The Ballad of Frankie Silver (25 page)

She nodded. “Go on, then.”

“State your name, please.”

“Nancy Wilson.”

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

“That’s right.”

“No kin to Attorney Thomas Wilson of Morganton.”

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

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

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

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

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

“I know her.” An emphatic nod.

“Are you related?”

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

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

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

“Did the defendant know where he was?”

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

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

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

“Did they?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This testimony was completely different from the account Miss Wilson had sworn to on the previous day. I had not made notes of the witnesses’ recitals, for it was only my job to see that legal procedure was correctly followed, but I remembered it well enough. Nancy Wilson spoke with conviction in a clear, carrying voice, and her words had impressed themselves upon my memory. Frankie Silver had been weeping, she had said. The young wife had been worried about her missing husband. She had asked Margaret Silver and Nancy Wilson to come back to the cabin with her, but they declined, saying that they did not wish to tramp through the deep snow to her cabin. This was the testimony as I recalled it; surely the jury would remember as well?

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

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

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

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

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

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

*   *   *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“No.”

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

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

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

He looked uneasy. “I cannot be sure.”

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

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

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

*   *   *

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

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

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