The Ballad of Frankie Silver

Chapter Three THE MANILA FOLDER lay on the wrought-iron table, untouched but not unnoticed by the invalid in the lawn chair. While he drank his morning coffee on the deck overlooking the mountains, Spencer Arrowood stared at the thick manila folder that Martha had brought him the night before. He had felt too tired to tackle it on the previous evening, but now his curiosity about it was almost overpowering. He had not touched that file in nearly twenty years. Its contents would be strange to him, even though he had written most of the entries himself—and yet he hadn’t. The author of those police reports had been a swaggering young deputy, sure of his place in the world and of his superiority over his prisoners. He was the white knight upholding honor and justice in a tarnished world; they were cartoon bad guys, without excuses or families or feelings. He remembered how that young deputy had looked at life. He saw a world inhabited by only two kinds of people: criminals and cop groupies. He had viewed both types with suspicious condescension. It had taken Spencer a long time to learn how narrow the range of his experience was. Most people’s lives never touched the orbit of a police officer: they went through an entire existence as neither victim, nor devotee, nor perpetrator, and so he had never seen these folk.

Spencer could remember thinking like that, but he could no longer summon up the arrogance of youth that made such belief possible. He had perspective now. He had arrested a wife beater and recognized him as the skinny kid from sixth grade who used to show up at school with a black eye and bruises and

mumbled excuses about how he got them. He arrested a pretty young cheerleader for drunk driving, only now she wasn’t the pretty young cheerleader: she was blowsy and forty-four, and sometime in the intervening years since high school she had turned into her own mother. Although he would seldom admit this, especially to himself, Spencer had felt inside himself the same rages and impulses that got people arrested, and now he thought that most law-abiding citizens were as fortunate as they were virtuous. Any one bit of luck—loving parents, a knack for getting good grades, enough money, a faithful spouse—could derail the kind of tragedy that happened to people less blessed.

He knew that Fate Harkryder had not been an upstanding member of the community, but he had not been lucky, either. Spencer looked again at the manila folder containing the biography of a killer, wondering how it would read to him now that he was no longer the arrogant young deputy who thought that his gold shield made him a knight.

He half remembered typing the final reports, two-fingered, on an IBM electric typewriter that at the time had seemed to be the last word in technological wonders. The machine was probably still down in the basement of the sheriff’s office, along with the broken staplers, the rotary-dial telephones, the boxes of old paperwork, and all the other detritus of previous administrations which they had always meant to discard but never quite got around to carting off to the landfill.

The first item in the folder was a yellowed newspaper clipping from the Hamelin Recordrelating to the Harkryder case, with a photograph of the state’s key witness, a twenty-four-year-old deputy named Spencer Arrowood. Spencer stared at the picture of himself as an impossibly soft-faced kid. His cheeks were plump, his eyes unlined, and for all the air of menace he had tried to invoke, with his narrowed eyes and his mean-cop scowl, he looked like the rawboned adolescent he was, fresh out of the army but still looking for a fight. His sandy hair had brushed his collar in those days, fashionably long but a continual source of irritation for Nelse Miller, whose childhood impressions of masculinity had fixed on the close-cropped doughboys just back from the lice-ridden trenches of the First World War. Spencer had wasted many coffee breaks arguing the point of fashion and hygiene with the old sheriff, but it had been a waste of breath. A waste on both sides, he thought ruefully, for now he kept his graying hair as short as Nelse Miller could have wished for.

Had he ever been that young?

The thought worried him more than he would ever admit. That arrogant young deputy, the Spencer Arrowood of twenty years ago, had made decisions that would cost a man his life. What if he had been wrong?

He hadn’t thought so at the time, but back then he had been so angry, and so eager to see someone punished for what had happened to Emily Stanton, that he never paused to question his conclusions for an instant.

Her face smiled out at him from the faded newsprint. He had never seen her smile. The newspaper photo was a yearbook shot from her university. They couldn’t have used the crime scene photo in a family newspaper. No one would have wanted to remember her as she was when they found her. This was better. The picture was black and white, but Spencer remembered it in color: long red curls, clear green eyes. He remembered other colors, too, ones he would have liked to forget: streaks of mud across her left cheek, a purple bruise on her forehead, rivulets of blood, and a white splinter of bone poking through skin that should have been pink but wasn’t anymore.

The caption beneath the picture said: “Army Colonel’s Daughter Killed in Hiking Tragedy.”

To the right of Emily Stanton’s lovely face, the plain features of Mike Wilson looked out at him with the buzz haircut and the glazed stare of the student soldier. ROTC—a “Rotsy,” as the students in the university’s Reserve Officers’ Training Corps were called. Mike Wilson was headed for a hitch in the air force after college, but he never made it. He had fought a brief, private battle in a clearing in the Tennessee mountains, and he’d never had a chance. There had been defense wounds all up and down his arms, and nicks on his fingers that showed he’d tried to grab at the knife as it came at him. Those were the least of his injuries, of course, but at least they said something about how he had died. Bravely. Everyone clung to that. “Brave Mike Wilson” the news accounts invariably called him, as if that would make up for the waste of his life. Mike Wilson had died first that night. Quickly. At least, Spencer hoped it was quick.

Mike Wilson and Emily Stanton had met at college, the article said, and they had become good friends—the newspaper of twenty years ago would not have said “lovers,” but most of its readers would figure it out for themselves. They had decided to hike the Appalachian Trail together as a chance to get to know each other better, and to see if they could work well as partners. Mike liked the idea of roughing it in the wilderness to toughen himself up for the military. He had not been armed, though. Back in those days no one thought that the Appalachian Trail was a dangerous place. Hikers knew to give snakes a wide berth, and they were assured that black bears were not really a threat to people, as long as you didn’t menace them or try to approach the cubs. No one gave much thought to human predators in those innocent days.

She was only nineteen that night. She had been dead for twenty years. Spencer tried to picture Emily Stanton growing old, fading from a radiant beauty into an aging woman. Either way, he reasoned, that pretty young girl would not exist any longer, but at least she would have had a chance to become somebody else. He wondered if she had been robbed of a happy future or spared a more protracted tragedy.

At least he could try not to compound the tragedy by letting an innocent man go to his death. But how could he investigate the case at such a remove? The fading documents in this manila folder were all he had to go on. The physical evidence had long since been destroyed. A few months or years after the trial, the blood samples, the hair and fiber evidence, the clothing exhibits, and all the other mementos of the tragedy would have been incinerated in the interest of space management. After all, a small sheriff’s office could not keep everything, just on the off chance that it would someday be needed again. The state had won its conviction. Clear out the detritus of that investigation and move on to the next. Don’t look back.

Besides, physical evidence deteriorates. Even if the Wake County Sheriff’s Department had managed to keep the samples, the results from a retesting would not be reliable, and surely they would not be accepted as new evidence by the court. There was no DNA testing at the time of the Trail Murders. Perhaps then he would have known for sure; now he must investigate with only uncertainty to guide him—that, and his will not to let any mistakes be made.

Spencer leafed through the rest of the contents of the folder. He had the crime scene photos—that was encouraging, but beyond them, he had only his notes to go on, and a short list of witnesses. He wondered how many of them were still alive, and if their memories of that night had faded with time. He would have to find out.

Spencer took out the photos. Some of them had been taken with the department’s Polaroid, a state-of-the-art camera back then, and an excellent device for producing fast shots of the crime scene. Had he known then of their impermanence? He could barely make out the images in the faded prints. Heat and age had long since neutralized the developing chemicals of the instant camera, making the prints as imperfect as memory. The 35-millimeter shots were better preserved, but the exposures were inexact,

a testament to the inexperience of the photographer, who had been himself.

He had been called to the crime scene by Willis Blaine, the forest ranger for their district. The sequence of events was all there in the witness statement that he’d typed himself so long ago but now could only dimly recall. Spencer scanned the lines of faded type.

The call came in well past midnight: two hikers found dead, but not on the Appalachian Trail, which was federal land. A couple of firemen from Alabama had decided to spend their two weeks’ vacation hiking the North Carolina/east Tennessee section of the Appalachian Trail. They were nearly at the end of their journey, and that night they had gone off the trail to spend Friday night at a beer joint. At 11:20 P.M. they were making their way back through the fields to their campsite when they stumbled over something soft and sticky in a moonlit clearing.

Emily Stanton.

The startled firemen had stopped just long enough to determine that the victim was past any efforts at rescue. That decision had taken only a few seconds. They checked for breathing and a pulse, but really they had known it was useless the moment they touched her. “Dead people’s skin doesn’t feel like flesh,” one of them said at the trial. “It feels like lunch meat wrapped in plastic.” The journalists had omitted that comment from their stories out of consideration for the families, and because it served no purpose to make a good guy sound silly in the newspaper when they already had a surfeit of villains: the Harkryders.

The two hikers hadn’t lingered to investigate further. They ran down the path in the moonlight, back to the beer joint to call the forest ranger.

A body?he’d said, a little disbelieving. It wouldn’t be the first time anyone tried to play a telephone prank on a forest ranger. Where?

In the woods at the edge of a field, they told him. Just down from the Appalachian Trail, across the dirt road from the white frame church. The snake handlers’ church.

Yes,he told them. He knew the place. It wasn’t a snake handlers’ church, of course, but the trail has its own mythology, and it wasn’t important that he should correct their theology. He knew the place they meant. Would they wait for him in the parking lot and lead him to the scene of the accident? No point in calling it murder, yet. It wasn’t his call anyhow. If the hikers had described the site correctly, that clearing was a couple of hundred yards west of the Appalachian Trail, not federal land. It was in Wake County.

He got in his truck and drove to the roadhouse. The hikers were easy to spot. They were slender young men in their early twenties, huddled together in a pool of light beneath an electric pole, shivering in flannel shirts, although the night was warm. When he parked in the gravel lot and began to walk toward them, they backed away, darting glances toward the open door of the roadhouse, where jukebox music spilled out into the darkness. At last they noticed his ranger’s uniform, and they rushed toward him, both talking at once. We’re not armed,they told the ranger. Whoever did that might still be there.The ranger nodded. He showed them his pistol and told them that there was a shotgun in the truck. They could bring it along if it would make them feel any easier. Then they were willing to lead him to the site. They were trained to handle emergencies, and they were already getting over the shock of their find.

Willis Blaine took his flashlight out of the truck and followed them down the road to the church, and then up the dirt road, past the field, and into the woods.

When he aimed the spotlight at the clearing, his mind registered several things at once. Homicide. Not a

fight or a failed robbery, this one. A very sick individual was loose out here. Young adult victims, one female, one male—their clothing indicated that they were probably hikers from the trail, but they were no longer on it.

I have to secure this crime scene,he told the young firemen. They nodded. They knew about crime scenes. You need to go back to the roadhouse and make another call. Wake County Sheriff’s Department. Tell them Willis Blaine sent you. Tell them where I am. Tell them it’s murder.

Spencer remembered the call. He wasn’t supposed to be in the office at all, because they were a two-man department in those days, and after eleven, calls were forwarded over to Unicoi County, whose sheriff’s department had twenty-four-hour patrols. But Spencer was a hotshot in those days. He would have worked twenty-hour days if Nelse Miller had let him, and that night Nelse Miller wasn’t there to send him home. Where had the sheriff gone? On vacation to Wrightsville Beach? To a bureaucrat’s meeting in Nashville? To a cousin’s wedding in Ohio? Spencer couldn’t remember anymore. The whereabouts of the sheriff was not a detail included in the official report on the case, but it was duly noted that the officer in charge of the investigation was Wake County sheriff’s deputy Spencer Arrowood.

He had been sitting at the oak desk in the darkened office. Only the paperwork and a white china coffee mug were illuminated by the desk light. He had been up since six, and he was so exhausted that the letters were beginning to wiggle on the page, so that he could no longer make out what he had just written. He might lay his head down on the desktop and catch an hour or two of sleep before finishing the reports. The soothing monotony ended with the ringing of the telephone. A calm steady voice with a Deep South drawl delivered the message with only a tinge of emotion shading the words. The fireman told him where they were and what they had found. Spencer made the caller say it twice so that he could be sure he had heard him right.

Murder on the Appalachian Trail.Well, not on it. Near it. In his jurisdiction. Mr. Blaine, the forest ranger, was there with the bodies, waiting to turn the investigation over to him. Did he know where the clearing was? Spencer shook himself to clear his head and to banish the weariness from his muscles. Wait by the phone,he told the hikers. You can save me time by showing me where to go. And I’ll need statements from you.

He had called Alton Banner and asked him to meet the patrol car at the roadhouse. The caller had assured him that the victims were dead, but Spencer wanted to take every precaution.

He took both cameras, the Polaroid and the 35-millimeter; the notebook; and all the paraphernalia that had to be carried to a crime scene. Spencer knew the drill: he had done it often enough before; he had even been in charge of investigations in the past, but they had been trifling occurrences of no real consequence. Murder itself was uncommon enough in this rural mountain county. A case like this was almost unheard of. You would have to go back decades to find another one. God help him, had he been eager? Had he been excited to have a terrible case dumped in his lap after weeks of routine and paperwork?

He locked the office and headed down the steps toward his patrol car, wondering if in his grogginess, he had forgotten some crucial point of police procedure. Oh shit,he thought, as his hand touched the car-door handle. The TBI.

He was running now. Unlock the office—his fingers seemed to have grown two sizes in as many minutes as he fumbled with the lock, swallowing the urge to kick in the door. A few more minutes wouldn’t matter. The real pros wouldn’t be there for another three hours at least, because Knoxville was 120 miles

away. The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation. You called them out for any serious crime, because they had all the toys. The TBI had a fully trained death squad of officers who did nothing but crime scenes, and who knew how to check for fingerprints, hair and fiber evidence, bloodstains. They also had the lab to process the evidence, which meant that they would get it all anyway, so he might as well let them collect the samples themselves so that there would be no question about tainted evidence when the case came to court. Whenthe case came to court. Spencer wouldn’t even consider the possibility of a stalemate.

He checked the county map before he made the call, because he would have to give directions to someone unfamiliar with the county back roads. He couldn’t say, “Turn left at the Evanses’ place, and go past that field where the white horse is usually grazing.” No. He located the church and the roadhouse on the map, noted down the road numbers, approximated the distances from the main road. Then he made the call.

The officer from the TBI would meet him at the crime scene in a couple of hours. Say, 3A.M. Spencer would secure the area and do the photography and the site mapping while he waited. When the sun came up, they would be better able to determine what they were dealing with. Nobody was getting any sleep that night. That much was a given.

He left the office with the taste of cold coffee still in his mouth. He found an all-night country station on the radio and turned it up as loud as he could stand it, so that the noise would keep him awake. He was hoping for happy songs that would drive away the darkness outside and the darkness to come.

One of the vacationing firemen was waiting for him at the crossroads beside the church. When he recognized the patrol car, he stepped out of the shadows of an oak tree and flagged him down. Spencer parked in the church’s gravel lot and followed the young man down the road and through the field toward the dark woods beyond.

The fireman’s name was Al Hinshaw, and he said that his buddy Neil was waiting at the site with the ranger. He explained about their hiking vacation, and how they’d stumbled over the bodies on their way back to the shelter. Hell of a way to end your vacation, he’d said, shaking his head. The trail was supposed to be a peaceful place, wasn’t it?

“It usually is,” said Spencer. Now he saw the glow of a Coleman lantern, and he knew they were within hailing distance of the crime scene. He had met Willis Blaine a couple of times, when their paths had crossed in other investigations, but he couldn’t remember anything about the man that would be fodder for small talk during the long wait for the pros from Knoxville. How’s the wife and kids, Willis?Who knew if he even had any? Spencer wasn’t much good at small talk anyway, in those days. The demands of the job seemed to overshadow all the rituals of everyday life for him, leaving him without anything ordinary to say.

Blaine did not seem interested in conversation, either. He stood up and nodded a greeting when Spencer came into the clearing. Spencer shook hands with him and with the other fireman, Neil Echols, and that ended the civilities of the evening. “I didn’t touch anything,” the ranger told him. “It’s not my jurisdiction anyhow. But I’ll stay if you want me to.”

Spencer nodded. He could tell from Willis Blaine’s tone of voice that he wasn’t trying to take over the investigation. He was extending a courtesy to a fellow officer, and Spencer would have accepted the offer, realizing with some surprise that he really didn’t want to be all alone in the woods in this terrible place waiting for help to arrive, but Alton Banner had joined them by then, so he would have company. He wasn’t afraid; he decided that the proximity of death had made him realize how little time we all had in

this world not to be alone. Instead of expressing these sentiments, he said: “You go on home. I’ll call you and let you know what we find out.”

Then he went to hold the light on the bodies while Alton Banner examined them.

“Well, they’re past my help,” the old doctor declared after a moment’s silence. “You don’t need me to tell you that.”

“No, sir. But your presence makes it official.”

Spencer had written the words “Crime Scene Log” at the top of the first page of the notebook. He would record the names of every person who went in and out of the area, so that if a question arose later about a fingerprint or a bit of fiber evidence, they could check the sample against those who had been present at the scene. He took the names and addresses of the two vacationing firemen and sent them on their way. It was just possible that they had been responsible for this crime, but Willis Blaine hadn’t thought so, and neither did Spencer. The two men had seemed genuinely upset by their discovery of the bodies, and they hadn’t shown the signs of uneasiness or cockiness he’d have expected from the perpetrators. They acted, as far as he could tell, normal, under circumstances that were far from normal.

“They were killed separately,” Alton Banner remarked when the hikers had gone.

Spencer blinked. “What?”

“The bodies. There’s a difference in body temperature that suggests one has been dead an hour longer than the other. The male victim went first. He was off in the weeds. The killer probably took him there for—what? Privacy? To get him out of the way without letting the girl know what had happened to him?” The doctor shrugged. “Figuring that out is your job, I guess.” He turned the flashlight toward the second body, letting the beam play on the ropes that still bound her wrists. “The girl was tied to the tree at that point.”

“Cause of death for the male?”

“Exsanguination, suffocation. His throat is cut.” He shined the light on the male victim’s head and neck. “Windpipe is severed. Watch how you move the body when the time comes. There isn’t much holding the head on.”

“And the other one?”

“I’m coming to that. I don’t think the first victim, the male, was the primary target. The killer got him out of the way first, but that killing was fairly perfunctory. Bludgeon-ings. Defense wounds. Then the quick slash that puts an end to it. Like swatting a fly.” He pointed to the body of Emily Stanton and sighed wearily. “He took his time with her.”

Spencer nodded. He wondered how much of it she had been conscious for. At some point in unbearable pain, he’d heard, the mind simply drifts off to somewhere else. He hoped she went there quick and never came back. The blood looked black in the moonlight. “I think I’ll wait for the TBI guy,” he told the doctor. “He’ll have to take samples.”

“That’s what I’d do,” Banner agreed. “My investigation was perfunctory, but he’ll do the evidence collecting. You might as well photograph the scene while you wait. I’ll hold the light.”

Spencer willed himself not to register what he was seeing as he photographed the area—roll after roll of black-and-white 35-millimeter film, backed up by a dozen Polaroid shots. The recording of a crime scene is a methodical process closely akin to archaeology in the precision of the measurements and the use of grid markings to measure off the area. The body was “twelve o’clock” on the site map. He began photographing the body, shooting clockwise around the scene, taking every angle, every degree of rotation, until he returned again to the starting point. When he had finished photographing the scene, Spencer went back to his notebook and began to sketch the scene—pinpointing the position of the bodies, the objects nearby, and so on. Investigators were taught to be thorough. He wasn’t much of an artist, but he was diligent.

It was just past three when the officer from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation showed up. Spencer knew that he was a veteran investigator not so much by his age as by the way he approached the area. He introduced himself to Spencer and the doctor.

“Guess I’ll head on home,” said Alton Banner. “Office hours come mighty early. You know where to find me if you need anything. I’ll get a report typed up for you in the morning.”

Spencer thanked him. When he turned to explain the situation to the TBI man, he found the investigator already bending over the body of the young woman. “Oh my,” he said in a calm, conversational tone as he trained the beam of his flashlight across her upper body. “What haveyou got loose in your neck of the woods, Deputy?”

Spencer was startled by the question. Surely a bear couldn’t have done this? “We’re pretty sure they were killed by a human being, sir,” he said.

The investigator laughed. “Oh, it was a person, all right. I might be willing to debate you over how humanhe was, though, considering his handiwork. I hate to claim him as part of our species, but, yeah, he’s one of us, all right.”

He had brought a thermos of coffee, and he didn’t even turn away from the bodies while he poured it out and gulped down his first cupful. Then he set down the coffee and surveyed the scene again. “A hard day’s night,” he said with a sigh.

He signed in on the site log and glanced at Spencer’s sketches of the area. “It’ll do,” he remarked to no one in particular. Then he stood up and stretched. “Drink your coffee. Take your time. I’ll have to collect some samples, and then we’ll do the grid work together, okay?”

“Sure. Fine.”

“Have you identified the victims yet?”

“No. I was waiting for you.”

“Maybe we’ll turn up something on the grid work. They’re not local, are they? Look like trail bunnies to me.”

“Hikers. I think so, too,” said Spencer. “I don’t think they were killed because of who they were. I mean, not by anyone they knew.”

“Oh Lord, no,” said the TBI man. “Of course, we’re pissing in the wind at this early stage of the investigation, but in my far-from-humble opinion, this wasn’t a crime. It was a sport. To whoever did this,

I mean.” The crime scene photos were spread across Joe LeDonne’s desk, in the spotlight of his reading lamp, but he barely glanced at them. At the moment, a hamburger in greasy waxed paper was occupying the

one spot on the wooden surface not covered with photographs. “I’ve stared at those pictures until I can see them in my sleep,” he said. “If I got any these days, that is.” “I thought we’d have solved it by now,” said Martha, setting a cup of cold coffee down untasted.

“We’ve put out the word to the informers and talked to everybody within a mile of that field.” “The lab work will help.” “Only if we have someone’s blood type and DNA to compare it to.” “It’s a start.” “I was so tempted to tell Spencer about it when I took him the mail today, but he still looks awful. The

Harkryder case is really getting to him. I don’t think he’s sleeping much.” “You took him the mail? What about the newspaper?” Martha smiled. “I took him the Knoxville Journal. I told him I’d forgotten to bring the Record,and I’d

try to remember it next time. He doesn’t need anything else to worry about. Besides, there’s nothing he can do about it now. The site investigation is done, the lab work isn’t back, and he’s in no shape to do the legwork of a criminal investigation.”

LeDonne leafed through another folder on his desk: the photocopied files of the Fate Harkryder case. Martha had made a copy before taking the originals to Spencer Arrowood. “I wish we had a murder weapon,” he said, for perhaps the tenth time.

“Well, it isn’t a twenty-year-old knife,” said Martha. “The TBI investigator agrees with Dr. McNeill: the wounds are similar to those in the Trail Murders case, but not identical. He thinks it may be a copycat crime, based on the fact that Fate Harkryder’s case is back in the news.”

“We have Fate Harkryder’s blood type on file somewhere, don’t we?” “I think so.” “When the lab work comes back, let’s compare them.” “It isn’t him,” said Martha. “Riverbend is the best alibi there is.” LeDonne nodded. “Besides, he’s too old. We’re looking for someone under thirty-five. This kind of

violence is a young man’s sickness.” “I think I’ll drop by the high school tomorrow,” said Martha. “See if anybody wants to talk about the murders.” Fate Harkryder was thinking about death.

It seemed strange to know that you were going to die when you felt perfectly sound. When he came to consider the matter, it seemed not so much strange as . . . improbable. Ridiculous to believe that after twenty-odd years of sedentary monotony, the very people who had wished him good morning and to whom he had passed the occasional remark about a basketball game or a change in the weather would come for him, strap him into a plain wooden chair, and kill him.

Strange to think that the ridge he had watched day in and day out for so many years would go on changing from green to gold with the seasons without his presence as the observer. He liked to think that the ridge was there on his account, and he found it hard to believe that his death would go unheeded by his ridge.





Of course, he knew that deep down he didn’t believe in death at all. Not for himself, that is, and certainly not by execution in the state of Tennessee. He was still young and strong. He did push-ups every day for exercise, and despite a twenty-year pack-a-day smoking habit, his lungs and his blood pressure were fine. He trusted his body to keep him around for many more years, and he trusted the Tennessee legal system to spin its wheels for at least that long before they got around to trying to execute him. By then, maybe the voters would abolish the death penalty altogether, and someday, when his crime was so far in the past that nobody cared anymore, he would be granted parole. He intended to be hale and hearty enough to enjoy that freedom when the time came.

Even with lawyers who were mediocre at best, Fate Harkryder had been able to stave off the death penalty for twenty years already. It wasn’t difficult. There was always some objection that could be made in the appeal process, and any little quibble could tie the court up for a year or more, so slowly did the mills of justice grind. His lawyers had argued that his original counsel hadn’t been any good. That fellow was now quite a prominent attorney in Knoxville, but no one seemed to notice the discrepancy, and Fate figured that it was just one of the moves in the game: a formality. Anyhow, it bought him more time. When that objection played itself out a few years down the line, his legal advisers objected to the expert witnesses who had testified at his trial. They had now spent years nitpicking through a stack of transcripts and documents that would fill a pickup truck, but each legal dispute ate up a few more months: filing time, waiting time, court time, awaiting-the-decision time, appealing the decision, and then back to square one to begin again.

Fate sometimes thought that the delaying tactics would go on even if he dropped dead in his cell, so impersonal and relentless was the process. He was not the quarterback in this legal scrimmage; he was the football. It had been years now since anybody had mentioned the names Mike Wilson or Emily Stanton to him. The paperwork just rolled on, oblivious to real time and real people. Sometimes it seemed that the judicial process had taken on a life of its own, independent of any actual, long-ago crime.

Burgess Gaither

CHOOSING COUNSEL The snows of January deepened into a bleak February chill, and we town folk gathered at our firesides, passing the time away in desultory conversation. We discussed the presidential election coming in autumn, and what the reelection of Andrew Jackson boded for the Western lands. Since the time of the Revolution, the landholdings of the Cherokee nation had shrunk from many thousands of acres stretching from Alabama to Virginia to the present remnant of their past glory: a few townships in the steep mountains to the southwest of us. Now, even that pittance was begrudged them. Since the recent discovery of gold in those mountains, the United States government had been besieged with demands to move the Indians westward so that better use could be made of their mineral-rich acreage. The Indian Removal Act had passed in 1830, ordering all Indians to be resettled on lands west of the Mississippi,

but so far it had not been enforced. People were growing impatient. Andrew Jackson, who rose to fame as an Indian fighter, was said to be sympathetic to the plight of the settlers, and people claimed that he’d see to the eviction of the Cherokee to win the support of the voters on the frontier. Gold fever had swept the mountains.

There was much local speculation about the gold fields, and what effect the discovery might have on our own prosperity. Old John Tate, who is seventy if he’s a day, has already taken his family off to the hills of Georgia to seek their fortunes, and other folk talk of joining him. They are waiting to hear if he strikes it rich.

Aside from the economics involved, there is much concern among my colleagues that Andrew Jackson may ruin the country if his presidency continues. Most of the gentlemen of my acquaintance think that Jackson is a lout, an uncouth peasant who would turn the country over to the mob rule of uneducated dirt farmers. He is an Antrim Irishman who prides himself on his common touch.

He is also a lawyer. He read law not far from here—with Spruce MaCay in Salisbury, North Carolina. In 1787, when my father-in-law the squire was a young clerk of court in Morganton, Andrew Jackson was the public prosecutor for the Western District of North Carolina. The older gentlemen remember him as a hard-drinking, quick-tempered scarecrow who would sooner fight than gamble.

People still talk about the incident that occurred when Jackson was practicing law over the mountain in Jonesborough in the months before he moved on to Nashville. He was invited to an elegant ball at the home of one of the county’s prominent families. Jackson asked if he might bring a companion, and the request was granted, no doubt in hopes that he might introduce another eligible frontier gentleman to polite society. Instead Andrew Jackson arrived at the home of his host in the company of five bawds, tavern women of easy virtue whom he tried to pass off as “ladies.” The shock and outrage of those present meant nothing to Andrew Jackson; it only satisfied him that the gentry had correctly interpreted his message of contempt.

Now gentlemen everywhere talk bitterly of President Jackson’s 1829 inaugural party, when a drunken mob of his beloved “common people” were allowed to rampage through the White House, leaving a trail of mud and broken china in their wake. The aristocrats are afraid that if this ruffian is allowed to run the country for another term of office, ruin will follow. There is talk of placing tariffs on imported goods, which worries a good many people. They do not criticize the president so publicly, however, for Jackson was a hero in the war with England twenty years ago, and his ties to western North Carolina are cherished by many. Jackson’s popularity with the local farmers and backwoodsmen is as undeniable as it is bewildering. I confess, though, that I sometimes wonder what it would be like to be independent of rich and powerful old men, and to be able to oppose them with impunity. Andrew Jackson is every inch a self-made man, and it heartens me to see that such a feat is possible, although I would wish to have more respect from educated and wellborn gentlemen were I in his place.

Besides these political and economic topics, and the ever-present discussions about the weather, we all spoke endlessly, obsessively, perhaps even morbidly, of Frankie Silver. Her trial was but a month away.

She alone of her family languished in the Burke County jail now. Her mother and brother had been let go after the hearing before the magistrates in January. Mr. Burgner quite rightly set them free, declaring that no one had offered any evidence to show that they had known of or participated in the death of Charlie Silver. They were, however, to be witnesses in the forthcoming trial, and to ensure their appearance in court on the appointed day, he made them post a bond of one hundred pounds to secure their liberty. Isaiah Stewart paid the requested sum, and he lost no time in putting forty miles of mountains between them and the law in Morganton, for he took his wife and son back up the Yellow Mountain Road to their

land on the Toe River. Frankie Silver was well and truly alone in her prison cell, for the journey across the mountains was too great for a family visit, especially in winter. She must have missed her baby daughter dreadfully, but we did not speak of that. The ordinary folk of Morganton recounted the crime to one another, thrilling anew to the horror of it with each retelling, while we in the legal profession had a more prosaic matter to contemplate. Which of us would defend this wretched young woman?

We had gathered at a secluded table in McEntire’s tavern to discuss this delicate matter. I was there as an impartial participant, for as clerk of Superior Court, I could not have defended her even if I had wanted to. And I most certainly did not want to.

Nobody did.

I looked at the faces of my fellow lawyers gathered round the table. Their expressions ranged from wariness to mulish obstinacy. We were here to decide what must be done about her, and I thought that someone was bound to dislike our solution. For a frontier town, Morganton had a goodly number of lawyers, but not all of them cared to practice their calling in court. The fact that the western circuit court met in Morganton was reason enough to have a fair crop of lawyers about, but that was not the only reason they were plentiful. Wealthy planters sent their sons off to study law because a knowledge of legal matters was considered to be the final polish on the education of a gentleman. A trained legal mind made a man proficient in his business affairs, well able to understand deeds and contracts. Perhaps it was a vestige of the old pioneer spirit that inspired the elderly gentlemen to make lawyers of their sons: in that way, the family’s commercial ventures would not be at the mercy of outsiders when it came to interpreting and utilizing the law. The family would not have to take anyone’s word for the rightness of a business transaction or the meaning of a statute. If knowledge was power, then legal knowledge meant commercial and fiscal supremacy.

Some of these “gentlemen” lawyers, who practiced law for their own benefit only, did not attend our tavern conference, for the present legal dilemma was no concern of theirs. Others were there perhaps out of curiosity, but it was very much a family discussion. There were but six of us to settle the matter—it would have been seven if my brother Alfred had lived, and how I wished he had been there to offer his counsel. I was the youngest man present by a decade. My colleagues were my father-in-law Squire William Erwin; his eldest son and my brother-in-law Adolphus Erwin; Colonel James Erwin, their cousin; Mr. Isaac T. Avery, a former state legislator, who is married to my wife’s sister Harriet; Mr. D. J. Caldwell; and Mr. Thomas Wilson, who had represented Mrs. Silver’s relatives at the habeas corpus hearing with great success. Mr. Wilson’s wife Catherine is a niece of the Erwins, as her mother is Mrs. Erwin’s sister Ruth.

“You ought to take it on, Cousin James,” Adolphus suggested. “You could make a name for yourself with this case.”

“Yes, but not a name to be spoken in polite company,” growled Colonel Erwin. “The woman is an object of loathing to the entire county. Whoever takes her part in court will be branded with her villainy. The criminal cases are tried but twice a year, gentlemen, and they constitute at best a few weeks of work. What would become of the rest of my practice?”

“He’s right,” said my father-in-law. “Deeds and wills and civil lawsuits are the bread and butter of every country lawyer. Defend that woman, and no honest citizens will cross the threshold of your office thereafter.”

“What about you, Mr. Avery?” asked Adolphus.

The silver-haired gentleman shook his head. “I am the bank president now. I have no wish to dabble in criminal law. Particularly not in this case.”

“You ought to defend her, Wilson,” said Colonel Erwin. “You represented the family at the habeas corpus hearing. An admirable performance.”

“And so I have done my part,” Wilson growled. “Let someone else take up the burden. Any of you could afford the loss of income better than I.”

Thomas Wilson was the next youngest of the group, and not the least distinguished. He had served a term or two in the North Carolina legislature before he moved west to Morganton to set up his law practice, and as I have noted, he is related to the Erwins by marriage, which is useful. Wilson’s older brother Joseph, a prominent circuit court judge in Charlotte, had died within months of my own brother’s death, and because of this loss so similar to my own, I had always felt an unspoken bond of sympathy with the man. He had been kind in my bereavement, talking of his own loss and offering wise counsel about what I should do now that I had lost my future as a junior partner in a family law firm. Wilson was a good man, well respected by the community. Still, I had misgivings about him for such a momentous case. Thomas Wilson was a competent enough fellow for ordinary matters, but he always struck me as humorless and unimaginative. In my heart I knew that if I were ever in the dock in fear of my life at the whim of a loutish jury, I would want someone other than Thomas Wilson pleading my case.

“Regardless of one’s financial circumstances, it would be a pity to put a lifetime’s work on the rocks for the sake of a two-day trial with a foregone conclusion,” said Adolphus. “It would be folly.”

“Surely this one case could not harm a man’s career so grievously,” I said. “The public must be made to understand that everyone is entitled to a defense in court. Someone must side with an accused person, whether that defendant is guilty or not. I put it to you that our very legal system is built on that premise.”

“You might as well teach catechism to a mule,” drawled Adolphus. “The layman has no understanding of such matters, and no patience to have it explained to him. I consider myself lucky if I face a jury that is tolerably sober; I don’t ask them to think. The fact is, the townspeople are after that young woman’s hide. There’s not a doubt in anybody’s mind that she’s as guilty as Jezebel and twice as wicked. That mob will tar Frankie Silver’s lawyer with the same brush that convicts her of cruel murder, and while there will be no trial for her attorney, he will be sentenced to poverty as surely as she is bound to die. Let us be clear on that.”

“I wouldn’t even let my son Joseph take the case if he finished his study of law and passed the bar today,” said Colonel Erwin. “Not for the experience or the fame, or even for triple the fee that anyone is likely to get for defending her. No one who is going to practice law in this town can afford the taint of her society.”

“I can say the same for my own son Waightstill,” said Avery. “He will finish his studies at the university in a few months’ time, and he means to make the law his profession, but I would not wish this case on him for any consideration.”

The others nodded in somber agreement, and I could not doubt them. Between them they had a good half century’s experience in the practice of law, while I was barely past my first year, and, thanks to my clerkship, I was independent of the whims of clients. “But this is unfair, then!” I protested. “How can we ask any man to risk his livelihood by representing a hated defendant who is by all accounts guilty as charged?”

“You are well out of it, Burgess,” said Squire Erwin. “And much as I am tempted by the sheer challenge of the matter, I fear that my age and infirmity prevent me from such exertions, so I, too, must be exempted. Gentlemen, we would all be wise to keep out of this matter, but we cannot. We must make some provision for this poor creature’s defense, because that same mob who would shun us for defending the woman would be just as quick to condemn us for negligence if we abandoned her to her fate. We must steer a safe course between these two evils.”

“But what is the alternative? No lawyer wants this case.”

Colonel James Erwin looked thoughtful. “There may be one that does.”

“But whois Nicholas Woodfin?” Elizabeth asked me when I returned from the lawyers meeting at McEntire’s tavern (but for the presence of Mr. Wilson, I might have termed the gathering a family reunion with perfect truth).

“I have met him but once, I think. He has been a licensed attorney now for precisely one year, but we hear good things of him—at least your cousin James says so.”

“Woodfin . . . Woodfin . . .” Elizabeth shut her eyes and wrinkled her forehead. A sign, no doubt, that she was flipping through the pages of that great studbook-cum-social register that all the frontier gentlewomen seem to have indexed in their brains.

“Asheville,” I said helpfully.

She opened her eyes wide. “Asheville! So near! And his wife is—?”

“He doesn’t have one. He’s only twenty-one, and doubtless he has been working too hard in his studies to find time for courtship. But there is someone of your acquaintance who may vouch for him, and you will value his opinion even above mine—Mr. David Lowry Swain.”

Elizabeth gave me a look. “I might have guessed that, Burgess. Cousin James would not recommend a young novice for an important case unless there was some sign of distinction about him. For an Asheville attorney, that sign could only be a clerkship with the honorable David Swain, who is surely one of the most promising young men on the frontier—excepting yourself, my dearest.”

I smiled at her generosity of spirit, but I did not think I merited the comparison. I am a simple country lawyer, content with my lot in life. Never was I as driven to succeed as the tireless Mr. David Swain of Asheville, whose ambition might pass for ruthlessness in the eyes of more humble folk. In the score of months that I had been an attorney in Burke County, I had heard much about him and his aspirations. Although he was not from a prominent family, he had struggled and sacrificed to attain a good education, after which he worked harder than any three so-called gentlemen to better his lot in life. He was barely thirty, yet already he had served five terms in the North Carolina legislature. His days of toil and poverty were behind him, and I daresay he was now as much a gentleman as anyone in Carolina.

“David Lowry Swain,” said Elizabeth thoughtfully. “But he is forever traveling, and he stays for months in Raleigh, does he not? One wonders that he would have had time to mentor a lawyer in Asheville. Is he still the member for Buncombe County in the House?”

“No. He refused a sixth term. He is a circuit court judge now.”

Elizabeth sighed. “He married exceedingly well.”

“Really? Pretty, is she?”

That look again. Elizabeth takes a dim view of my teasing. “Eleanor White is the daughter of a North Carolina secretary of state,” she said primly. “Her maternal grandfather was Richard Caswell, governor during the Revolution. Thanks to Eleanor, and to his own efforts, of course, David Swain has connections that extend well beyond Asheville. That whole family has prospered in state politics. James Lowry of the State House of Commons is his half brother, you know.”

I didn’t know. Latin verbs are child’s play compared to unraveling the tangled lineages of the North Carolina gentry. “David LowrySwain and James Lowryare half brothers? Curious coincidence of names.”

“Not a coincidence at all,” said Elizabeth. “Don’t you know that story? It’s common talk in the western legal circle. David Swain’s mother was Miss Caroline Lane, who as a young woman was married to a Mr. David Lowry. They lived on a farm in north Georgia, and she bore him a number of children. Sadly for his wife and babes, David Lowry was killed in an Indian raid, and poor Caroline Lowry married again—to a Mr. George Swain, who is a merchant and a physician. They had six or seven children—I forget the exact number—”

“Really? I would have thought you’d have their birthdays down by heart.”

She waved away the Swain offspring. “They aren’t important, except for the youngest. And his mother named him after her first husband—David Lowry. So he is David Lowry Swain. Isn’t that a sweet story, Burgess? Such a tender remembrance. The poor woman never forgot her first love.”

“One wonders how Mr. Swain felt about the matter,” I muttered. “Though perhaps after six predecessors, the happy couple had run out of names anyhow. They might have called the next one after the cat.”

“Names are a serious business in good families, Burgess,” said my wife reprovingly. “It tells the world instantly and precisely what your connections are—Oh!”

Her lecture on dynastic nomenclature was cut short by a wail from the nursery. Our own son and heir, young master William Willoughby Erwin Gaither, was in need of his mother’s attention.

A few minutes later Elizabeth returned to pursue the topic of Nicholas Woodfin with renewed interest, but I was unable to satisfy her curiosity regarding the young gentleman’s antecedents. I said that Colonel Erwin had vouched for Woodfin as a competent attorney, and we were too preoccupied with legal matters to inquire into his suitability for breeding purposes. Elizabeth murmured that perhaps someone in her family would know who he was, and I did not doubt that for a moment. The Erwins of Belvidere have eight daughters; no gentleman west of Wilmington escapes their scrutiny.

After a few minutes of companionable silence, my wife looked up from her embroidery and said, “Something has just occurred to me, Burgess dear.”

“Yes?”

“None of you lawyers wants to defend this poor girl Frankie Silver. Is that correct?”

“It is most fervently the case,” I assured her.

“Aha! Then why would Nicholas Woodfin agree to take it?”

“I can give you three reasons. First, he is a very young attorney who needs the trial experience, and perhaps even the celebrity that might be gained from this case. Second, he has another case on the Superior Court docket, so he is coming anyway. Another case will only make his trip more fruitful. Third, Woodfin may be well connected by association with David Swain, but your family assures me that he is by no means rich. The legal fees in the Silver case will not amount to much, but I’m sure they will be welcome to a fledgling attorney.”

“Those are good enough reasons, I suppose,” said Elizabeth. “But what would cause Mr. Woodfin to accept this case when our Morganton lawyers would not?”

“Precisely that, Elizabeth. Nicholas Woodfin is nota Morganton lawyer. A local man would lose the community’s goodwill and a substantial portion of his income from deeds and wills by associating himself with the infamy of Frankie Silver. Nicholas Woodfin will suffer no ill effects. He can take the case, show off his legal skills to his fellow attorneys in circuit court, collect his fee, and then ride away to Asheville, some fifty miles away, where few people will know or care about a Burke County murder case. He will not lose a scrap of business for his effort, and if he does well in court, he may even increase his practice by gaining the goodwill of the legal community.”

“It seems very suitable for all concerned,” Elizabeth conceded. “But what of that poor young woman? Will she be well represented by such young and inexperienced counsel?”

“Your cousin James assures us that Nicholas Woodfin is an able fellow who plans to specialize in the practice of criminal law. He may well be Mrs. Silver’s best hope for a defender. Besides, Thomas Wilson has graciously consented to serve as second counsel, so that Woodfin can have the benefit of his experience.”

“For part of the fee, of course,” said Elizabeth, smiling.

“Of course.”

“But he will not speak for Frankie Silver in court?”

“No, certainly not. That is Woodfin’s task. Woodfin is to be seen to act as her attorney.”

“So all of our local attorneys—”

“Most of which are in your immediate family,” I hastened to remind her.

“Thank you, Burgess. I know that. So the Erwins and Mr. Wilson are relieved of the obligation of taking the case, and therefore they will save their livelihoods. And you tell me that Nicholas Woodfin is a good man. I am glad to hear it. My sister Mary is most concerned about the poor young woman.”

“She need not worry on Mrs. Silver’s account.”

“Mary says that she would like to visit the jail. She wants to hear the facts of the matter from the accused woman’s own lips.” Elizabeth took a deep breath. “And I would like to go with her!”

“Neither of you will be permitted to do anything of the kind,” I said, with ill-concealed irritation.

“Thomas Wilson is acting as advisory counsel until the trial. He has cautioned his client with the utmost severity against speaking to anyone about her case. I doubt that Sheriff Butler would permit you or Mary to visit. I urge you not to attempt such a thing.”

“My sister Mary is quite determined.”

“Your sister Mary always is.”

“And you are sure that Mr. Woodfin will be a sympathetic and conscientious defender of poor Mrs. Silver?”

“I am certain that he will be excellent, my dear,” I assured my wife. But I was thinking, He is a good deal more than she deserves, for we believe she is a wicked murderess.I did not tell Elizabeth that her cousin James’s parting remark had been, “Won’t we look like fools if the young devil gets her acquitted?” And we all laughed heartily at that.

I miss the flowers. I can hardly bear to look out. The ground is so bare and brown now, and the trees look for all the world as if they were dead. “Don’t you worry,” Sarah Presnell says to me when she brings me my dinner. “The flowers will be back in late March. Everything comes alive then, same as ever.”

I must be the opposite of the flowers, then, for they will reappear the very week that my trial is held. They will be coming alive as I commence to dying. They have got me a lawyer, Mrs. Presnell says, and she seems to set a store by them, always going on about what fine gentlemen they are, and big political men, but I cannot see what use that will be to me. I don’t trust strangers, and I’ve seen the way these town-bred folk look at us mountain people—like we were something they caught in a trapline, and they’re afeared of catching something off ’n us. I do not want to tell my secrets to such as them, for they are men, and like as not they own slaves to boot. What would they know about being afraid? They think the law looks after people that needs help. They live in a town with a sheriff within hollering distance, and prying neighbors to see that everybody does what he ought. It’s easy to die in the wilderness, and there’s nobody around to save you.

I dream about Charlie sometimes. He is standing in a field of buffalo grass, and it is summer. He has been picking wild blackberries for me, because he knows I love them so. He lifts a handful of blackberries to his mouth and he bites into them, and the dark juice runs out of his mouth. But suddenly I see that it is not blackberry juice running down his chin, but blood, and there is a gaping wound at the side of his head, matting his brown hair. His eyes are open and staring, but their sense is shut, and he walks toward me, holding out the basket of blackberries. Before he reaches me, though, the dream changes and I am kneeling beside the little branch that runs back of our cabin. The water is so cold that it numbs my fingers, but I am washing white linen in the branch water, and I cannot stop. Swirls of red slide away down the cloth when I hold it up to look at it, but it is not yet white again. I scour it harder on the cold rocks. Someone is behind me, watching me scrub the bloodstains out of the white linen. Someone is watching. It is not Charlie.

Burgess Gaither

THE GRAND JURY For one week of every September and March, the session of circuit court transforms Morganton from a sleepy frontier village into a boisterous festival of tavern phillipics on law and politics, dinner parties, and, I am sorry to say, more than a few drunken brawls and fistfights, which simply generate more business

for the legal community that created the occasion to begin with. The local hostelries teem with travelers come to town for the court. Some of the newcomers are litigants or relatives of the accused, but many others are merely spectators who have come for the sport of it. They see the week of trials as a bit of drama to spice up a humdrum existence. As I have said, court is our theatre.

My wife’s parents, the Erwins of Belvidere, offer their hospitality to the visiting attorneys, hosting a sumptuous dinner and even lodging to those who prefer not to take their chances at a country inn. Perhaps this custom of entertaining the officers of the court arose from my father-in-law’s long years as clerk of the Superior Court, but I suspect that the family would have done it anyway. The judge and the attorneys who come to town for the court session bring news of the outside world, and they offer fresh opinions on the political intricacies of government in Raleigh. Their society helps to strengthen the ties between the frontier gentry and their peers in the more settled parts of the state. Their town manners and their news of fashion remind us that even in the back of beyond, we are ladies and gentlemen.

Elizabeth always looked forward to these grand family parties, for she never tired of the social round, nor of hearing news about the births and marriages of her far-flung acquaintances, and as she said more than once, she welcomed the chance to show me off to visiting dignitaries who might prove influential in my career. Elizabeth has higher ambitions for me than I have for myself, I fear. Perhaps Morganton is a sleepy backwater village, and someday I suppose I might tire of it, but for now it contents me and I cannot imagine ever wishing to leave it.

We were dressing for the dinner party. I was resplendent in “Archbold” (Elizabeth’s playful name for my good black suit), as befitting the importance of the occasion. It is the suit I wore to our wedding and to the funeral of my poor brother Alfred. She will probably insist upon my wearing it to Superior Court next week as well, and perhaps given the solemnity of that occasion, she will be right. Elizabeth was wearing a black gown of some shiny fabric, and a very fetching carved necklace and earrings of jet, for she is still in mourning for her sister Margaret Caroline, who died last year. Elizabeth’s hair has been crimped into the sausage curls of current fashion, but because she has a long neck and splendid shoulders, the style suited her better than it did many of the poor overfed matrons who endeavored to wear it. I believe the dress is the one that Elizabeth made from the pattern book from Charleston, though I am by no means an expert on ladies’ finery. I am not much better on the vagaries of society’s bloodlines and shibboleths, but in this area at least, Elizabeth has been endeavoring to instruct me.

With a worried frown she straightened my cravat before turning again to inspect her own elegant reflection in the pier mirror. “Now, Burgess, do try to keep it all straight, won’t you? The two most important guests tonight are Judge Donnell and Cousin William, and they are both from Charlotte.”

“Cousin William . . .”

“Alexander!” She fairly snapped at me. “William Julius Alexander. Do try to take this seriously! There is more to the practice of law than passing your exams and winning your share of cases. William Alexander is my kinsman. He is an Erwin on his mother’s side, Sophia being the sister of the colonel, that is, Cousin James.”

“I’m not likely to forget him,” I assured her. “As to Mr. Alexander, I have met him briefly, I think. He is the attorney for the state in this week’s trials.”

“Yes, but you mustn’t talk about the court docket at dinner. It has always been Father’s custom never to discuss cases pending before the court. There are outsiders present, you see, and privileged information must not be divulged in general company.”

“Of course I knew that,” I said with some asperity. Anyone would think that shewas the lawyer in the family and not I. I forbore to mention that since I was clerk of the court at the forthcoming proceedings, I had no particular need to charm our visiting legal dignitaries. To such a protest of disinterest my wife would no doubt reply that every social connection will prove useful sooner or later, and that one should never lose an opportunity to impress a person of influence. No doubt she is right. The success of the Erwins, socially and otherwise, brooks no argument.

“Besides,” said Elizabeth, “all that sort of legal talk is very boring for the rest of us. But even if we stick to general conversation, there are some things you must keep in mind.”

“What, for instance?”

“William Alexander is not only our cousin; he is also the nephew by marriage of Thomas Wilson, so be careful that you don’t say anything disparaging of the Wilsons in his presence. Not that you would, of course,” she added hastily, seeing the glint of annoyance in my eyes.

“I will disparage no one tonight,” I assured Elizabeth. “Morganton, which consists solely of strangers and kinfolk, taught me that lesson a long time ago. Still, it surprises me to find such a tangle of pedigrees in the court. It will be old home week in the courtroom, won’t it, my dear? All the attorneys kin to one another in varying degrees. No outsiders except the defendants and perhaps a witness or two.”

“That is hardly unusual,” she said, unimpressed by my wit. “Good families socialize with one another. It is only natural that they should intermarry.”

“And the judge? Have we managed to get him into the family yet?”

“Really, Burgess! You are quite dreadful. And I implore you not to adopt this teasing tone with Mr. Justice Donnell. The poor man is quite recently widowed, and I am sure he has no heart for levity. His late wife was only thirty when she passed away, poor thing. She was the former Margaret Spaight, the governor’s daughter.”

“Richard Dobbs Spaight,” I murmured to show willing. “Anything else?”

“You will notice a Scots brogue in Mr. Donnell’s voice, by the way. He is a native of that country, but he has spent most of his life on this side of the ocean. He is a graduate of the University of North Carolina, as is Cousin William. The judge is a quiet man, most serene and serious. An altogether superior person, I feel. His home is in New Bern, so we do what we can to make him feel at home and welcome when he is at this end of the state. He has a son and a daughter—”

I took my wife’s arm. “No more, please!” I said, laughing. “My memory has reached its limit. Let this poor Christian go down into the den of social lions before I forget every word you have said to me about their pedigrees.”

I think I acquitted myself well at the Erwin dinner party. I was solemn and respectful in the presence of the gravely taciturn Judge Donnell, and I chatted amiably about the weather and horses, and the activities of mutual acquaintances with William Alexander, who was closer to me in age but equally distant in interests and temperament. It was not I who brought up the subject of Frankie Silver.

We did manage to get through most of the meal without a mention of court business by anyone present, but by the time the dessert wine was being poured into small crystal glasses, we had exhausted the exchange of news and gossip about absent friends, and we had settled the mysteries of weather, politics,

and the fate of President Andrew Jackson to our mutual satisfaction. In the slight lull that comes with an over-warm room and a sated appetite, Miss Mary Erwin’s voice rang out from the other end of the long mahogany table.

“Have you heard about our local cause célèbre, Mr. Alexander?”

William Alexander withdrew the wineglass from his lips and set it down with only a suggestion of a sigh. “What cause célèbre would that be, Cousin Mary?” he inquired with grave courtesy.

“Why, that there is a woman on trial for her life in Superior Court next week! Surely you have been briefed about the case?”

Mr. Alexander looked around the table for guidance from his fellow attorneys—the table was rife with them—but we were all careful to maintain perfectly neutral expressions. After an awkward silence during which no one leaped to his rescue, he said, “Oh, yes. The murderess. I hope you are not learning the domestic art of wifely behavior from that unfortunate example, Miss Mary.”

His quick thinking was rewarded with a brace of chuckles from the gentlemen present, and a clinking of glasses indicated that the tension had eased, but my spinster sister-in-law refused to let the matter drop.

“So you have made up your mind that she is guilty, have you?” she demanded.

“So I must. If she is brought to trial, it is my duty as district solicitor to prosecute her,” he replied. “If you are worried about her guilt, you had better speak to those who are defending her.” His gaze sought out his wife’s uncle, a few chairs down the mahogany table.

Thomas Wilson glanced nervously at the judge, who remained impassive, apparently in deep contemplation of his wineglass; then he met the imperious gaze of Mary Erwin. A classical image from my Latin studies at Hull’s School leaped to my mind: Ulysses caught between a deadly pair of monsters, Scylla the rock and Charybdis the whirlpool. Although it seemed particularly apt, I decided against sharing this Homeric inspiration with the rest of the party.

“We shall do our best, Miss Mary. Indeed we shall.” Wilson tried to strike a note of geniality but his voice rang hollow. “Still, you must see that the evidence against Mrs. Silver is very strong.” He glanced warily at the judge, as if he expected that worthy gentleman to rap upon the table with a carving knife and call him to order.

At that point Squire Erwin came to the aid of his struggling dinner guest. “Mary, my dear, you mustn’t badger poor Mr. Wilson about his unfortunate client, particularly when his own involvement in the case is indirect. Mrs. Silver will be defended in court by a splendid young lawyer from Asheville, a Mr. Nicholas Woodfin.”

Since Nicholas Woodfin was not present at the dinner party, Squire Erwin had succeeded in rescuing Thomas Wilson without throwing his colleague to the wolves. Before Mary could pursue the matter, another guest changed the subject, and we all fell upon a discussion of some trivial matter with more relief than interest.

As we left the table, though, I heard Colonel James Erwin murmur, “Has anyone warned young Woodfin about our Miss Mary, do you think? She is far more menacing than his rustic client.”

“Old home week, indeed!” said my wife Elizabeth.

It was Saturday, March 17, the day after my twenty-fifth birthday. I was preparing to leave for the courthouse, where this morning the grand jury was meeting to decide which of the possible cases should go on to trial when the Superior Court met the following Monday.

“Whatever do you mean, my dear?” I murmured, but my attention was on the mirror.

“The grand jury is meeting today, is it not?” I nodded. “And as clerk of court, you selected the jurors?”

“Well . . .”

“And who did you choose to be foreman of the grand jury?”

I sighed. Sometimes I think people in Morganton know things beforethey happen, so quickly does gossip spread through the community. “Samuel Tate.”

Elizabeth smiled. “Oh, Burgess, you are such a humbug! After all that fuss you made before father’s dinner party about the court being ‘old home week,’ as you put it, because of the lawyers’ family connections. And then, who do you put in charge of the grand jury? Sam Tate!”

“It is a small town, Elizabeth,” I said with as much dignity as I could muster. “Nearly every eligible juror is connected in some way—how isSam connected, by the way?”

“Samuel Tate is married to my cousin Elizabeth, the daughter of Peggy Erwin, that was.” (Peggy Erwin Tate is the sister of Colonel James Erwin, in case you are as obsessed with family connections as everyone else in Morganton seems to be.) “But that is hardly the point, Burgess, as you well know.”

I did know. Apart from his family connections, Sam Tate is hardly the disinterested village yeoman that people seem to think comprise grand juries. Although he is just past thirty and his primary occupation is farming his landholdings at “Hickory Grove,” Sam Tate is a former sheriff of Burke County, and now serves as a justice of the Burke County Court of Pleas and Quarter Sessions.

“I think he is a very fitting choice,” I said. “I realize that the notion of a former sheriff acting as jury foreman might strike the casual observer as an odd and even suspicious circumstance, but he will be very useful. He has a working knowledge of law and procedure, and he can direct the other jurors in a sensible fashion.”

“He is hardly a disinterested party.” Elizabeth’s questions were serious enough, but something in her tone made me think she might be laughing at me. “And hardly an angel of mercy, either, I fancy.”

I knew what she was referring to. Although the incident had happened before I became the clerk of Superior Court, and thus I did not witness it, I had heard the story told more than once. During Sam Tate’s tenure as sheriff, a man had been convicted of a felony that required him to be branded upon the thumb with the letter symbolizing his crime. ( Mfor manslaughter, and Tfor thief or any other crime.)

There are many crimes on the law books for which the prescribed penalty is death, but in these enlightened times we choose not to execute everyone who steals or commits some lesser crime, even though the law permits such summary justice. First offenders, especially people who are otherwise upstanding citizens except for this one lapse, are often shown mercy by the court, though when I have witnessed the administering of the alternative and heard the screams, I have often wondered if it is indeed mercy that is meted out.

To distinguish between irredeemable sinners and unfortunate transgressors, therefore, capital crimes are divided into two classes: the unpardonable acts in which the offender was denied benefit of clergy and was executed for his crime, and the other, so-called clergyable offenses, in which the convicted prisoner might plead “benefit of clergy” and thus escape the death penalty by accepting the lesser punishment of being branded on the brawn of the left thumb. The term clergyablerefers to the origin of the practice. In medieval England, the clergy could claim exemption from the punishments of secular courts. Later this leniency was extended to anyone who could read, permitting the offender to escape the death penalty for the lesser punishment of branding. More recently, “benefit of clergy” was extended to citizens irrespective of their literacy, and more depending upon the nature of the offense. One cannot claim “benefit of clergy” twice, however. The law is not given to the eternal mercy of heaven.

When a court had accepted the prisoner’s plea of benefit of clergy, waiving the execution in favor of the lesser punishment, the sheriff’s duty was to hold the red-hot branding iron to the thumb of the criminal for as long as it took the man to cry out “God save the State” three times. On this occasion, the unrepentant felon, tied to a post and writhing in his agony, screamed out “God save the State!” twice, and then sobbed and gasped, “God damn Sam Tate!”

Sheriff Tate carefully removed the branding iron from the poor man’s thumb and began the procedure all over again, making sure that the requisite phrase was said correctly three times, as prescribed by law. No, Sam Tate was not an angel of mercy, but he was faithful to the letter of the law, and he knew the North Carolina statutes as well as anyone.

“Well,” I said, “whatever Sam Tate’s biases are toward the people of Morganton proper, if indeed he has any, he is sure to be a stranger to all the principals in the Silver case, because they all hail from the back of beyond. Therefore the proper objectivity will be preserved. Sam knows the law. I know of nothing fairer than that.”

“I suppose it’s a foregone conclusion anyway, isn’t it?” she asked as I turned to leave.

“Pretty nearly,” I said. “All her hopes must rest on the trial itself. Perhaps her lawyer can move the jury with his eloquence. Failing that, she is lost.”

The grand jury under Sam Tate’s able direction considered the case against Frankie Silver, her mother Barbara Stewart, and her younger brother Blackston. The facts were presented, and the witnesses heard. When the grand jury retired to begin its deliberations, they argued about what should be done.

One of the more prominent jurors, George Corpening, whose brother David is our state legislator, said: “I say we indict the lot of them! They’re all in this together. Anyone can see that.”

Other voices chimed in to agree with Corpening.

They finally stopped chattering and noticed that the grand jury chairman and former sheriff sat conspicuously silent. After a moment’s silence, Rucket Stanley said, “What do you think, Mr. Tate?”

Sam Tate considered the matter. “Well, boys,” he said, “it’s like this. Trials are tricky things. You can indict ever who you want to, but that doesn’t guarantee that you’ll get a conviction when the trial is over and done with. I’ve seen a lot of cases go to court in my time, and I’ll tell you what’s the truth: indicting all three of these suspects would make me uneasy. Yes, sir, it would.”

“Why is that, Sheriff Tate?”

“Because it suggests that we don’t know who to blame, and that we’re arresting everybody just to make sure we get the guilty party. People don’t like that. Jurors are so contrary, they might end up feeling sorry for the Stewarts and letting every one of them go. I say we ought to pick one of them—the most obvious one—and let that person take all the blame.”

George Corpening was scowling. “But what about the other two?”

“Do you see any proof that they were involved?” The sheriff’s eyes narrowed. “I’m not talking about common sense, George. I’m talking about proof that will stand up in a court of law. All I see in this case is what you call circumstantial evidence. Charlie Silver disappeared, and a week or so later his body parts are found in the fireplace of his own cabin.”

“But according to the witnesses, Charlie Silver’s widow lied!” Corpening protested. “She said he had gone from home, when all the time bits of him were lying in that fireplace.” He broke off with a shudder.

“Exactly right,” said Sam Tate, unmoved by the thought of gore. “Mrs. Frances Silver was caught in a great and terrible lie. And that means that she is not an innocent party. But what about the other two, boys? What evidencecan you give me to tie them to this death?”

“It stands to reason that a young girl like that wouldn’t have acted on her own,” said David Glass.

“I’m talking about proof,” Sam Tate reminded him. “Can anybody show me proof?”

No one spoke.

“All right, then. Here’s what I propose that we do, boys: we bring back a true bill on Mrs. Frances Silver, and we no-bill her mother and brother. We know she’s in it up to her neck, and I’d rather see her punished for her crime than cast the net too wide and risk losing all three. I say we make it easy on the jury and send them a sure thing. Who’s with me?”

Hands went up. They all were.

A few hours after they began their deliberations, the Burke County grand jury returned a true bill only on Mrs. Frances Stewart Silver. She alone would stand trial for murder.

In view of the strong feelings inspired by the Silver case, the court ordered each of the subpoenaed witnesses in the forthcoming trial to post a bond, ranging from twenty-five dollars to one hundred pounds British sterling, in order to ensure their attendance at the proceedings. These were staggering sums to be required of witnesses, but we felt that it was necessary to make the consequences of not testifyingjust as terrible as the consequences of testifying. We all knew that when cases involving backwoods families are tried in court, the matter seldom ends there. The losing family continues its search for justice with violence and acts of reprisal, particularly against unfriendly witnesses, often for years after the original matter was settled by the court. The urge to avoid the matter entirely must have been strong for the people of Frankie Silver’s community.

The court set the trial date for Thursday, March 29, and Sheriff William Butler was ordered to summon 150 jurors on the Thursday following to be considered for service in the proceedings. This was a larger number of potential jurors than we usually called, but because of the sensational nature of the case, I thought it prudent to have men in reserve in order to provide the lawyers with a satisfactory selection of men from which to choose. Perhaps the notion of mountain justice would convince many of our own

citizens that they wanted no part in the proceedings.

Nicholas Woodfin, the young lawyer who was brought in to represent Mrs. Silver in court, arrived in Morganton a few days beforehand in order to familiarize himself with the case and to interview his client. I do not know where he stayed, perhaps at the estate of his cocounsel Thomas Wilson a few miles outside town, or perhaps he took lodgings at the Buckhorn Tavern. Whatever his residence, I know that he did not lack for dinner invitations. One of Elizabeth’s sisters had caught sight of Mr. Woodfin, boots shining, brass gleaming, and clothes brushed free of the dust of travel, riding into town on his strapping bay gelding, and she had stopped in her tracks and stared upward like one who has been given a celestial vision.

“Why, he looks for all the world like a foreign prince!” Miss Erwin exclaimed. This pronouncement of the regal nature of Mr. Woodfin’s appearance was quickly communicated to every lady in the county, or so it seemed, and they vied with one another to show him every kindness during his visit. I venture to say that the mothers of unmarried gentlewomen in our county envisioned Mr. Woodfin’s role of rescuer of damsels extending well beyond his duty to his client Mrs. Silver.

“And doeshe look like a prince, Burgess?” Elizabeth wanted to know. Tending to our infant son and to her duties at hearth and home had kept her so occupied that she had yet to see the distinguished newcomer. She relied on her sisters to keep her supplied with news.

“He is certainly an imposing figure,” I said, trying to temper my annoyance with justice. I do not recall such a fuss being made among the ladies when Ifirst arrived in Morganton. “Nicholas Woodfin is a man of medium stature, with dark eyes and features in the Greek mold, I believe you would say. His hair is very dark, though already it is flecked with gray.”

“What a pity,” said Elizabeth.

“Not at all, my dear. The last thing a young lawyer should wish to look like is—a young lawyer. Age suggests wisdom and experience. His clients find his mature countenance very comforting, I expect.”

“And has he seen his most important client yet?”

“Mrs. Silver? Yes, I believe so. He must interview her before the trial begins, of course. It must have been an interesting encounter. I wonder what they made of each other?”

“How so, Burgess?”

I shrugged. “I cannot imagine two people more dissimilar than Nicholas Woodfin and the rawboned backwoods girl whom he must defend. It must have been a memorable meeting for both of them. There he is, smelling of lavender soap and pressed linen, standing over her in his spotless wool suit and polished calf-leather boots, an attorney of law, well educated and mannered, conversant in Latin, and acquainted with the most prominent gentlemen in Carolina . . . and there sheis—greasy-haired, lice-ridden, and unwashed from her months in a straw-floored cell of our Burke County jail: a scrawny, graceless girl, unable to read or write, and scarcely able to understand what is happening to her, I’ll warrant.”

“The poor girl must see him as a knight in shining armor,” said Elizabeth.

“If she has ever heard of such a thing, yes.”

“But, Burgess, I have heard that despite all her deprivations in prison, Mrs. Silver is very pretty, too.”

“I doubt if Mr. Woodfin would notice if she were the Queen of Sheba,” I replied. “He will have quite enough on his mind with a murder trial to prepare for. It is a great responsibility to have someone’s life in your hands. And he is such a young man. I do not envy him one bit!” I said these words with all the more force because they were not true.

There were other less notorious cases to be settled in the first few days of the Superior Court session, although nobody paid them much mind. All talk centered on the final day’s business: the State v. Frances Stewart Silver, scheduled to be tried on Thursday.

I saw Thomas Wilson in court, of course, for he had other cases on the docket to attend to, but it was several days before we managed to find a moment for conversation other than the perfunctory courtesies one utters in passing.

I saw him one morning walking from his office to the courthouse, and I fell into step beside him. After wishing him good day, I said: “I hear talk of nothing but the Silver case, Mr. Wilson. Someone said that if we could sell tickets to the trial, we could do away with Burke County’s property taxes for a year.”

He permitted himself a trace of a smile. “I fear that such an avid interest in the case is a misfortune for the accused woman. Strong interest means strong feelings, and the jury will feel pressured by that, whether they admit it or not.”

“At least you will not have former sheriff Tate to contend with. Having served on the grand jury, his obligation is discharged. I would not have wanted to try a murder case with his cold stare trained on me.”

He nodded. “Well, I will not be pleading this case before the court. The stares are Mr. Woodfin’s concern, but I do not think he minds. He is a great playgoer, is Mr. Woodfin. He says that a defense attorney is the principal actor in a tragedy. He even went so far as to say that clergymen ought to attend the theatre and pay close attention to the dramatic orations, as it would greatly improve their style of preaching.”

“He seems to have some unorthodox opinions for such a young man.”

“Yes, but I think he is very able. And I’m not sure that I don’t agree with him about the importance of being a dramatic orator. Juries feela great deal more than they think,it often seems.”

I protested, “Surely a logical argument, well presented—”

Wilson smiled again. “If you ever stand in the dock, Mr. Gaither, guilty of the crime of which you are accused, I’ll warrant that you will realize the value of making jurors weep instead of think.”

On Thursday morning the trial began. The family of the murdered man would be present in court, no doubt making certain that no Stewart kinfolk slipped into the ranks of the jury. By the same token, Isaiah Stewart and his sons, who waited outside the courthouse with expressionless stares, would see to it that none of the Silver clan sat in judgment of Frankie. Since both families were forty miles from home, I thought they stood a better chance than most of receiving disinterested justice.

The thought of all these grim backwoodsmen from beyond the mountains made me uneasy, for their notions of civilized behavior might differ widely from those of Morganton proper. The moment I reached the courthouse I had a word with Constable John Pearson, warning him to keep an eye on the spectators during the trial, particularly the Stewarts. They might all be armed, and they might attempt violence if the

court did not rule in their favor. Taking the law into their own hands is a common enough practice on the frontier, where courts are too far removed to serve the needs of the settlers. Men in the wilderness learned to protect their kinfolk and their possessions without the benefit of the legal system.

Pearson narrowed his eyes at my warning. “You think they’ll fight, then?”

“I hope not,” I said, “but you must be vigilant. Watch everyone. Even our own local citizens. Regrettably, many of them are much the worse for drink on court days. They might become unruly. Feelings are running high over this case.”

“So are wagers,” grunted Pearson.

“They are betting on this case? On whether she is guilty?”

“No. Her guilt seems evident—at least no one is wagering otherwise. The bet is on whether Mrs. Silver will be acquitted or sent to prison,” said Pearson.

“But surely, if she is convicted—”

He shook his head. “She is a woman. They won’t hang her.”

The first order of business on the day of a trial is the selection of a jury. Today it would be a particularly onerous task, since more than a hundred men had crowded into the courtroom upon the summons of Sheriff Butler. John Pearson was keeping order and quiet among them as best he could, while I readied the tools of jury selection: a wooden ballot box filled with 150 slips of paper, each bearing the name of a Burke County citizen, painstakingly copied from the tax records by me. Of all these men who had been summoned, we required the services of only twelve. The law states that any man between the ages of twenty-one and sixty who is a resident of the county may serve as a juror, provided that he has in his own name or in trust for him a worth of ten pounds in lands or rents, or if he leases for twenty-one years or longer land worth the sum of twenty pounds or more. It is part of my duties as clerk of Superior Court to compile from county tax records the names of those citizens eligible to serve on juries for the year, and to furnish the sheriff with that list, arranged alphabetically, with the place of abode of each man duly recorded by his name, so that the sheriff may easily locate the fellow to summon him.

To select the jurors for the trial, slips of paper bearing the names of the hundred and fifty men summoned were put in a wooden ballot box, and their names were drawn out one by one at random.

I reached into the box and drew out the first name. “David Hennessee!”

There was a stir among the crowd, and a fair-haired young man of short stature and pleasant features stepped forward. David Hennessee told the court that his date of birth was September 3, 1806, adding that he was the son of Mr. John Hennessee, who had substantial land grants along the Catawba River and elsewhere. Thus satisfied as to age and his material qualifications as a juror, Judge Donnell said, “Have you heard about this case?”

“Some,” the young man admitted. “People have been talking about it around town.”

“Are you acquainted with any of the principals in the case?”

“You mean do I know these folks, the Silvers, or that other family? No, sir. Nary a one. They’re from a long way west of here, sir.”

“And since you have heard talk about this case, have you made up your mind whether the defendant is innocent or guilty?”

David Hennessee shook his head. “No, sir. Don’t rightly know.”

Judge Donnell nodded to the prosecutor. “I am satisfied, Mr. Alexander,” he said. “You may ask your own questions now.”

William Alexander approached the nervous young man. “I shall be brief,” he assured him. “Are you aware that the defendant in the case is a young woman?”

David Hennessee blinked. “I reckon everybody knows that, sir.”

A trickle of laughter punctuated his statement.

“Well, would you have any difficulty sitting in judgment of a woman?”

The young man hesitated. “It’s got to be done. It’s the law.”

“So it is,” said Mr. Alexander with a faint smile. “And if the evidence presented convinces you of this woman’s guilt, could you vote to condemn her? Could you vote guilty—knowing the consequences?”

“You mean, that they’d hang her?” said Hennessee.

“Very likely.”

“If I thought she done what they said she done, then . . . yes, sir, I could see my way clear to make her pay for it. With her life. Yes, sir.”

William Alexander turned to me. “He will do.”

This process was repeated nearly two dozen times, until satisfactory jurors were settled upon by the court. Judge Donnell thanked the fourscore freeholders who had answered the summons to jury duty. “You may stay and watch the proceedings if you wish,” he told them. Constable Pearson asked the chosen jurors to remain near the front of the court. The others filed out to mingle with the waiting crowd, and we were left with a dozen solemn citizens who knew that a young woman’s life rested in their hands.

The jury selection took a little more than an hour. Afterward we took a short recess to stretch our legs, but we were all back in place in the courtroom before Pearson let the rabble in. I was at my table in proximity to the judge’s bench, surrounded by the books of North Carolina laws and statutes, with my late brother’s leather-bound copy of Principles of Criminal Lawat the ready. The state’s attorney sat reviewing his notes of the case, seemingly oblivious to the noise of the milling crowd waiting beyond the double oak doors, but after a courteous nod in his direction, I barely spared him a glance.

I was watching Frankie Silver.

In my record of the proceedings, I would of course write the defendant’s name as Frances Stewart Silver, but she had been known as “Frankie” in the mountain community she came from, and whenever her crime was discussed these past few months, it was that nickname that had been bandied about in the streets and taverns of Morganton. By now I had come to think of her this way.

The name suited her, I thought. It had a suggestion of boyishness about it that went well with her slender frame and the alert angular face that seemed forever watchful. She seemed little more than a child sitting in the dock, overshadowed by the dark elegance of Nicholas Woodfin. She was unfettered, for the law forbids the use of irons or shackles of any kind on a prisoner during trial, unless there is evident danger of escape. She was wearing a shabby blue dress that seemed far too large for her slender frame, and too long at the sleeve ends to have been her own apparel. Sarah Presnell must have done what she could to make the girl presentable for trial. Her pale hair was clean and pinned up into a knot at the nape of her neck, and she looked too well scrubbed to have emerged unwashed from ten weeks in a prison cell. I wondered if the ill-fitting dress had been a gesture of charity from some Morganton lady, or if it were her own property, and a testimony to the rigors of her confinement. She was unnaturally pale, and though she stared straight ahead without expression, she twisted her hands in her lap, knotting and unknotting her fingers in a continuous display of anxiety. Surely she knew what people were saying about her, and how little sympathy there was for her in that room.

Nicholas Woodfin, by contrast, seemed serene. It was difficult to believe that the Asheville attorney was only three years older than his client. He was as calm and self-assured as a man twice his age. His notes lay in front of him on the small oak table, but he did not glance at them. Once I saw him lean over to his client and say a few quiet words. Then he smiled reassuringly and leaned back to straighten his silk cravat.

I wonder what she has told him of her situation,I thought. And can he possibly imagine what her life was like?And if he cannot, how on earth can he defend her? I abandoned this foolish notion at once, for who, I wondered, could truly understand the harsh frontier life that had been the prisoner’s existence and yet himself be an able lawyer capable of defending her in a proper court? For some reason a name leaped unbidden to my mind, to be banished by me as quickly as I thought it: Andrew Jackson.

At that moment Constable Pearson threw open the doors to the court, and a seething crowd pushed past him, elbowing one another for the best positions and making loud and uncouth comments about the proceedings. I saw a grim-faced Isaiah Stewart shepherding his wife and sons to a place on the side of the courtroom, a place where the defendant could see them, although they were not near enough to converse. I saw her cast a stricken look at her mother, but I could not tell what emotion was conveyed in the returned gaze.

At last Judge Donnell took his place at the bench and called the court to order.

“Frances Stewart Silver.”

The defendant stood up, and I fancied that she swayed for a moment before steadying herself on the edge of the table. Nicholas Woodfin placed a gentle hand on her arm and held her attention with a calm, steady stare, much as one might use to quiet a frightened mare. She took a deep breath and nodded slightly, and together they approached the bar.

Judge Donnell consulted the indictment that Mr. Alexander had carefully copied out for him. It was substantially the same document that the prosecutor had prepared for the grand jury hearing ten days earlier, but in this version the names of Barbara and Blackston Stewart were omitted, because the grand jury had not seen fit to bind them over for trial. Judge Donnell read Mr. Alexander’s carefully wrought document, his lips moving soundlessly through the phrases, which consisted of but a single tortuous sentence, so long and intricate as to tax the orative powers of even the ablest judge. After a few more moments’ contemplation, he began to read the document aloud in a steady drone, marked only by the ripple of his Scots brogue on a word here and there.

“State of North Carolina. Burke County. Superior Court of Law. Spring Term 1832. The jurors for the State upon their oath do present that Frances Stewart of said county, not having the fear of God before her eyes, but being moved and seduced by the instigation of the devil, on the twenty-second day of December in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and thirty-one, with force and arms in the County of Burke aforesaid, in and upon one Charles Silver in the peace of God and of the State, then and there being feloniously, wilfully, and of malice aforethought did make an assault; and that the said Frances Silver with a certain axe of the value of six pence, which the said Frances Silver in both hands of her, the said Frances Silver then and there had and held to, against, and upon the said Charles Silver, then and there feloniously, wilfully, and of her malice aforethought did cast and throw; and that the said Frances Silver with the axe aforesaid so cast and thrown, as aforesaid, the said Charles Silver in and upon the head of him, the said Charles Silver, then and there feloniously, wilfully, and of her malice aforethought with the axe aforesaid, so as aforesaid by the said Frances Silver cast and thrown, in and upon the head of him, the said Charles Silver one mortal wound of the length of three inches and of the depth of one inch; of which said mortal wound he, the said Charles Silver, then and there instantly died; and so the grand jurors aforesaid, upon their oath aforesaid, do say that the said Frances Silver, him, the said Charles Silver, in manner and form aforesaid feloniously, wilfully, and of her malice aforethought did kill and murder against the peace and dignity of the State.”

He paused for a moment while the thunder of his final words echoed in the murmurs of the spectators. What a talent for rigmarole Mr. Alexander has got, I was thinking. The saids and aforesaids rumbled through the air like drumbeats. The prosecutor’s carefully wrought indictment was as majestic in sound and cadence as a mass in Latin, and surely as incomprehensible to the majority of its hearers.

Mrs. Silver stood there looking down at the floor, letting the words wash over her head like a mighty river, and understanding not a syllable of their sense, I am certain, for when Judge Donnell said, “How do you plead?” she merely stared up at him, bewildered.

His Honor spoke louder. “How say you, Frances Silver, are you guilty or not guilty?”

There must have been a nudge or a sign from Nicholas Woodfin indicating that this was her cue (they had rehearsed the process beforehand, surely), for suddenly Mrs. Silver stood up straighter, and in a clear, soft voice she said, “Not guilty.”

This response came as no surprise to anyone. Since the penalty for murder is inevitably death, there is nothing to be gained by admitting one’s guilt. No doubt Woodfin and Wilson had explained to their client that her only chance to escape the gallows was to fight the accusation in open court.

Not guilty.

Judge Donnell nodded to Woodfin and Alexander, and then he uttered the phrase that would begin the trial: “Then let the jury come.”

Why must I say I’m not guilty, I asked them. Why can’t I just tell them all how it was right then and there, and then they can decide for themselves what should be done with me. Anybody ought to be able to see how it was—even town folk. The old lawyer, Mr. Wilson—he is black and skinny like a crow—he smiled down his beak at me and said, “Proper procedure must be followed in a court of law.” His Adam’s apple bobs in his throat when he speaks to me, and I wonder if he is dry-mouthed and has trouble swallowing, on account of being in the presence of a wicked murderess. I keep my eyes downcast, and I speak in a soft voice, though, for I do not want them to think me mad—or, worse yet, an ignorant savage from nowhere, for they would hang me without a second thought if they convicted me

of that—of being a nobody.

My father has money and can pay for my defense. He comes from good people down in Anson County, near the town of Charlotte, which is where the enemy lawyer hails from. My grandfather William Stewart was a proper man of business in the county, and once he lawed some fellow in court, just like gentlemen are always doing to settle some dispute.

We settle disputes different up the mountain.

I used to speak more ladylike when I was a young ’un, before we came to this place, but I have got out of the way of it now. There wasn’t much call for fine words up the mountain. Hard work is what talks the loudest up there.

The young fellow, though—Mr. Woodfin, his name is—he nodded his head, and said, “I wish you could just tell your tale straight out. It must have been possible to do so in a court of law once upon a time, Frankie, but now we have a great book full of rules concerning the conduct of a trial. It is a game we lawyers play, and you must bear with us.”

I like him. He has a well-scrubbed look about him, and calf’s eyes, and his clothes are right out of a picture book. He is like the prince in the fairy tale. He looks straight into my eyes and says that he will not stand to see me hanged.

So I am safe.