The Ballad of Frankie Silver (22 page)

“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
fool
louder 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.