The Ballad of Frankie Silver

Chapter Six SPENCER ARROWOOD had not been to church in many months, but this Sunday, despite his difficulty in getting around and the doctor’s misgivings about his leaving the house so soon, he had come. His family had belonged to the little white frame church for generations, and he felt that any thanks offered up for his continued existence should be said here. As usual, though, he came more with the intention of making additional requests than in thankfulness for mercies already bestowed.

The sight of so many people whom Spencer had known for most of his life was reassuring to him in his new awareness of mortality, as if their concern and good wishes could keep death at bay for a little while longer. He sat in the pew beside his mother, uncomfortably warm in his navy sport coat and tie, still pale and weak from his injuries, but trying to seem as if nothing were amiss. From time to time members of the congregation smiled and waved to him from neighboring pews, and he tried to smile back, but perhaps he had ventured out too soon. He felt light-headed, and impossibly tired from the short walk from the car to the sanctuary. It was as if old age had overtaken him in the course of an hour, but this time, when he was well again, he could go back to youth. He wondered what it would be like when he was old for good, past going back. Perhaps he would not live to find out.

When the service began, the comforting rhythm of the ritual washed over him without his being aware of the sense of the words. He stared up at the stained-glass window of the plump Victorian angel guiding a boy and girl over a bridge. As a child he had loved the radiant image, but its cloying sentimentality could not reach him now. He became distracted by the rhythms of his own body: the thud of heartbeat, the prickles of sweat on his forehead, the clump of bandage just above his waist which itched beneath his starched blue shirt. His body had become a clock ticking off the seconds of his allotted time until he reached the abyss, and the bridge that he would have to cross, angel or not.

He was thinking that in twelve more days Fate Harkryder would go to the electric chair. While the opening hymn was sung, Spencer was standing silent, oblivious to the words, working out the number of hours in twelve days. Another part of his mind was wondering if he ought to try to talk to the condemned man on the eve of the execution. What was there to say, though? Please tell me that you did it, so that I’ll feel better? Why should he be allowed to feel better when in 288 hours Fate Harkryder would feel nothing at all.

He felt regret at the thought of a man’s life being taken from him, and he forced an image of Emily Stanton’s body into his mind to remind him that this man deserved his death, but it did not lessen the uneasiness, and he realized that he was picturing the sullen adolescent that he had sent to prison years ago. Let him see the canting, frightened killer who had grown old and hardened in confinement, and perhaps he would resign himself to letting the man go. He would be able to watch it happen.

Spencer had been sitting there thinking about the Harkryder case for some time, while the voices of the other parishioners faded into a hum at the back of his mind, when he realized that he was no longer in the sanctuary of the white frame church. He was standing in the shadows on a trail in the deep woods, and a small blond girl in a white dress was squatting a few yards away from him in the stony shallows of a mountain stream. The creek, forever shaded by deep woods, would be more melted ice than water, and even in summer it would be so cold that wading more than a few feet along the streambed would make your legs ache and your feet tingle, then go numb.

The pale girl was washing a white cloth in the swift, silver water. Her hair was a faded gold, and she was small-boned, a white shadow in the filtered sunlight of the forest clearing. She was leaning over the

stream, submerging the cloth in the bone-chilling water. She seemed not to feel the cold on her fingers. She scrubbed the stained cloth against a flat rock in the streambed, intent upon her work and indifferent to the observer. After a moment she looked up at him, without a smile or a flicker of expression, just a look that said he was there, and he knew that she was Frankie Silver.

He tried to move toward her, but he found that he could not. When he opened his mouth to call out to her, she looked straight at him with narrowed eyes and a cold smile. Then she lifted the white cloth out of the water, and he saw the bloodstains that she had been trying to wash away.

When he came to himself, he was standing with the rest of the congregation, and the last strains of a hymn were dying away into silence. Spencer saw that his hymnbook was open to “Are You Washed in the Blood of the Lamb,” and his mother had placed her hand on his arm and was shaking him gently.

“I’m all right,” he murmured, rubbing his forehead to banish the last fragments of the dream. “I think I dozed off.”

“I told you it was too soon for you to be out!” she hissed back.

“No. I’m all right. I just have too much on my mind, that’s all.”

People were beginning to file out of the pews now, and he realized that the service was over. It seemed to him that only a few minutes had passed since he’d gone into the church. Several of his mother’s friends paused in the aisle to wish him well, and he shook white-gloved hands with a tentative smile. He hoped his mother had not invited company over for Sunday dinner. He was not equal to the small talk of village acquaintances.

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, Sheriff,” said a soft voice beside him.

He turned to find that Nora Bonesteel, one of the oldest parishioners, had slipped into the pew behind them. She was tall and straight in her blue church dress with the gray wool shawl draped over her shoulders. Her hair, still more dark than silver, was pulled back in two wings framing her face, and drawn into a knot at the back of her head. She touched his arm and he suddenly felt cold. “The poor in spirit,” he murmured, recognizing the Beatitudes. Miss Bonesteel had been his Sunday school teacher more years ago than either of them cared to remember. “For they shall see God.”

The old woman smiled and shook her head. “You never could keep those verses straight, could you? It’s: For theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

He shrugged. “Well, I guess that’s why I didn’t see God.”

“What did you see?”

People told tales about Nora Bonesteel, though nobody ever said she wasn’t a good, righteous woman. She knew things, though. She saw things before they happened, and she had a way of knowing secret things no one would have dreamed of telling her. She didn’t exactly meddle in other people’s lives, but if you went to her for help, she always knew what it was you’d come about. The old folks claimed that Nora Bonesteel even talked to the dead, but Spencer could not let himself believe that, so he chose never to consider the matter at all. He had known her all his life.

What did you see?

“Frankie Silver.” He blurted it out before he thought better of it. Nora Bonesteel had always been able to get the truth out of him, even when he was a sullen teenager who passed the few minutes between Sunday school and church sneaking a cigarette in the back of the churchyard with some of the older boys. Nora Bonesteel had put a stop to that one spring morning without so much as a word passing between them.

Frankie Silver.

Anyone else might have said, “Who?” or, “You must have been dreaming!” Or they might have passed the remark off as a joke, but Nora Bonesteel did none of those things. She considered the matter for a moment and nodded slowly.

“I have heard that she walks,” she said. “Though I have never seen her myself. It’s not surprising, though, is it?”

“No?” He could not believe that he was having this conversation in broad daylight in the sanctuary of the little white church. The place was nearly empty now. His mother had walked toward the door to speak to some of her friends, so there was no one to overhear them.

“They say that those who die by violence often walk. Hers was a cruel death.”

“Do you know what really happened that night?”

Nora Bonesteel shook her head. “It’s not for me to say. But if you have seen her, she means to tell you something, Spencer. You’d best find out what it is.”

That night Spencer Arrowood sat in a circle of light at his dining room table with case-file papers and books of North Carolina history mingling in a pile in front of him. What was there about the Harkryder case that had reminded Nelse Miller of Frankie Silver? He couldn’t see it. He didn’t think Nelse had known the connection, either. It was a hunch of some sort that had never clarified itself in the old man’s mind. Spencer hadn’t taken much stock in such things in those days, but now, twenty years older and wiser, he believed that the intuition of an experienced cop could be counted as probable cause. If you lived long enough, you knew things just from instinct and observation.

By now Spencer had read all the material that the libraries could supply on the Silver case. Some of it was speculative, and most of it repetitive, but he had read it all, and the connection between the legend and the Harkryder boy still eluded him. When he looked at the Silver case as a lawman would, he could see why Constable Baker had no choice but to arrest Frankie Silver for the crime. The jury had no alternative, either. Since the grand jury had not indicted the Stewarts, they were offered no other suspects on whom to cast the blame. During the trial Frankie Silver had given no explanation for the fact that she had lied about Charlie’s whereabouts, or for the fact that his remains had been found in their own cabin. “Not guilty,” she said. Take it or leave it. They left it. Had to. He understood all that. But his instinct told him that there was something terribly wrong with the case. Eighteen-year-old girls do not kill without provocation, and they don’t cut up bodies.

He wondered what had really happened that night. Any explanation—no matter how lame—might have saved her, but she had sat there stone-faced and silent. Not guilty.

Lafayette Harkryder had done the same.

He had been given a court-appointed lawyer, not one as young as Nicholas Woodfin, but not much

older, either. Perhaps the attorney had lacked the experience to mount a proper defense to the charges, but since the defendant had no money, he also lacked the resources necessary to generate reasonable doubt in the minds of the jury. No private investigators muddied the waters of evidence with favorable findings; no psychiatrists or forensic experts were employed by the defense to refute the state’s witnesses. Fate Harkryder had not even been able to afford a suit jacket and tie to impress the jury with his respectability. He had sat in court in a red plaid flannel shirt and gray work pants, looking all the more barbaric in contrast to the sleek attorneys in their dark suits and crisp, starched shirts.

All that was fine with the sheriff, provided the defendant was guilty. Sometimes the law needed all the help it could get to worm a conviction out of bleeding-heart juries, but he didn’t want to think that a man had been convicted of murder simply because he had violated the middle-class dress code. The penalty is greatest for breaking the laws that are unwritten.

Spencer pictured the courtroom. Fate in his worn plaid shirt, and his nervous young attorney, correct but bland, and himself in his brown deputy sheriff’s uniform. Colonel Stanton had been almost as conspicuous as the lawyers in Wake County’s little courtroom. He had understood the symbols of society’s unwritten laws. He sat there day after day, ramrod straight, immaculate in his dress uniform, with every ribbon and medal on prominent display: the picture of solemn grief demanding justice. His wife was beside him most of the time, in a little suit and hat that would not have been out of place at a funeral or a church service. She had seemed a bit embarrassed to be there, blushing when anyone spoke to her and never looking at the defendant or the jury, but Colonel Stanton watched the proceedings with the alert gaze of a director viewing the dress rehearsal of the play. He took in everything, nodding when he agreed, and scowling when he did not. He took care to sit where the jury could not fail to see him, and perhaps because of his impressive looks and his air of command, they did seem to be watching him, testing their own reaction to a witness’s testimony by checking Stanton’s expression for approval.

What about the other victim’s parents, Spencer thought. He tried to picture them in the courtroom, but the image would not be summoned. The Wilsons were elderly. They had come to court at least twice, Spencer knew, because he remembered speaking to them in the hall, but they were simple country people, and they had been overshadowed by the elegant Stantons.

Outside the courtroom, Charles Wythe Stanton had also been in command. He radiated confidence, and dignified outrage over his daughter’s death. He was always ready to be photographed for the newspaper or to provide a sound bite for the television newsmen, and he would offer each reporter a poignant snapshot of pretty Emily. “She must not be forgotten,” he would say with a moist smile. “This trial is not just about that monster in there. It is about what Emily deserves, too, in exchange for her life.”

Spencer admired the man for his poise in the face of the media. He’d had the microphone shoved in his face a few times during the course of the trial, and he knew that projecting an image of courageous intelligence was harder than it looked. The old sheriff, though, wanted nothing to do with the Stantons. More than once he refused their offers to take the officers to lunch.

“That man is a creature of vengeance,” Nelse Miller remarked to his deputy, after court recessed on the third day. “Lafayette Harkryder might just as well have killed one of the Disney Mousketeers and been done with it, because this smooth-talking snake-oil man is going to hound him to the outskirts of hell. If you ever kill anybody, Spencer, make sure that they don’t have a damn bloodhound for a daddy.”

“That’s how I’d want my kin to act if I had been murdered,” Spencer replied. “Stanton has a right to demand justice.”

“I know he does. I’m just not sure that you can take one day of a person’s life, draw a line, and judge

him on it.”

“We do it every day,” said Spencer. “Yesterday I gave a speeding ticket to a member of the church choir.”

Nelse Miller shook his head. “I’m getting old,” he said. “I keep thinking the world would be a better place if there were less justice and more charity.”

Nelse Miller had fulminated through the entire trial, prompting Spencer to ask more than once, “Which side are you on?” One day the old sheriff might be carping about Colonel Stanton holding court before the media. Another time he remarked: “Have you ever noticed that you can tell which side a person is on in this case by the way they’re dressed?”

That was true enough.

The Stantons and their supporters always dressed in what Nelse Miller called “Episcopal uniforms,” while the Harkryders, who had no notion of showing their respect for the court—or perhaps they were—turned up in clothes that Spencer wouldn’t have worn to a yard sale: old stained work clothes, T-shirts with rude sayings printed on the front, and occasionally camouflage hunting outfits. Fate Harkryder’s mother was dead, but various other female relatives turned up from time to time, usually in bright print slacks and cheap blouses laden with dime-store beads. The jury wasn’t supposed to notice such things, but inevitably they did.

Spencer’s clearest memory of the trial was the solemn, chiseled features of Colonel Stanton on one side of the courtroom, and sullen, scraggly Fate Harkryder on the other. Every day his two older brothers sat near the front of the courtroom, almost within touching distance of the defendant. They, too, glowered throughout the proceedings, muttering ominously when they disagreed with the witness testimony. Spencer kept his eye on them throughout the trial, watching for the bulge of a weapon in their clothing, or some sign that they meant to cause trouble.

When the verdict was announced, one of the brothers shouted, “It’s a damned lie!”

Spencer and the bailiff hurried to put themselves between the prisoner and his family, anticipating more than a shouting match, but Fate Harkryder had simply looked at his brothers for a long moment and shaken his head.

They subsided once more into smoldering resentment. “We’ll fight this, boy,” one of them muttered.

“You hang tough,” said the other one.

Fate Harkryder nodded.

By the time he was led handcuffed from the courtroom, his brothers were already gone. Spencer wondered if he had ever seen them again. Whatever happened to the Harkryder brothers, anyhow?

Fate Harkryder had twenty years’ experience in not letting his feelings show. He sat impassively in the blue padded chair, studying the man in the green necktie who sat across from him. He was a stocky fellow in his early forties, with unruly dark hair and a tendency to perspire. He was smiling uncertainly, and creasing the corners of his paperwork. Fate was trying to decide why the man was nervous. Some people felt uneasy in the company of a convicted murderer, but since this man was a state psychologist who often studied prisoners, his current subject didn’t think the anxiety stemmed from that particular

source. Race was not a factor, either. Fate decided that the man must be uneasy because he was talking to someone who would be dead in a few days’ time. Death is considered bad taste in polite society. People do not care to be reminded of it. Now that Fate had an execution date, even some of the guards had stopped looking directly at him, as if they were embarrassed by the presence of someone so close to the abyss.

The psychologist managed a tentative smile as he pushed his glasses farther back along the bridge of his nose. “Now, Mr. Harkryder,” he said, “my name is Dr. Ritter. I don’t wish to alarm you in any way. I just wanted to have a talk with you to see if there are any concerns you’d like to voice.”

“Concerns?” Fate blinked at him. He had found that playing dumb was an asset in prison life. It gave you more time to evaluate your opponent, and sometimes it caused him to underestimate you, which was even more useful.

“Yes. As you know, your—er—your execution is scheduled for later this month, and barring any unforeseen developments, it will take place at that time. I wondered if you’d like to express your feelings.”

“I’m innocent, sir.”

The psychologist looked away. “I know nothing whatever about the details of your case, Mr. Harkryder. I find it easier to counsel prisoners if I am not apprised of what they have done. My only concern is your peace of mind at this point in time.”

“Well, sir, they’re going to kill me. How do you think I feel?”

Ritter was ready for that one. “There are many possibilities, Mr. Harkryder. You might feel relief that your long stay in prison is at an end. You might embrace the opportunity to atone for your misdeeds. You might take solace in religion and look forward to peace and joy beyond this life.”

“Or I might think that this life is all there is, and I’ve been cheated out of it by a state that framed me for a murder I didn’t commit.”

“I had hoped you might be beyond that,” sighed the psychologist. “I realize that death is a very difficult thing to accept. That’s why we tend to concentrate on the little rituals that precede it as a way of distracting ourselves from the prospect of the death itself. Would you like to discuss some of those items?”

“Like what?”

“Well, to begin with a trivial one—why don’t you tell me what you’d like as a last meal?”

Fate Harkryder shrugged. “I haven’t given it much thought,” he said. He had, of course. Back in Building Two, discussions of his last meal had been going on for weeks. After a while he began to notice that the suggestions from the other men tended to fit a pattern. They urged him to ask for steak and a milk shake; country-style steak, french fries, and strawberry shortcake with double whipped cream; a large pizza and a banana split. It was all comfort food—the dream menus of teenage boys, or of men whose last memories of happiness stretched that far back in their lives. It was food rich in grease, salt, and sugar, proposed by men who had lived for years on a bland, starchy diet that never quite filled them up.

Other suggestions were a poor man’s idea of a high-class meal. The farm boy who had suggested a

pound of shrimp, a pound of lobster, and a pound of prime rib had never tasted any of those things. Fate had no better ideas about what he should ask for on the night of his execution, and he was by no means sure that he could swallow a single mouthful of whatever was brought to him, but at least he prided himself on knowing why his comrades suggested the menus they did. After twenty years in confinement, he thought he might be as much of a psychologist as the perspiring man who sat across from him now.

“No thoughts on a last meal,” Dr. Ritter was saying. He made a notation on his legal pad. “Let’s leave that then, shall we? You have plenty of time to consider that option. Now, is there anyone you would like to see in the coming days? Anyone you would wish us to contact?”

A hooker,he thought. Names of various shapely movie stars ran though Fate Harkryder’s mind, but he no longer felt in a playful mood. Besides, he was sure that the fat man had heard such feeble efforts at wit before, and was probably expecting them. He probably had his chuckle and his pat answer ready in his froggy throat. Fate decided that the conversation was beginning to bore him. He shook his head. “No one.”

“A relative, perhaps? Is your mother still living?”

“She died when I was eight.”

“Your father, then?”

“Lung cancer. Ten years back.”

“I see. I believe you have brothers, though. Perhaps you’d like a visit from them?”

Fate Harkryder almost smiled. “Perhaps I would,” he said. “Why don’t you see if they’d like to come and say good-bye?”

“I can certainly do that,” said Ritter smoothly. “Now let’s talk about you for a moment. Are you experiencing any symptoms of undue anxiety? Loss of appetite, trouble sleeping?”

“ Undueanxiety?” The prisoner stared at him. “The state of Tennessee is going to strap me into a chair and shoot electricity through my body until I burn to death from the inside out. Just what anxiety would you call undue?”

“You would do well to remain hopeful. You might possibly get a stay of execution,” said the psychologist, ignoring the emotional outburst. “Meanwhile, we would hope that you can stay as calm and upbeat as possible under the circumstances. I can recommend sleeping tablets—in carefully controlled doses, of course—and perhaps some sort of tranquilizer for daytime use, if you feel that would help.”

Fate Harkryder shook his head. “Keep the drugs,” he said. “If I only have a few more days to spend being alive, I don’t want to miss any of it. I intend to go down fighting.”

Ritter’s frown told him that he had misunderstood.

“Legally, I mean,” said Fate. “Appeals. Motions filed in every court we can think of. Messages to the governor.”

“I see. Meanwhile, if you’d like, we can discuss the incident that put you here. Would you like to tell me your side of it?”

“I don’t believe I would.”

The psychologist shrugged. “Some men find it easier to go to their deaths having made their peace with this world. Is there any bit of unfinished business that troubles you?”

“Not anything you can put right,” said the condemned man.

Burgess Gaither

THEESCAPE They’ll not hang a woman, folks kept saying, over and over like rain on a roof. You’ll not hang, Frankie. I was a young girl, a proper married woman, the mother of an innocent babe. I was no madwoman crazed for blood, nor no town whore robbing a young blade and adding killing to the slate of her sins. You’ll not hang. And I carried myself meek and mild every time the court met, with my hair combed smooth, and my dress as clean and fitten as I could get it. “She’s a pretty little thing!” the men would say when I passed by. “She don’t look like no Jezebel.” And I would keep my head down low and pretend not to hear them, for it was all a game, and if I could not tell the truth flat out to that court full of strangers and be done with it, why then I must play their game and take care to win.

I had done good. The fine town ladies brought me pies and came and sat with me and read out the Bible in my cell, and I was thankful, for they were kind, but the tales I liked best were the fairy stories that my mama used to tell me. There was one about a beautiful princess who was walled up in a tower, and a handsome prince rode up and saved her. When my mama told the story, the princess had long golden hair like mine, and the prince was a dark-haired man with a big house and all the money he needed. I didn’t ask for the ladies to tell me stories like that, for it wouldn’t have been fitten, but I thought about them all the same, to myself, and to pass the time I pretended that I was the princess in that tower, awaiting to be saved.

The ladies told me that people were working hard to get me a pardon. They were writing letters to Governor Stokes, begging him for mercy, and there was talk of getting up a letter signed by half the county, asking that my life be spared.

Governor Stokes left office at the new year, and the new governor was a man called David Swain, who came from Buncombe County, not far from here. Then the jailer’s wife, Sarah Presnell, who wasn’t one for making fine promises, she came to my cell with the news, and she said, “Happen you’ll be all right now, Frankie, for the new governor is from these parts, and he’ll be made to listen to all the folks who won’t stand to see you hang.” The other ladies of Morganton came and said the same. They told me that even the jury was sorry they had ordered me hanged, and that some of them had signed their name to the paper asking the governor for mercy. I reckoned it would be all right then, just like Mama said. I sat through the winter thinking about how big my baby Nancy was getting and wondering how many teeth she had, and if she was walking good yet. I reckoned I’d see her in the spring. She’d have to get to know me all over again, but at least we’d be together, when I got shut of this old town.

But then in March a new judge came, and he was old and sour, with a pinch-prune face and eyes like the pebbles in the creek bed, and he looked at me as if I were a shriveled-up old woman, and you could tell that he didn’t think me a pretty little thing, but only a wicked murderess to be damned and sent to hell, and he was the one to do it.

He fixed the twenty-eighth of June as my day to die.

I never figured on dying in tomato time. Leaving my baby without a mama or a daddy to look out for her. Going into the cold clay while my teeth are still strong and my hair is yellow as moonlight. It don’t seem right.

The ladies tell me that Daddy has been stumping around the county like a bear tied to a stake, trying to get some help for me. He went hat in hand to this colonel and to that gentleman, and they all gave him advice, but sometimes they’d say the opposite of one another. At last I reckon Daddy figured it was up to him to look out for his own. And what could I say when they came for me? I wanted to live. I wanted to feel the grass again on my bare ankles, and drink spring water.

So when they stood there in the night with the key to my cell a-dangling from Jack’s hand, I didn’t spare a thought for the governor or the fine ladies of Morganton with their pies and their petitions. I put on Jack’s old shirt and breeches and blacked my face with coal dust, and I went with them.

The people in that town meant well, most of them, trying to help me with letters and such, but we don’t take charity from strangers if we can help it. It’s not our way. I’d rather trust a surefooted horse and a steep mountain than all the fine words in the world.

I know that people have said I must have known something about it, but upon my oath I did not. Though I should have guessed, perhaps. I had heard the story often enough, when people spoke of Eliza Grace McDowell. The family is proud of it, and perhaps they should be, but just lately it troubles me all the same.

It was a warm evening, the seventeenth of May, and I was pleased to see a red sunset, a sign that we should have no more of the spring rains that had blighted our days, muddied our roads, and made ponds of our fields for a good many days. I lingered on the courthouse lawn, talking with Sheriff Boone in the glow of the spring twilight. We were merely exchanging pleasantries, as I was leaving to go to Belvidere for dinner. I do not think we spoke of Frankie Silver, for her execution was still some weeks away, and I knew that the sheriff was uneasy in his mind about having to perform the grim task, and he did not care to talk about it. So it was apropos of nothing in particular when Boone said to me, “You know, Mr. Gaither, I have been thinking about John Sevier these past few days.”

My mind was on other matters, I suppose. I was thinking of the baby’s cough, and of whether my old black coat would see me through another season, and I was wondering whom I should be put next to at dinner this evening, for I was too tired for sparkling inanities with the ladies or the sober political doomsaying of my elders. “John Sevier,” I said, to show that I was listening. I barely glanced at Sheriff Boone, for I was anxious to begin the evening, if only to see it over with. “A hero of the Battle of King’s Mountain. Sevier was a fine, bold fellow, and a patriot.”

“Perhaps too bold,” said the sheriff. “But I believe he was a good man nonetheless.”

I nodded. There were those who said that Sevier had been too cruel in his treatment of the Indians, but I hardly thought that John Boone would be concerned about such matters some thirty years after the fact. Then I recalled that Sevier had run off with another man’s wife over in Tennessee, and I wondered if the sheriff was hinting at some domestic trouble of his own as yet undreamed of by his neighbors. Surely not! Not wishing to hear treacly confidences from this somber old fellow, I eased the subject along a new path. “John Sevier. Indeed, sir, Old Nolichucky Jack was a credit to this country, whatever his personal faults, but, Sheriff, I believe that if we talk of the region’s favorite sons, surely it is your uncle whose fame has spread throughout the world, and whose star will burn the brightest and longest in memory. Rightly so.”

John Boone blushed and nodded. The sheriff is the nephew of the great pioneer Daniel Boone, but he himself is a kindhearted and modest man, not much given to boasting about his lineage, and I wondered what had prompted his musings on long-dead heroes. I made one or two other inconsequential remarks praising the pathfinder of Kentucky, to which he made little reply, and then I took my leave of the sheriff. I left him standing in the twilight, and now that I think back on it, the old fellow looked as if he had something more to say to me but didn’t quite know how to begin. I left him thus, with his piece unsaid.

I realize now, of course, what had put the thought of John Sevier into his head. It was not Sevier’s exploits in the Revolution that John Boone had been thinking of, nor of his elopement with Susannah Tipton, but a later incident, much closer to home. Nearly fifty years ago—before the time of Sheriff Boone and myself, but an incident still talked about—John Sevier and his supporters had wanted the mountain country to rid itself of North Carolina’s ownership. He had ample justification for this, I am sure, because North Carolina had been willing to cede the western lands to the federal government in payment of its war debt from the Revolution. We are a neglected section of the state even to this day. The State of Franklin was formed from the eastern counties of what is now Tennessee, and Sevier became its governor. Four years later the bold endeavor to form a new state collapsed in political infighting, and in 1788 the state of North Carolina sent a party of armed men to arrest John Sevier, to be tried on a charge of treason.

He was brought in chains over the mountains to Morganton—a sad plight for one of the great leaders in our war for independence. The sheriff of Burke County at the time, William Morrison, had served with Sevier at King’s Mountain, and he was appalled that his old commander should be treated thus by order of the craven politicians in Raleigh. Sheriff Morrison struck off the prisoner’s chains, and granted him bail so that he might remain in Morganton, but not under lock and key, awaiting trial. The bond money was put up by the grandfathers of Eliza Grace McDowell. These old soldiers, Charles and Joseph McDowell, were themselves brothers, and also brother officers of John Sevier’s, one a colonel and the other a general in the Revolution.

Sevier must have had powerful enemies in North Carolina government, or perhaps the politicians merely wished to make an example of anyone who would question the state’s authority. They meant to hang John Sevier, right there in Morganton, but that faithful old soldier-turned-sheriff William Morrison would have none of it. Before the court could be convened, word went out to John Sevier’s son that his father was at liberty within the town, but in peril of his life come the trial date. By and by, Sevier’s brother and his son John Jr. rode into town with some of his supporters, leading Sevier’s favorite saddle horse. Young Sevier found his father in the tavern with his old comrades, the McDowells of Quaker Meadows. “I’ve come to take my father home, sirs,” the young man told his father’s companions.

The McDowells wished John Sevier Godspeed, and they watched him ride off with his faithful friends toward the Yellow Mountain Road, which would take them at last into Tennessee and away from the jurisdiction of the state of North Carolina. No posse ever set out to bring them back. Nothing more was ever done by the sheriff of Burke County or by the state of North Carolina to prosecute John Sevier. Indeed, in the autumn of the very next year, Sevier was elected to the North Carolina Senate, and he took his place in that august body and was present when the legislators voted to reinstate his rank of brigadier general. It was as if he had never been a shackled prisoner and the object of North Carolina’s vengeance.

Surely that was the incident in John Sevier’s life that John Boone had been thinking of—not the war, not the attempt to secede from North Carolina, not the incident with the Tennessee lady, but the escape from the Burke County jail. The successful, unpursued escape from the very jail that Sheriff John Boone was now sworn to guard. Sometimes justice can best be served by avoiding the process of the law.

Frankie Silver escaped from jail that night.

Many stories were put about as to how she was able to flee, and I cannot say with any certainty which story is true. Everyone agreed that intruders had entered the building through a basement window and had unlocked the cell by means of a key. It seemed to have been done in stealth, for there was no battle between guards and rescuers. The most fanciful storytellers claimed that Frankie Silver’s brother Jack had made a wax impression of the lock of her cell door, and that he carved a key that would fit that lock, but I have never put much faith in that tale myself. I think—though I should never dream of saying it, much less trying to prove it—that a kind and scrupulous man could not bear the thought of hanging that poor, friendless little girl, and so, taking his text from the example of his predecessor Sheriff William Morrison, this gentleman left his own keys where the friends of the prisoner might get at them and thus spirit her away—perhaps, like John Sevier, to Tennessee, and then onward to the great empty Western lands, where she could disappear forever, beyond the reach of North Carolina’s terrible revenge. Or justice. Call it what you will.

The next morning word of Frankie Silver’s escape spread around the county as fast as a horse could run. I was sitting peacefully at the breakfast table when a commotion in the hall alerted us to the presence of an urgent visitor, and one of the young constables burst in past the servant to tell me the news. I set down my cup and stared at the fellow. He fairly danced on the handwoven rug in his muddy boots, rifle in hand, and he had not even remembered to take off his hat when the servant let him in the front door. “She’s fled in the night, Mr. Gaither!” he said, and his eyes were bright with excitement as if he were announcing a fox-hunting party rather than a grim search for a killer. “Frankie Silver has broke out of jail!”

I stared at him for one stricken moment, thinking a dozen thoughts at once. Finally I managed to say, “Was anyone hurt in the escape?”

He shook his head. “No one knew she was missing until they saw her cell empty this morning. Spirited clean away! Some of us are riding out in hopes of picking up her trail. Will you be going with us?”

I looked across the table at my wife’s expression of dismay. She had clapped one hand to her mouth, as if determined to keep from crying out in protest of my going. I had no intention of doing so, however. Surely Elizabeth did not imagine that a respectable country lawyer and clerk of court would abandon his day’s business to go haring through the mountain wilderness with a horde of vigilantes? After the spring rains, the roads would be indistinguishable from the creeks. And what would her father the squire say if the fine saddle horse he had given me as a wedding gift came back lame from such a fool’s errand?

“I leave the chase in your capable hands, Jack,” I told the constable. “As an officer of the court, I should stay in town. There may be warrants to be drawn up, or other legal matters that need tending to.”

He saw the sense in this—indeed, he saw more sense in this than there was, for I foresaw no legal business that would require my presence—but the excuse satisfied him, and presently Elizabeth and I were able to return to our breakfast in peace, though neither of us had much appetite for it any more.

“She has escaped from jail!” said my wife in a tone of wonder. “I cannot believe it! How could she manage such a thing?”

“With help, no doubt.” It was not my place to speculate on such matters, and I keep my thoughts to myself. Elizabeth has too many sisters to confide in.

“But who could have helped her?”

I smiled, thinking again of John Sevier. “Perhaps it was Eliza Grace McDowell, my dear. Her family seems to make a practice of it.”

“Oh, Burgess, do be serious!” I don’t know whether Elizabeth took my meaning or not. I did not remind her of the incident. At last she said, “Do you think they will catch her?”

“I hope not,” I said, before I thought better of it. I realized that my reluctance to see the prisoner recaptured was the real reason that I had been unwilling to join the searchers—though I am sure that I would have been of little use to the seasoned hunters and woodsmen who were on her trail. I did not want her found. So much simpler to let the prisoner disappear into the wilderness of Tennessee, as John Sevier once did a generation ago. Then John Boone would not have to dread the grim duty of hanging a woman, and we could end all of the clamoring to young Governor Swain, whose concerns lie elsewhere. Besides, if they caught Frankie Silver, I felt sure that it would go hard on her father and brother, who surely took her away—but it might also cause harm to the person who let her go. Such a trial would divide Morganton into hostile opposing camps, and such a rift would profit nothing. So, guilty or innocent, I wished Mrs. Silver Godspeed in her flight across the mountains, and I prayed that I might never see her again.

Her escape was a nine days’ wonder in our little country town. People seemed to talk of nothing else, and they never tired of speculating on who might be responsible for the escape. I told no one of my conversation with John Boone, and he rode west with a search party, for it was his sworn duty to bring back an escaped prisoner, whatever his private feelings in the matter may have been.

I wonder if any of those searchers wanted to catch the prisoner because they thought she deserved to die, or if they were simply acting on impulse, like hounds who will chase anything that runs, simply because it runs. It was a game of hide-and-seek, with the trackers pitting their skills against the wiles of the elusive prey. I am sure that there was a great deal of shouting and boasting and drinking done by the posse, and that in the end it all seemed such a great sport to them that they forgot the deadly purpose of their chase.

She was not taken easily. Day after day went by with no word from the searchers, and news of the escape spread far beyond the borders of Burke County. Colonel Newland said that even the Raleigh newspaper carried an article about the missing prisoner, and we knew that other lawmen from the neighboring counties had joined in the search. Still, it had been a good many days since her escape, and it seemed likely that she was gone for good.

“Seven days,” Miss Mary announced at dinner one night. “Surely she is out of reach by now. The Tennessee border is four days’ ride at most, is it not?”

The squire gave his daughter a reproving glare. Such things are not talked of before white linen and crystal. “Are you referring to the escaped murderess, my dear?”

“Of course she is, Father,” said Elizabeth. “We can talk of nothing else! We are quite beside ourselves with worry.”

“I don’t think you need worry,” her father replied. “I do not believe that Mrs. Silver will break in to Belvidere and take an ax to us in our beds.”

The Erwin women all stared at him for a moment’s consternation before they burst into laughter. It is the

squire’s way of joking to pretend to misunderstand his wife and children, and then to allow himself to be instructed in the true significance of their remarks.

“Oh, really, Daddy!” said Delia, who is the baby of the family, nearly twenty, and a great pet of her father. “We do not think Mrs. Silver presents any danger to anyone. We are all soin hopes that she will get away!”

“Really?” said the squire in mock amazement. “You wish her to escape justice? Delia, my dear, has anyone informed your Dr. Hardy of your feelings regarding husband killing?”

Delia squealed and blushed prettily at the mention of her most ardent admirer, and the others began to laugh and tease her, and so the subject was forgotten. Later, however, as we were leaving the table, Miss Mary turned to me and murmured, “I hope that Delia will be more fortunate in her choice of a husband than Mrs. Silver was.”

“There is no doubt of that,” I said. “And as for Mrs. Silver, at least it has ended well. She has made her escape, and we can only hope that she deserved this second chance at life that she has been given. Even now she is probably safe in Tennessee, making plans to go west and picking the wild blackberries she spoke of so fondly.”

“I hope that you are right,” said Miss Mary. “But I shall continue to pray for her deliverance. Indeed, I will not rest easy about it until the hunt is abandoned and the last of the searchers has come back from the mountains.”

“Do you not think that the governor would pardon her if she returns?”

My sister-in-law hesitated. “Very likely he would,” she said. “But I think it is best not to put too much faith in men—or governments.”

I heard the returning search party before I saw them. I had walked down to Newland’s to see if the stagecoach had arrived yet, and just as I was crossing the street to have a word with the colonel himself, a mighty whoop and a couple of piercing yells echoed down the street, accompanied by the drumming of hooves. A frail old man on a nearby porch jumped up and reached for his pistol before he remembered himself. The Indians had been gone for a generation or more. No one any younger than the old man would have even considered the possibility of a raid, for such Indians as there were nowadays lived farther to the west, or miles to the south in the Cherokee towns like Chota. These screaming warriors were savages of a different kind, and an instant after I heard their whooping I knew what it meant: the search party had come back, successful in their quest.

I clambered onto the safety of Newland’s porch, in case the revelers decided to take a victory gallop along the main street of Morganton. Colonel Newland was emerging from his office just as I reached my vantage point by his doorway.

“What is all this commotion?” he demanded, peering down the street in the direction of the noisemaking.

“I am afraid it is the posse,” I told him.

He glanced at me as if he wanted to dispute my theory, but curiosity got the better of both of us, and we jettisoned the argument in favor of leaning across the railings of the stage-office porch, straining for a glimpse of the returning riders. A moment later the procession came into view. Half a dozen mud-caked riders on sweat-soaked horses rounded the bend in the road. The three leaders were waving their hats

and shouting to passersby, glorying in the impromptu parade. Three more solemn horsemen followed a short distance behind, each holding the reins of his own mount, each leading a second horse on a short rope. I did not immediately recognize any of the search-party members, but I knew at once the identity of the three ragged and weary persons tied to the saddles of the horses in tow.

Isaiah Stewart sat slumped forward, as if his weariness had overcome even his sorrow and his anger. His clothing was torn and muddy, and there were flecks of blood in his grizzled beard. He had not been taken easily, I thought. Beside him, Jackson Stewart sat up, defiantly glaring at the onlookers as though daring them to jeer at his plight. He is a great bear of a man, six feet in height and not lacking in girth, and all the welts and bruises upon him I imagined had been repaid with interest upon the persons of his captors. He wore iron shackles about his wrists, and over them a rope tying him to the saddle. Although Frankie Silver would have been regarded as the main prisoner, it was this accessory to her escape that the posse most feared. Mrs. Silver herself rode with eyes downcast, as oblivious to the stares of the crowd as she had been at her trial. Her hands were bound with rope, but her feet dangled at the horse’s side, not tied together beneath the belly of her mount, as were those of her accomplices. She was wearing men’s clothing: buckskin breeches and a homespun shirt beneath a man’s coat, and her blond hair tumbled out from beneath a wide-brimmed leather hat, although it must have been bound up when the searchers came upon them. She was small and sturdy enough to pass for a young boy. I thought the clothes must have belonged to Blackston Stewart, and I wondered if he had been left at home to tend the homestead, or if he had got away into the forest when the lawmen came.

An old man in the crowd called out: “How did ye take her, boys?”

One of the rear guard reined in his bay mare, and leaned back in the saddle with a grin of lazy triumph. Whatever happened,I thought, you had least to do with it.“Well,” he said, “it weren’t an easy hunt. It’s perilous country out there, and you could turn around twice and be lost, but we tracked them well enough, though the going was slow when they left the trail and took to the woods. We might not have caught them at all, but for the high water.”

Someone laughed and called out, “Come hell or high water, was it?”

“Some of both, I reckon,” said the rider. “We reckoned on them heading west into Buncombe County and then making for the Tennessee line, but that is not what they done. They was in Rutherford County when we caught up to them, trying to ford the river, which was so swollen from the spring rains that their horses could not manage the crossing.”

“Did you shoot it out with them?”

The sad little procession had moved on up the street now, and the rider looked after them as if he wanted to end the talk and catch up to the others, but after a moment he perceived that they were only a few yards from the jail, and there were townsmen aplenty surrounding them now, eager to have a tiny part in the recapture of a notorious outlaw so that they, too, might become tellers of tales. I watched the prisoners being dragged from their horses, and I wondered where it was they were headed. Rutherford County is due south of us, and not on the way to Tennessee. Perhaps the Stewarts originally came from down that way, and they were taking Frankie back to kinfolk there, or in South Carolina. Anywhere but here,I thought. For if ever they could have eluded the searchers and made them turn back with no more leads to follow, they would have got away. The sheriff had neither the means nor the heart to prolong the search for her. Another day would have seen her safe.

Seeing that he was no longer needed among the hunters, the straggling horseman mopped his brow with a muddy rag and turned his attention back to the little crowd that hung on his every word.

“Well, now, I can’t say that I heard tell of any shooting,” he said. “The fugitives were hoping to put so much distance between themselves and Burke County that they would never have to see us at all, and, failing that, they were thinking they could outsmart us. Old Frankie was dressed as a boy, and the other two were trying to get a loaded wagon over the river. So one of the trackers—a fellow name of Gouge, I think it was—went up to the wagon and says to the little lad, ‘You’re Frankie Silver, ain’t you?’ She ducks her head and says, ‘No, sir. My name is Tommy.’” The rider paused and grinned. “That big fellow yonder was a-driving the wagon, and he heard them talking. ‘That’s right!’ he hollers out. ‘ Hername is Tommy.’ ”

The listeners roared appreciatively, and several of them echoed, “ Hername is Tommy,” to impress it in their minds before they hurried away to regale their friends with the news.

I wondered if it had happened that way, or if the fellow had used the ride back to Morganton to come up with a rousing tale for the taverns. He would drink his fill tonight on the recital of that one, I thought. There would be revelry tonight in the inns of Morganton, I thought as I turned away. The hanging would take place after all.

Burgess Gaither

CONFESSION Frankie Silver’s eight days of freedom had ended in capture, and the arrest of her father and brother for aiding in her escape. I had thought that such an act of disregard for the laws might turn the community against her once more, but it did not. We are a frontier people, still. Our parents’ generation comprised their own army to defend themselves against the attacks of the Indians, and they enforced their own laws within the settlements, so we are not yet complacent about taking orders from a far-off government. People seemed to think Frankie Silver’s escape was a sensible reaction to an unjust sentence of death. Perhaps they, too, remembered John Sevier in similar circumstances. If anything, the clamor for the prisoner’s release was even more strident, and the list of names upon the circulating petition grew ever longer.

I still had not signed it, however. I told myself that whatever I might think of the case, I did not know the facts concerning Charlie Silver’s death. Until I was satisfied on that point, I could not in good conscience ask that his killer be reprieved. I said as much to the sheriff, and to a number of well-meaning people who thrust petitions under my nose.

“She wants to confess.”

It was the eleventh of June. Thomas Wilson had found me in McEntire’s, sharing a pint with young Dr. Tate, who is a learned and kindred spirit in our little country town. Wilson stood looming over my chair like a black-suited crow, as gawky and unsmiling as ever. It is of little wonder to me that Mr. Wilson’s political career was short and unpropitious. I stared up at him, endeavoring to make sense of his blast of words. I said stupidly, “She . . . wants . . .”

“The prisoner. Frankie Silver! The wretched girl has finally got it into her head that the state means to kill her, and she has been weeping for hours on end. The sheriff tells me that she has abandoned herself to despair, but that some of her friends have visited with her in the jail—” He paused here and gave me such a meaningful look that I knew at once who the prisoner’s friends were, although Mr. Wilson is too much of a gentleman to say the names of wellborn ladies aloud in a public tavern.

“I see.”

“I’m sure you do,” he said dryly. “Apparently, these friends have convinced the poor creature that her only hope of survival is to tell the truth about what transpired on the night of Charles Silver’s death. Her advisors think that if her story is brought to light, the governor can be persuaded to spare her life.”

“Do you think so?”

“It is possible, I suppose.” He said this with no apparent conviction. “It is worth trying. I have been summoned to hear Mrs. Silver’s narrative, and I want another witness. In this situation there should be two listeners to corroborate the testimony.”

“That seems fitting,” I said. “Will you ask Sheriff Boone?”

“I think not,” said Thomas Wilson, after a moment’s hesitation. “He is already suspected of being too lenient toward the prisoner. I think you would be the proper witness. As clerk of court, you are the ranking official in the county, since the circuit judge and the district solicitor are not from Morganton. Besides, I was one of Mrs. Silver’s attorneys, but you are a disinterested observer—a most desirable thing in a witness. Will you hear her confession?”

“I will, gladly,” I said, getting to my feet. “Shall I come with you now?”

“Now is as good a time as any. Bring writing materials with you. We shall want a record of the prisoner’s statement.”

I stopped by the courthouse to fetch ink and paper, and we proceeded across the lawn to the wood frame building that served as the county jail. John Boone was expecting us, it seemed, for he met us at the door himself and ushered us up the stairs to the prisoner’s cell with very little comment beyond a civil greeting.

She must have heard our footsteps on the stairs, for as we neared the second floor, I heard a clank of chain that indicated the prisoner was stirring in her cell. “Can you unchain her while we talk with her?” I asked the sheriff.

John Boone would not meet my eyes. “No,” he said.

I did not protest further, for I knew that the escape had forced him to be vigilant. He let us into the cell and locked it behind us, placing the iron key back on his belt. “Really!” I said to Wilson as the door slammed shut. “The sheriff can hardly think we mean to effect an escape with the prisoner.”

“He is taking no chances,” said Wilson. “I cannot fault him for that.”

I thought with sorrow of the pretty young woman who had prattled on about tomatoes and apples last summer. She was gone. The gaunt and haggard creature who huddled near the window of the cell bore no resemblance to that blue-eyed girl who had held her own against the Erwin sisters many months ago. She did not turn to look at us as we came in. I think she no longer cared for visitors.

Thomas Wilson said, “Good afternoon, madam. We have been summoned to speak with you. I believe you know Mr. Burgess Gaither?”

She nodded, and turned to look at me. “I remember him.”

“I was asked to witness your statement,” I told her. “Do you want to tell this story in your own words, Mrs. Silver, or would you like us to ask you questions?”

“I’ll just tell it straight out, I guess. It’s been bottled up inside me so long now, I feel like it’s poking out my stomach. Let me tell it.”

I sat down on the camp bed, took out my writing materials, and set my quill to paper. “Whenever you are ready,” I said, with what I hoped was an encouraging smile.

The tears flowed freely down her pale cheeks. “I killed him,” she said.

I drew in my breath. I knew, of course, that she must have done it, and the jury had pronounced her guilty more than a year ago, but there is still a chill that comes when one hears a murderer say quietly, I killed him.I waited for her to continue, but she simply sat there looking at us.

“We must know more,” said Thomas Wilson.

She nodded, and looked back toward the window and the green mountains in the distance. “Charlie . . . I was sixteen when I married him. He was handsome enough, and I reckon that’s why I said yes when he asked me. Folks were always saying what a handsome pair we were. And I was wanting to get away from home anyhow. Seems like all there ever was to do was chores, and I thought, I may as well do the washing and the cooking for my own man in my own house instead of letting Mama boss me every whipstitch doing the selfsame tasks at home. I wish I hadn’t of now.” She looked at me. “You ain’t writing,” she said.

“No. I will only set down what pertains to the crime itself,” I told her. I could not write as fast as she spoke, and at any rate I thought this preamble would be of little value for our purposes. “You may say whatever you like, though, Mrs. Silver. I will read it back to you when we are done.”

She nodded. “Where was I? Oh, Charlie. You’d think with his mama dying a-borning him, that he wouldn’t be spoiled by his stepmother, but I reckon he was. Or else he was just naturally trifling. He didn’t hardly lift his hand to help with the work. He’d chop wood and feed the cattle, and he called himself hunting when he’d slip off for hours at a time while I tended to everything else.”

Thomas Wilson scowled at her. “Madam, did you kill your husband because he was lazy?”

She shook her head. “No, sir. I didn’t mind him much most times, but the thing was, Charlie liked to get drunk, and the liquor turned him mean.”

“How so?”

“He’d come home cold-eyed and set in his jaw, looking for things to find fault with. I answered him back a time or two at first, but he’d hit me across the face with the back of his hand and split open my lip. Or he’d black my eye and say I’d earned it. I learned to keep out of his way when he was drinking. There’s many a woman does the same, sir.”

“He had been drinking on the night in question?”

“The night and most of the day as well. He went over to George Young’s to get liquor, and he must have put away a jugful before he ever started home. He came in after dark, toting his pistol and letting the cold

wind in the cabin when he pulled the door open, and Baby woke up a-bawling.”

I wrote: The prisoner avers that Charles Silver did come home intoxicated on the night of December 22, 1831.

“We had words then, sir, for I was fit to be tied that he had been gone so long, leaving me to tend the fire and the cattle. I reckon I hollered at him: It’s about time you got home,or some such words, and he shoved me away. I fell against the cradle, and the baby yelled even louder. Charlie scrunched up his face like the noise hurt his ears, and I was still talking too loud to make myself heard over the din. He pulled out his pistol then, and said, I’m sick of both of you, by God I am!I wouldn’t have taken much notice of that, for he was always full of talk, except for the look on his face, which wasn’t red like anger, but gray, like somebody who was cold all the way to the bone. He looked down at my baby then, sir, and he says to me, Frankie, if you don’t shut that baby up, I reckon I will.”

“He pointed a pistol at his own child?” I said. Mr. Wilson gave me a withering stare, and I mumbled an apology for forgetting myself and went back to setting down her testimony.

“Charlie pulled the hammer back, and I knew he meant to do it. He wasn’t himself at all. He was mad with drink, and we’d been shut up in that cabin most of the winter on account of the deep snow, with the baby colicky and crying day and night. Charlie likes a good time, sir. He wasn’t one to suffer bad times. He would have been sorry afterward, most likely, if he had killed the baby, but it wouldn’t have been no use then.”

Mr. Wilson said softly, “And what did you do?”

“Well, I didn’t have more than a heartbeat to think on it, for he was a-steadying that pistol at the baby’s head. Next thing I knew, the ax was in my hands and I was swinging at him with all my might. I had to stop him, you see, any way I could.”

Thomas Wilson and I looked at each other. There was sorrow in his face and anger in mine, but we said nothing to the prisoner except a calm “Continue, please.”

“I hit him. I reckon I did.”

“And then?”

“He went down, and there was blood around the side of his head, and he was twitching. I had me a white kitten once, and while it was playing by the hearth, my daddy’s hunting dog snapped at its little throat and shook it while I stood and screamed. When that dog dropped my kitten, it lay there twitching, blood coming out of its mouth, with its eyes like ice, staring without seeing. Took it a long, long minute to die. I cried for three days.” She looked up at us, as if she had suddenly remembered we were there. “It was like that with Charlie. It was quick.”

We sat there in silence for a moment; both Wilson and I were waiting for her to pick up the threads of the story again, for she was no longer weeping, but the silence continued. At last Thomas Wilson said softly, “And then what, Mrs. Silver?”

She stared up at him. “I killed him,” she whispered. “And I told you how. That’s all I can say.”

“But how did you come to burn his body?”

She shrugged. “Just did.”

“Surely you realize that it is the destruction of the body that has caused the greatest outrage concerning your crime?”

She nodded. We waited another long minute in silence, but it was clear that the prisoner would say no more.

Wilson’s eyes narrowed. “Very well then, madam,” he said. “Let us proceed. Tell us what transpired on

the night you escaped.”

She took a deep breath. “Will them that helped me get in trouble for it, Mr. Wilson?”

“They deserve to,” he replied. “They have set the governor’s feelings very much against you, for he

thinks now that you are an outlaw. You may save yourself, however, if you will hand over those who effected your escape.”

“That wouldn’t be right,” said Frankie Silver.

“It would save you.”

“If I told on them that helped me . . . would they hang?” She was looking not at Mr. Wilson, but at me.

“We cannot say what punishment the jury would fix upon them,” he said primly, but my expression must have told her my thoughts: they would hang, as surely as I’m sitting here.

“I can’t say,” she whispered, huddling back against the wall.

Wilson tried to persuade her to confide in us, but she would say nothing further. At last he fairly shouted at her, “Mrs. Silver, without your testimony these people cannot be convicted!”

At that she smiled and shook her head again. I wondered if she really understood what her refusal would cost her.

We left the cell then, for it was clear that nothing more could be got out of badgering the poor creature. She had made up her mind to keep silent. As we descended the stairs, I murmured to Wilson, “She should not be hanged for this crime, sir! It was self-defense.”

“I know it,” he said. “I thought it must have been, but as she could not testify in court, we could not present that defense to the jury. It is not the killing of Charlie Silver that will hang her, anyhow.”

“No, it isn’t. It is the cutting up of the body that has outraged the community, and she will not explain that point away. It was panic, I suppose. She wanted to hide the evidence of her crime, for she does not understand legal shadings like ‘self-defense’ or ‘manslaughter.’ Poor ignorant girl! What will you do now?”

Thomas Wilson sighed. “I will write to Governor Swain yet again. I must tell you, though, that he is reluctant to intercede. I received a letter from him only last week, and he shows no inclination to mercy. As for the persons who helped Mrs. Silver escape, the governor wants them hanged as well.”

“But she should not have been convicted!”

“She was, though. And the state says that verdicts are to be honored, just or unjust. I have shared the governor’s letter with the prisoner’s father, Isaiah Stewart. I hope it will serve as a warning to him, lest he should get the whole family hanged instead of only the daughter.”

“Poor Mr. Stewart. His daughter is wrongly convicted, and he is powerless to save her. Can you wonder that he is driven to desperate measures?”

“I have no sympathy to spare for the relatives,” said Thomas Wilson. “It is their meddling that will get her hanged. They should have trusted in the law the moment that Charlie Silver died, instead of now, when it is all but too late.” He shook his head. “Well, I will do what I can. I will advise the governor of Mrs. Silver’s confession. I must impress upon him that the act was self-defense. Perhaps he will not hang her when he knows the facts of the case. But the escape—that was ill-judged. She is indeed an unfortunate woman.”

“You must save her, Wilson.”

“Well, I will try. You would oblige me by making several fair copies of Mrs. Silver’s confession. We shall need them to accompany the petitions we must circulate around the county. The governor will want reassurance that he is making a popular decision.”

“I will write them out tonight,” I said.

“Good. Time is short. I will write to Woodfin in Asheville myself. I think when he hears of this new evidence, he will assist us as well.”

Downstairs we said our farewells to Sheriff Boone. “I have witnessed her confession,” I told him. “And it is a sad tale indeed. I hope that this document will spare you the terrible duty of hanging her.”

“I hope so, too,” he said. “With all my heart. Though I reckon it would disappoint half the county to be deprived of the spectacle.”

“Not I,” I said. “If the dreadful day comes, I hope I am far away from the site of the execution, and I shall wish to hear nothing whatever about it then or later.”

As I started to cross the threshold into the open air, John Boone called me back. “Mr. Gaither,” he said, “you do realize, don’t you, that as clerk of Superior Court you are the highest-ranking officer of the court in the county?”

“I suppose so,” I said. “Why do you mention it?”

The old sheriff put his hand on my shoulder. “I wondered if you knew that you are the state’s witness to the hanging.”

Late that night, after most of the household had gone to bed, I sat before the fire in the great hall at Belvidere, copying out the confession that I had taken down. I heard the rustle of skirts and the soft patter of slippers on the oak floor. I had hoped that it was Elizabeth, come to keep me company after putting young William to bed, but I saw Miss Mary in the doorway, carrying the decanter of brandy.

“I thought you might need fortification, Mr. Gaither,” she said. “Shall I pour you a glass?”

“Thank you,” I said, without troubling to look up, for I did not wish to lose my place.

She set the glass down beside the candle and poured another for herself, at which point I did look up, but although I raised my eyebrows at this impropriety, I said nothing. “I have come to read the confession,” she said, taking the chair next to my writing table.

I sighed. At dinner that night I had spoken of my visit to the jail, but before anyone could press me further about the details of that meeting, I had changed the subject to talk of a visit to Charlotte, and the squire had come to my aid, steering the conversation away from the distressing subject again and again. I knew, though, from seeing Miss Mary’s thoughtful stare farther down the table, that despite our best efforts at shielding the ladies, I had merely delayed the discussion.

“The document may distress you,” I said.

Miss Mary smiled. “Why, Mr. Gaither,” she said, “I knew that she had killed him. I merely wish to know why.”

Without another word, I handed over the paper and watched as she read my summary of Mrs. Silver’s declaration. Her expression did not change. “I thought it must be something like this,” she said at last. “A simple girl like that could hardly have been roused to murder for anything less. It is not murder, though, is it, Mr. Gaither?”

“Mr. Wilson says that it was clearly a case of manslaughter, if not justifiable homicide. The law realizes that people must defend themselves. Or it should.”

“Yet she was sentenced to death for it.”

“That is so. However, we believe that justice was not served in this case, and we are doing everything in our power to have the judgment set aside.”

I could see from Miss Mary’s expression that she had no doubt that they would carry the day. The Erwins are people of power and influence. They know how to go about these things. They know all the right people in Raleigh, and elsewhere. I was a new member of the family, and I had not the confidence of my new kinsmen.

“People wonder why I have never married,” Miss Mary said, taking another sip of her brandy. “There is too much risk in the venture. A woman is quite at the mercy of a fool or a brute, and one can never know the bargain one has made until it is too late.”

“We are not all such bad lots,” I protested.

Miss Mary smiled. “Not all snakes are poisonous,” she said, “but I leave them all alone just the same.” She took another quill from the pewter pot on the writing table. “Have you many more copies to make? I write a fair hand. Let me help you.”

We spoke very little after that, but sat side by side until the fire burned low, copying the cold words of Frankie Silver’s confession until we knew the phrases by heart.

A few days later, I arrived at Belvidere just before the dinner hour, having escaped the premises for most of the afternoon because an afternoon tea was taking place in the great hall. I had no sooner shaken the dust from my boots than Miss Mary appeared, brisk as ever, and thrust several sheets of paper into

my hands. “Just the person I wanted to see,” she informed me. “Read this and tell me what you think.”

I arranged the sheets of paper in order and began to read.

June 29, 1833

To His Excellency David L. Swain:

Governor of the State of North Carolina Your petitioners are fully sensible of the Delicacy of presenting to you this petition. Yet they Justify themselves by claiming as a duty peculiar to the Sex to be all-ways on the side of Mercy towards their fellow beings and to the female more particularly.

The subject of this petition is an unfortunate creation of our Sex, Mrs. Francis silvers who was Sentenced by our court to be executed on the last Friday in June, but by your goodness respited until the second Friday in July. We do not expect to refer you to any information in this that you are not already familiarly acquainted with, only it be the treatment the unfortunate creature received during the life of her husband.

We do not refer you to this with a cause of Justification but wish to reiterate the various unfortunate events which have taken place in the world in consequence of the woman’s abuse, indecorous, and insupportable treatment in which the creature now before your Excellency for God’s mercy has, contrary to the law of God & the country, yet so consistent with our nature, been her own avenger.

Hear her own wrongs.

The husband of the unfortunate creature now before you we are informed, Gov., was one of that cast of mankind who are wholly destitute of any of the feelings that is necessary to make a good husband or parent. The neighborhood people are convinced that his treatment of her was both unbecoming and cruel verry often and at the time too when female Delicacy would most forbid it he treated her with personal violence.

He was said by all the neighborhood to have been a man who never made use of any exertions to support either his wife or child, which terminated, as is frequently the case, that those dutys nature ordered and intended the husband to perform are thrown to her.

His own relations admit of his having been a lazy, lady-trifling man.

It is admitted by them also that she was an industrious woman, but for the want of Grace, Religion, and Refinement she had committed an act that she herself would have given a world to be able to call back.

We refer you to the child who is an infant and needs the child’s mother. We hope that your Excellency will extend to the unfortunate female all the help you can, even to a pardon, & wipe from the character of the female in this community the Stigma, namely of a woman being hung under the gallows.

Yours sincerely, Mary E. Erwin Appended to this carefully wrought document were the signatures of nearly every gentlewoman in the county. I traced my finger down the list: the attorneys’ families were well represented. Thomas Wilson’s wife, Catherine Caldwell Wilson, who is the Erwins’ niece, and Mr. Wilson’s mother, Eunice Worth

Wilson, had signed the petition also. The name of my own dear wife Elizabeth was there, as was that of her sisters Delia Erwin and Catherine Gaither, my brother Alfred’s widow. My mother-in-law, Matilda Sharpe Erwin, and her sister Ceceilia Sharpe Erwin had signed the document. There was Martha McEntire Walton, daughter of the innkeeper and wife of Thomas Walton, a landowner and former justice of the Court of Pleas and Quarter Sessions. I saw the name of Jane Tate, a relative of our former sheriff Will Butler, and Goodwin Bousehell, of the Methodist minister’s family. Eliza Grace McDowell, granddaughter of a general and a colonel of the Revolution, had signed the petition, as had her cousins Matilda and Elvira Carson, who are McDowells on their mother’s side, like their cousin Annie Maria McKesson, also listed. Catherine Carson, the young bride of our United States congressman Sam Carson, had added her name and influence to the petition. I fancied that I could feel the paper growing warm in my hands, and I wondered if the governor would be similarly affected. It is true that women do not vote or hold elected office, but if the old adage is true, that “the hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that rules the world,” then there were enough imperial hands represented here to turn the firmament upside down. The daughters and granddaughters of governors, and generals, and congressmen, and wealthy landowners, and lawyers, and signers of the Constitution were all arrayed in a force that made me think of ancient Britain’s Queen Boadicea in her war chariot leading the charge against a Roman legion. The respectful request for a political favor was nothing less than a demand, for all its careful phrasing. I did not envy David Lowry Swain his office or his duties that day, or on any day since.

“Well, what do you think?” Miss Mary asked me, when I had set the document aside.

“I hardly know,” I said. “Are there no ordinary women who wish to see the prisoner reprieved? No miller’s wife, or tailor’s daughter?”

Miss Mary had the grace to blush. “Certainly there are,” she replied. “I would hope that every woman in the county and indeed the whole state would wish to see this poor creature saved from an undeserved fate, but time is short, and we had no time to spare for collecting signatures far and wide. Besides, I think these names will carry weight with the governor.”

I nodded. “The names will be familiar to him, to say the least. It reads like an index of North Carolina history.”

“Mr. Bevins has promised to write a letter accompanying the petition. You see his wife’s name there among the others. Surely this will prove to the governor that all the county desires a pardon for that poor wretched woman.”

“Did Mrs. Silver ask you to draft such a letter?”

“No. How could she think of such a thing? She knows nothing whatever about it. In fact, it was Colonel Carson who suggested it.”

“What? Old Huntin’ John?” The colonel was a prominent landowner, and father to our congressman Sam Carson, and I wondered how he came to be dabbling in a backcountry murder case. “What has he to do with it?”

“Poor Mr. Stewart is beside himself with worry over the fate of his daughter, and he appealed to Colonel Carson for advice in the political aspect of the matter.”

I frowned. “I think Mr. Stewart should have considered the political side of the case before he broke his daughter out of jail.” I raised a hand, forestalling their protests of his innocence. “And if he did not do it, he certainly condoned it, and he certainly knows who did.”

“He is a desperate man, Burgess,” said Elizabeth, with a look of genuine, if misspent, concern.

“Her unlawful escape from confinement shows little respect for the law, my dear,” I said sternly. “I am sure that the governor will be less inclined to mercy than he would have been if she had not shown her contempt for North Carolina justice.”

“Why shouldn’t she show contempt for it?” Miss Mary demanded. “She has seen little enough of it. She was condemned at her trial without a chance to tell her side of the story. The State Supreme Court considered the case without having anyone present to speak on her behalf. And now you tell me that Governor Swain will judge her harshly because she refuses to sit obediently in her little cell and wait for them to come and kill her?”

I had no more heart to play devil’s advocate with her, for she voiced my own sentiments—if, that is, a clerk of court were permitted to have any.

In the weeks since Frankie Silver’s escape and return to jail, Burke County had besieged the governor with letters and petitions asking that the prisoner’s life be spared. Colonel Newland continued to press his case, and Mr. Wilson wrote as he had said he would, giving Mr. Swain the details of the prisoner’s confession. Life went on as usual in Morganton, with weddings and christenings and even a fancy dress ball at Bellevue, but inevitably the talk returned to the prisoner chained on the second floor of the jail. What could be done to save her?

On the twenty-first of June a letter arrived from Raleigh via the Buncombe Mail, granting the prisoner a two-week stay of execution. The governor said in his order, It has been represented to me that the prisoner has been deluded by false hopes of pardon. Now therefore know so that, to the end that further space may be allowed her to prepare for the awful change that awaits her, and by virtue of the power vested in me by the Constitution of North Carolina, I do hereby respite said Frances Silvers until the second Friday in July next.

John Boone showed me the letter, so that as the officer of the court, I might make note of the official change in the schedule.

“Well,” I said, “we have two more weeks to circulate more petitions.”

Boone nodded. “I wonder if it’s a kindness, though, to give the girl hope.”

Mr. Bevins wrote his letter accompanying the ladies’ petition, and even Nicholas Woodfin had come to Burke County to do what he could. Woodfin took one of my copies of the confession, and he spent many days riding through the outlying districts of the county gathering the names of other citizens upon petitions for clemency. I was gratified that Mrs. Silver’s young lawyer should take such trouble on her behalf, long after his duties in the courtroom were done, but I thought his time and influence could have been better spent in other ways.

“Nicholas Woodfin is riding from one homestead to the next up the mountain getting backcountry farmers to put their Xon a petition to save Frankie Silver. I cannot understand it!” I was holding forth to Squire Erwin as we took a Sunday afternoon ride along the John’s River bottom land that formed one of the boundaries of Belvidere. The plantation runs to nine hundred acres of cultivated land, dotted with smokehouses, sheds, and slave cabins. Beyond that, several thousand more acres of forest and mountain complete the estate, ensuring that William Willoughby Erwin is truly “lord of all he surveys.”

When I said again that I did not understand Woodfin’s behavior in the Silver case, the squire reined in his mare to a slower pace and gave me an appraising stare, as though I were a schoolboy parsing Latin. “What would you have him do?”

“Why, he should write to the governor, of course! It seems that everybody in Morganton with the means to a goose quill has dispatched a letter to Raleigh. Why doesn’t Nicholas Woodfin do the same? Surely he has the most influence with David Swain. He clerked under him in Asheville not three years ago!”

“And you think that the governor would grant Nick Woodfin a great political favor because the man once clerked under him?” William Willoughby Erwin smiled. “Why should he?”

“Why, because they are associates. Because Woodfin is known to him, and so his word may be given higher value than that of well-meaning strangers not known to the governor.”

The old man shrugged. “Politics is a form of commerce, Burgess. Never forget that. I assure you that our young governor does not forget it for one moment. What would it profit David Swain to grant a favor to a young pup of a lawyer from Asheville?”

“Why, it would be an act of kindness, a courtesy such as one gentleman shows to another,” I protested.

“Too much charity bankrupts commerce. I think young Woodfin knows that he has no claim upon the governor as far as favors go. He thinks that by getting the names of a few hundred voters upon a piece of paper, he may enable his mentor to see the benefit of reaching a popular decision regarding the Silver case. Grateful voters count for more than happy young lawyers.”

“So you think that the petitions will save her?”

“No. She will not be saved.” William Willoughby Erwin turned his horse away from the river and set forth on his customary path to the western end of his estate, from which he could see the afternoon sun gilding the western mountains in soft, lambent light. After a few moments’ contemplative silence, the squire said, “What do you think of James’s new bull? Have you seen him yet?”

I was not to be diverted by this change of topic. The minutiae of farming hold no interest for me. When I build a home of my own, it will be in the town, and the few horses that I’ll own for carriage and saddle use will be boarded in the livery stable. Bull, indeed,I thought. “So you think all our efforts are in vain? Mrs. Silver will not get her reprieve?”

The squire shrugged. “I wouldn’t give her one.”

I turned to stare at him. In all the months that had passed since the trial, I thought I had heard everyone I knew expressing outrage about the Silver verdict, and half the county seemed to be going to great lengths to keep the girl from being hanged. I had never suspected my father-in-law’s indifference to her fate. I was so startled that I could hardly speak. “But—but—have I not told you of her confession? She killed him in self-defense, and to save their child!”

“So she says now, Burgess. She has had a good many months to learn legal subtleties from the likes of Thomas Wilson and my daughter Mary. The fact remains that this frail and ignorant young woman cut the body of her husband into a score of pieces and hid them away. Add to that the fact that she escaped from jail and managed to elude her captors for eight days, and that she will not say who assisted her in the escape. I see no injured mountain dove in need of the protection of the state, Burgess. I see a cold and resourceful woman, who will make use of whatever comes to hand, be it influential but trusting young

ladies or the key to her jail cell.” He eyed me thoughtfully. “No doubt Frances Silver is very pretty, but I am past caring about that sort of thing.”

“But four members of the original jury signed her petition.”

“Eight jurors did not sign,” the squire replied. “The governor will go with the majority.”

“But think of all the names on the entreaties to Swain! Think of the ladies’ petition: your wife, and her mother Mrs. Sharpe, Miss Mary, and Mrs. Sam Carson, and all the other gentlewomen in Morganton.”

“Ladies cannot vote. What does it matter what they think?”

“But the governor is acquainted with all of them socially. How can he say no to them without seeming like a brute?”

“That is just what I have been asking myself, Burgess. It is what interests me most about the whole affair. He will have to be very clever about it, to be sure.”

“There has never been a woman hanged before in the state of North Carolina,” I said.

“I daresay that if she were a slave woman you could save her, by pleading that her death would constitute the loss of valuable property to her owner. Then she might be let off with a good flogging. But Frankie Silver is a white woman of no breeding, wealth, or influence. She is of no use to anybody.” The squire turned his back on the mountains and the setting sun. “Time to head for home, I think,” he said. “Unless you’d care to have a look at James’s bull?”

The letters and petitions were duly sent off to Raleigh, and then all Morganton waited anxiously for the official reply, although very few of us doubted that the governor would grant a request so universally favored among the constituency, particularly since a number of prominent people had championed Mrs. Silver’s cause. But the days stretched into weeks, and it came time for preparations to be made for the execution, and still there was no word of reprieve from Raleigh.

“The governor is waiting until the last moment,” people said. “He wants to make a dramatic flourish of his benevolence.” Then they began to worry that he would misjudge the speed of the stagecoach mail delivery, and that the good news would arrive too late to save the prisoner.

At last, though, on Thursday, the eleventh of July, W. C. Bevins received the long-awaited letter. He brought it to me at the courthouse, where I was going over the material pertaining to the duties of a clerk of court in the event of an execution. I had obtained a copy of the death warrant, and I was trying to determine whether there was any set formula by which I should report to the state government that the sentence had been carried out. I have the honor to inform you . . .did not seem quite apt under the circumstances.

Bevins gave me a stiff bow of greeting and set the letter on the table atop my law books without a word.

Executive Department Raleigh 9th July 1833

Dear Sir:

I have received your letter without date but postmarked in the 3rd Ins., together with the accompanying Petition of a number of the most respectable ladies of your Vicinity in behalf of the unfortunate Mrs. Silvers, who before this communication can reach you will in all human probability have passed the boundarys which separate us alike from the reproaches of enemies and the sympathies of friends. All that it is now in my power to do, is to unite in the anxious wish, which doubtless pervades the whole community to which she belongs, that she may find mercy in Heaven, which seemed to be necessarily denied upon earth, a free pardon for all the offenses of her life.

I beg you to spare the fair Petitioners, with the most of whom I have the pleasure of acquaintance, that the kindest motives which influenced their memorial in behalf of the unfortunate convict, are duly appreciated and that no one can participate more deeply than I do in their sympathy for her melancholy fate.

I am, Sir, very respectfully your obt. Servt.

D. L. Swain To: W. C. Bevins, Esq.

I set down the letter, hardly trusting myself to speak. “The governor appears to think that Mrs. Silver has already been executed,” I said at last.

“So it would seem,” said Bevins.

“But how can he think that? David Swain himself ordered that stay of execution not three weeks ago. He himself postponed the date of her death from the twenty-eighth of June until the twelfth of July, acting upon a request from Thomas Wilson. I saw the letter myself. How can he write now and say that the sentence has already been carried out?”

“Perhaps he has other things on his mind,” Bevins suggested, but I thought I detected a sneer in his voice.

“Very well, let us apprise him of his mistake,” I said. “We will go directly to the stage office and draft a letter that Colonel Newland can—”

My voice faltered, and Bevins nodded, seeing that I had realized my error. “Mr. Gaither, you had forgotten the date.”

I stared at him. “It is the eleventh of July,” I said. “Certainly it is too late to rely upon the stagecoach to send an answer, but—”

“It is too late altogether,” Bevins said quietly. “Mrs. Silver is to be hanged tomorrow. And no power on earth could get a letter from Morganton to Raleigh and back again in less than a day. The governor knew that when he posted his reply.”

“Then why equivocate with this pretended misunderstanding of dates? Why did he not simply say, I refuse to pardon the prisoner.”

“He has said it, Mr. Gaither. As plainly as any politician ever spoke.”