The Ballad of Frankie Silver (30 page)

“With me it was always the apple harvest,” I said, smiling. “Sometimes I couldn’t wait for them to get ripe, and I’d eat the green ones and be sick as a pup.”

She smiled and nodded, “Apples, too!” She looked like a child when the smile illuminated her features, and I thought for a brief moment that some mistake had been made. Surely this little girl was not the wicked murderess everyone talked about? She found the blackberry pie just then, and took a great bite out of the side of it, spilling purple juice down her chin and onto her breast. She wiped the stain away with the back of her hand and blushed. “I ask your pardon,” she said. “But it’s been a long time since I had pie.”

She ate for a few more moments in silence, and then, the edge taken off her hunger, she began to study her visitors. She swallowed a mouthful of food and said to Miss Mary, “That is one pretty dress, ma’am. I always wanted me a white dress with lace on’t. Reckon I oughtn’t to have one now.” She nodded toward Catherine, in her widow’s weeds. “Ought to wear dark like you, ma’am.”

Miss Mary and I glanced at each other, neither of us daring to enter into a discussion on the proper mode of etiquette for a widow who has become one by her own hand, so to speak. Catherine said gently, “Did you have a white dress for your wedding?”

The prisoner shook her head. “We got married after harvest, Charlie and me. We waited ’til the circuit rider came to meeting so we could stand up before him and make it all legal. Mama cut up one of her old calico dresses from back in Anson County and made me a new frock for the wedding. And Charlie’s sisters Margaret and Rachel helped me weave leaves and daisies into a garland for my hair. It was over so quick, I hardly had time to think on it. They give a picnic supper for us, though, after. Folks brought beans, and yams, corn bread, and the last of the summer tomatoes. Silvers killed one of their cows for a barbecue. They roasted it on a spit over an open fire.”

“Who butchered it?”
The words rose unbidden to my mind, and I said them before I was even aware of it.

Frankie Silver’s wide blue eyes turned on me with a careful stare. “I don’t believe I’ve eat that much before or since,” she said.

*   *   *

One blazing July day, when the air shimmered like creek water, distorting the shapes of the trees and hills in the distance, a letter arrived for me from Raleigh. It was addressed to
B. S. Gaither, Clerk of Sup. Court, Burke County, Morganton
, in the spidery copperplate script that is the hallmark of professional scribes and minions of the law. I knew exactly what it was, and I took a deep breath before slitting open the envelope, for it is a solemn thing to hold someone else’s life in your hands.

A few lines in black ink, nothing more. I stood there in the red dust of the road, reading those words, for, unseemly as it was, I could not wait to walk back to the courthouse to read the verdict contained in that missive.

It is considered by the Court that the judgment of the Superior Court of Law for the county of Burke be affirmed. And it is ordered that the said Superior Court proceed to judgment and sentence of death against the defendant, Francis Silver. On motion judgment is granted against Jackson Stuart and Isaiah Stuart, sureties to the appeal, for the cost of this court in the suit incurred.

Jno. L. Henderson

Clerk of Supreme Court of North Carolina

I folded the letter and put it back among the other letters that had come for me that day. There’s an end to it, I thought, but I could not help feeling saddened at this turn of events.

David Newland, the owner of the stagecoach line, stood nearby, watching me. Since he brings most of the news to Morganton, it is not unnatural that he should take an interest in it. “Bad tidings, Mr. Gaither?” he said, ambling over to join me.

“It is very bad indeed for Mrs. Silver,” I said. “Her appeal has been denied.”

He frowned. “So Mr. Woodfin was not able to persuade the justices to show her mercy?”

I hesitated, but I could see no way to evade the question, and I told myself that it was no business of mine anyhow. “According to the letter, Mr. Woodfin was not there.”

“But who presented her case to the justices, then? Mr. Wilson has not left town these past weeks.”

I could not meet his gaze, for I knew that I would see the outrage I myself felt mirrored in his eyes. “No one appeared on her behalf before the Supreme Court. The case was judged only on the merits of the written appeal.” A document of some three and a half hundred words, cribbed together by me in weariness and haste on the night following the trial. Her life had depended on this brief and colorless cluster of words, and it had failed her.

David Newland’s eyes widened. “She had no lawyer to plead her case in Raleigh? No one?”

I studied the wagon tracks in the red dust at my feet. “It’s a long way to Raleigh,” I murmured.

“Don’t I own the stagecoach, by God? I know how far it is, Mr. Gaither. I know exactly. And if I had been hired by that poor girl’s family to see her through her troubles, I would have kept my word, so help me I would, even if Raleigh was halfway to hell and stank of brimstone.”

I could think of nothing to say that would not cast aspersions on my fellow attorneys, so I merely patted him on the arm and tried to summon a smile.

“Well, what must be done now?” asked Newland.

“Done?” I stared at him. “There is nothing to be done. The jury ruled, and the State Supreme Court has upheld their decision. It is all over now, except for the sentencing, which will come in the fall term of court, and then the execution that must follow.”

“We’ll see about that,” Newland said.

“I beg your pardon?”

He sighed. “You know, Mr. Gaither, when we had that trial back in March, tempers were high around here, and I don’t mind telling you that I was as eager as the rest to see that young woman hanged for her crime, but there has been talk around town lately. People are saying that Charlie Silver didn’t amount to much, and maybe he got what was coming to him. They’ve been mulling this case over, and now I hear folks saying that a decent woman doesn’t turn to violence but for one reason: to defend herself, or more likely her child. They had a little baby girl, as I recall.”

“A daughter,” I murmured. “Just over a year old when the murder took place.”

Newland nodded triumphantly. “There you are. That set me to thinking, all right. Why didn’t her lawyers admit she killed Charlie Silvers and then explain why?”

I sighed. It is difficult to explain the law to laymen. They seem to think that justice has to do with right and wrong, with absolutes. Perhaps when we stand before our Maker on Judgment Day, His court will be a just one, but those trials held on earth are not about what happened, but about what can be proven to have happened, or what twelve citizens can be persuaded to believe happened. Sometimes I think that the patron saint of lawyers ought to be Pontius Pilate, for surely he said it best:
What is truth?

David Newland tugged at my sleeve. “You’re a lawyer, Mr. Gaither. Why didn’t they just tell us what happened instead of stonewalling with a plea of not guilty?”

I sighed. “It would have been a great gamble to have admitted her guilt in open court. There was no proof of self-defense, for there is only Mrs. Silver’s word for it, and she was not at liberty to testify. Her attorneys must have felt it was safer to make the state prove her guilt on the circumstantial evidence, rather than admit that she did it, with no means to show provocation.”

“Someone should have explained the situation to those judges in Raleigh.”

“It wouldn’t have mattered. The Supreme Court does not decide guilt or innocence. They rule on procedural matters. They cannot pardon as a governor can.”

“A governor?” Newland winced. “I had occasion to meet Mr. Montfort Stokes in Wilkesboro last April. The trial was still fresh in our minds, and when I discussed the matter with him, I was dead set against a pardon. I told him she would deserve what she got, and I said the rest of the county was pretty much to my way of thinking. I believe I misspoke, though, and now I must put things right. The governor can be appealed to, and if Montfort Stokes can be made to see reason, she might yet be saved.”

“It is worth a try,” I told him.

“Will you write him, then?”

I shook my head. “It would not be seemly for a Superior Court clerk to protest a ruling from his own court.” I did not like to think what Squire Erwin would say if I had undertaken such a measure. “I suppose I could sign a petition, though,” I said. “As a private citizen. The letter will need to be accompanied by a petition showing wide support for the prisoner within the county.”

“Who should write the governor then?”

Not I,
I thought. I told him: “There is nothing to prevent an honest citizen from taking up the cause, and since you are the one who broached the matter with the governor, surely you are the person to plead her cause with him now. Could you manage such a letter, Mr. Newland?”

He looked at me shrewdly. “I might. There may be one or two gentlemen who could advise me on how to set forth my argument. And I have business in Raleigh in early September, so I shall take care to see that he gets it.”

I smiled. “I’m sure that Governor Stokes’s door is always open to the citizens of Burke County.”

Several weeks later David Newland again waylaid me as I happened to be waiting for the stage. “I have it done!” he said proudly. “That letter to the governor. I have headed it ‘Raleigh,’ for I shall deliver it when I get there.”

He handed me the letter for inspection.

Raleigh, 6 Sept. 1832

His Exelency

M. Stokes, whom I had the pleasure of seeing in Wilksboro some time in April last.

The circumstances of Mrs. Silvers killing her husband was named and you was told that a petition would be presented to you for her pardon. The petition has come in hand for your consideration. At the time aluded to in Wilksboro you claimed you did not know of there ever having been a female executed in N. Carolina & asked if I had—to which I answered in the negative. You then said you would be delicately situated & asked me my opinion. I answered that if rumor be true I thought her a fit subject for example.

But Sir from various information which I have rec’d since her trial I am induced to believe her gilt has been much exagerated which you will perceive by the opinion some gentlemen of the Bar whom has signed her petition & was present & also disinterested during her trial. Upon the whole I realy think her a fit subject for excitive Clemency.

Yours, sinsearly,

D. Newland

“It’s a fine letter, Mr. Newland,” I said, for if I helped him with its phrasing or altered his misspellings, I would have had a hand in the document, which I did not feel able to do. “I hope it may achieve its purpose.”

He nodded happily. “The petition is done as well. You can see it has a goodly number of names on it. Some lawyers, and four of the jurors. The governor ought to sit up and take note of that.” He said no more, but he watched me expectantly.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Newland,” I muttered at last. I felt my cheeks redden as I spoke. “I do not feel able to add my name to the list of supporters. I do not know the circumstances of Charles Silver’s death, and so I cannot say if his widow should go free or not.”

Colonel Newland eyed me sadly. “You are dealing in justice, Mr. Gaither,” he said. “I am dealing in mercy. I hope some day—before it is too late—you find that Mrs. Silver is deserving of both.”

BURGESS GAITHER

Sentencing

On the fourth Monday in September, the Superior Court of Burke County convened to hear the fall docket of cases. One minor matter in terms of the court’s time, but uppermost in the mind of Morganton, was the sentencing of the convicted murderess Frankie Silver. Her time was drawing nigh, and already people were talking of the crowds that would flock to town for the execution. No woman had ever been hanged before in Burke County, or indeed anywhere that we had ever heard of, and excitement was running high at the prospect of such a cruel yet extraordinary spectacle. No traveling circus or tent revival meeting could rival the thrill of watching a pretty young woman die at the end of a rope, or so the local pundits said in the tavern. I seemed to be the only one present who had no wish to see such a dreadful event, but I kept my opinions to myself.

This was Will Butler’s last Superior Court as sheriff. A county election would be held in November in conjunction with the presidential election and various statewide offices, and since sheriffs are not permitted to serve consecutive terms in North Carolina, Butler was already preparing to leave. He looked every inch a gentleman as he entered the courtroom that brisk autumn morning in a russet-colored waistcoat and shining brown boots, but his expression was that of a worried man, and I wondered what was amiss.

The courtroom was not as packed with spectators as it had been for the trial of Frankie Silver, for no momentous crimes were set to be tried and no sensational testimony was in the offing, but since no court day goes unmarked by the curious and the scandalmongers, there was no shortage of spectators for the proceedings.

Gabriel Presnell brought the prisoner in through the great double doors, and my first thought upon seeing her was that her borrowed dress fit better now. Her collarbone, sharp as a split rail, no longer protruded above the bodice of the garment, and she was not swallowed in a shroud of blue fabric as she had been last spring. The months of incarceration had left her rested and less gaunt than I had seen her at her trial.
She eats better in prison than she did at home
, I thought, and this saddened me.

I reminded myself that this woman had killed her husband without pity or remorse, and that she had cruelly butchered his body and left it as carrion for the scavengers of the sky and forest. It is a crime past human forgiveness; only divine mercy could pardon such a sin. But how odd that the wickedness had left no mark upon her person: there was no hardness in her features, no coldness of eye or scowl of unrepentant scorn. Her skin still held the blush of the summer sun, and her pale hair was bound up into a knot at the nape of her neck, framing her face with wings of gold. I remembered John Milton’s poem
Paradise Lost
, wherein Satan is described as the most beautiful of all the angels. Surely this is Milton’s parable made flesh, I thought, but I could not wring any outrage from my heart, only regret and pity for a frightened girl who would never see her child again. Nearly a year had passed since the death of Charlie Silver, a man I had never even seen. It is easy to forget the victim when he is a stranger; it is especially easy to forget him when the accused is a forlorn and fragile creature who seems incapable of evil. Perhaps this is why the law is so inflexible in its strictures on punishment for those convicted of murder. The blindness of Justice protects us lesser mortals from the weakness of pity.