons.

“There is a blindfold around the eyes of the goddess of justice,” he reminded them, “so that she may not see who is rich or poor, young or old, fair or ill-favored, and thus base her judgments upon these superficialities. Gentlemen of the jury, see that you, too, are blind to the temptations of offering mercy where none is warranted.”

I was surprised by the anxiousness that I felt in anticipation of their verdict. Usually, cases in Superior Court, even quite serious or tragic ones, leave me unmoved. I have no stake in the verdict; nothing that transpires in the courtroom reflects upon my ability as a lawyer or affects my purse. I am merely an observer, a procedural referee, if you will. Somehow, though, this time I found myself wishing with all my heart that Nicholas Woodfin would carry the day, and that little Mrs. Silver would be set free.

I made a point of seeking out Mr. Woodfin, who was standing by himself on the courthouse lawn, seemingly oblivious to the white flowering trees around him heralding spring. It will be winter for him a good while longer, I thought, watching him. His colleague Thomas Wilson had gone home to dine, and none of the spectators had cared to approach the young attorney. The man who defends a heartless killer is not a popular fellow.

“I feel sure that she cannot have done it,” I said to him in a low voice, for I did not wish to be overheard by anyone else.

Nicholas Woodfin smiled at the urgency in my voice. He was tired now, and he wanted nothing more to do with hope. “Have you another theory, Mr. Gaither?”

I shook my head. “None. I dismiss all the theatrics of today—all that wild talk of Mrs. Silver’s strange looks and malevolent behavior. That was the embellishment of people wishing to enlarge their roles in the one drama of their lives. It is yesterday’s testimony that puzzles me. The witnesses were quite firm on the point of her lying. Frankie Silver said that her husband had not come home, and yet pieces of his body were discovered in the cabin. I cannot explain that fact away.”

“No.”

“Yet it was a crime involving gore and dismemberment, done in stealth rather than in the heat of passion: this argues madness. But the woman I saw in the courtroom was clearly sane. No one could fault her self-control.”

“I wish she had a good deal less of it,” said Woodfin. “She is keeping back the truth.”

“Surely not,” I protested. “Do you know what she is hiding?”

He looked uneasy. “I cannot be sure.”

“She must speak out. Her life depends on it.”

The young attorney nodded thoughtfully. “I wonder if she knows that,” he said. “I have told her so often enough, and Mr. Wilson has impressed it upon her in the sternest manner, but I cannot be sure that she believes us. She is so young and pretty that I am sure she cannot take in the enormity of dying. Perhaps she thinks that because she is a young woman with an innocent child, the court will show her mercy.”

“Perhaps they will,” I said, but my words rang hollow even to my own ears. We stood there in the pale sunshine and shivered, Nicholas Woodfin and I, for we knew what was to come.

This time we had little more than an hour to wait for the return of the jury. The bailiff summoned us all back to court, and I found myself searching his face for some sign of the verdict, as if I were the rawest oaf in a crowd of drunken spectators. His face betrayed nothing; if in fact he even knew what the verdict would be, he was careful to give nothing away. In his place I would have done the same. We will all know soon enough, I thought.

I resumed my seat at the clerk’s table and arranged my papers over and over to control my apprehension. Out of the tail of my eye I saw Mrs. Silver led in to take her place beside Mr. Woodfin. She was pale, and I thought I detected a tinge of red around her eyelids, but she was as composed as ever, walking slowly, oblivious to all. As she reached the defense table, and the bailiff let go of her arm, she looked up at her attorney and smiled, as if to reassure him that all would be well. As if hewere the one whose life hung in the balance. He tried to smile back, then looked quickly away.

He is but twenty-one, I thought, and he has tried fewer than a dozen cases since he was called to the bar. He will never again feel such pangs of sympathy for a client. He will never again allow himself to care. I was sure that if God were to spare Nicholas Woodfin to practice law for yet another fifty years, he would never speak or write of this incident again.

The jury filed in, properly subdued and solemn, taking their places without meeting the eyes of anyone present.

“Gentlemen of the jury, have you reached a verdict?” He said. The words at lasthung in the air unspoken.

“Reckon we have, sir,” said the foreman. A glare from the judge sent him scrambling to his feet as he answered, “She done it.”

Only the solemnity of the occasion kept Judge Donnell from uttering a blistering rebuke to this stammering yokel who was so heedless of court procedure. He continued to glare at the foreman several seconds during which a shocked silence prevailed in the courtroom. A few heartbeats later the gallery burst into a clamoring babble, with even a few whoops of triumph thrown in by some callous drunkards.

Frankie Silver seemed to sway for an instant, steadied by the arm of Nicholas Woodfin. He looked like a man who has steeled himself for a blow and has finally felt it delivered: it was as bad as expected, but at least it was over. He took a deep breath and murmured something to calm his client.

I looked for the Stewarts among the seething crowd, half fearing violence toward them or from them in reaction to the verdict, but they stood still. Isaiah Stewart had bowed his head, whether in prayer or submission I could not tell. His son Jackson stood with clenched fists, red-faced and breathing hard, as if the fight were just beginning, not ending. Neither of them made any move toward the defendant, and I felt a twinge of sorrow for her. She would be alone regardless, though, I thought. In this terrible moment when she has come face-to-face with her own death, she would be alone even if ten thousand hands were reaching out to comfort her. She did not spare a glance for her father and brother. She was looking up at Nicholas Woodfin with a face so full of trust that it made me ashamed of the powerlessness of all professional men. We doctors and lawyers and preachers and judges act as if we hold the power of life and death over those who pass before us, as if nothing frightens or dismays us, but really we are so many pawns in the game. Too often Death brushes past us to claim his prize without even sparing a glance for those of us who have set ourselves up as humanity’s defenders. People trust us so much; yet we can do so little.

“Your Honor, counsel for the defense wishes to move for a rule upon the state for a new trial!” Nicholas Woodfin was shouting to make himself heard above the crowd.

Judge Donnell nodded. He had expected some objection. “On what grounds, Mr. Woodfin?”

“That the witnesses were not sequestered.”

“Rule granted.” Judge Donnell turned to me, indicating that I should take down his words. I took up my pen and began to make notes.

William Alexander was on his feet, erupting in protest. “A new trial! Your Honor, we have wasted too much time already on this patently guilty prisoner. The witnesses testified under oath. Twice. There is no need to prolong their inconvenience further so that this woman may be convicted yet again.”

“She deserves a fair trial,” said Woodfin.

“She had one.”

“The testimony changed.”

“It was lengthened, but not substantially altered. Frankie Silver lied about her husband’s disappearance, and all the witnesses have said so from the very beginning.”

“That will do, gentlemen.”

“The state objects to the waste of time and public money that would be incurred in a new trial. The evidence for the defendant’s guilt is overwhelming. Counsel for the defense is quibbling over details.”

“Objection sustained,” said Judge Donnell, seeing the inarguable point. “Mr. Woodfin, rule for a new trial is denied.”

“Prayer for judgment, Your Honor,” said the prosecutor, before his opponent could object further.

“The prisoner will rise.”

Nicholas Woodfin helped Mrs. Silver to her feet and kept a protective hand at her elbow as they faced the bench.

The judge intoned the sentence in the sonorous voice of a benediction, with nothing in his tone to suggest any emotion on his part toward the defendant or her fate. “Frances Silver,” he said, “you have been found guilty of the crime of murder by a jury of your peers. Sentence of the court is that the prisoner, Frances Silver, be taken back to the prison from whence she came and thereby to remain until the Fayday of the July court next of Burke County, and then to be taken from thence to the place of execution and then and there hung by the neck until she is dead. This sentence to be carried into execution by the sheriff of Burke County.”

The pronouncement of death was a familiar formula, never varied, and my hand flew across the page as I noted it down. When I looked up again, Frankie Silver was being led out of the court by Mr. Presnell, with two other constables flanking him as guards in case of trouble. Her cheeks glistened with tears, but she never made a sound.

Woodfin motioned for the officers to stop. “Your Honor,” he said, “the prisoner wishes to appeal the judgment of this court to the Supreme Court of North Carolina.”

Judge Donnell frowned, and I fancied I knew the cause of his annoyance. It cost money to make an appeal to a higher court, and the defendant did not impress that worthy jurist as a person of means. “And whom does the prisoner give as security for the bond?” he asked.

I think that Nicholas Woodfin would have paid the costs out of his own pocket, for I saw a glint in his eye that spoke of foolhardiness to come, but before he could encumber himself with that reckless pledge, Isaiah Stewart’s voice rang out from behind him.

“I’ll stand her bond, Judge. Her brother Jackson and I will answer for it.”

“Who are you, sir?”

“I’m her daddy,” said the grizzled old hunter, looking at his daughter, not at His Honor. I knew that the words had been directed at her.

“Very well, then,” said the judge. “If you will guarantee the bond, the verdict shall be appealed.” He turned to me. “Mr. Gaither, you will have the goodness to write a summary of the trial to be sent on to the Supreme Court in Raleigh, and have it ready for my inspection before the departure time of tomorrow’s stagecoach.”

Traditionally the presiding judge wrote a précis of the trial for the appellate court, but in practice they often delegated this task to underlings—that is, to me. Lowly clerks of Superior Court often found themselves wielding the pen and burning the midnight oil to complete the task of summarizing the case for the appeal. “I will do it gladly, sir,” I said with careful politeness, but my heart was heavy as I thought of the evening of drudgery that lay before me, when I had hoped to forget about the cares of my office at one of the Erwins’ dinner parties.

I lingered over my papers, for I wanted to make sure that I had all the information that I would need to write the trial summary. A few feet away from my table, Nicholas Woodfin was taking his leave of the

condemned prisoner.

“We have appealed the conviction,” he told her. “Do you know what that means?”

She shook her head. She looked like a poleaxed calf, I thought, for she stood quite pale and still beside him, staring numbly at the ground as if she could envision it rushing up to meet her dangling feet. I put the thought from my mind. It would not come to pass. Nicholas Woodfin is her champion, and he is not without connections.

“An appeal is a request for a higher court to review the trial procedure.” He stopped, trying to find simpler words. “We must get the court in Raleigh to say that they cannot hang you.”

She nodded wearily, and I thought that she held out no hope, but that she had no strength left to argue about it. Will Butler told me once that after a trial is over, the prisoner sleeps soundly for the first time in weeks, for even if the worst has befallen him, at least the uncertainty is over. Frankie Silver was finished with us now. She had gone to some other place, where we could not follow.

“I haven’t given up on you, Frankie,” said Nicholas Woodfin. His voice was tinged with urgency, and I was gratified to know that honor as well as skill had comprised the defense of this poor young woman. “We will get you a new trial, and then we will carry the day!”

She nodded once more, and when the bailiff took hold of her arm to lead her away, she went willingly, and with downcast eyes. She did not look back, though Nicholas Woodfin stood and watched until the oak doors of the courtroom swung shut behind her.

She never saw him again.