Sharyn McCrumb - The Ballad of Frankie Silver

The first witness called to the stand was Thomas Howell, a kinsman by marriage of the oldest Stewart son, Jackson. I wondered if the family tie was close enough to cause difficulty for the young couple. Howell seemed ill at ease on the stand, but he took his oath in a clear voice and began his testimony without flinching. His story echoed the one I had heard from Charlie Baker: Frankie Silver reports that her man has gone missing, followed by days of searching through forest snowdrifts, only to be summoned to the missing man’s own cabin by Jack Collis.

At the end of Howell’s recital, the defense attorney rose and approached the witness. “Did the Stewarts have anything to say about the disappearance of Charlie Silver?”

“Never saw them,” said Howell. “They didn’t come help us search, that’s certain.”

“But they did not lie to anyone about the whereabouts of Charlie Silver?”

“Not that I know of.”

“And did you see them near the cabin of Charlie and Frankie Silver?”

Tom Howell answered, “I did not.”

William Hutchins, Elendor Silver, and Miss Nancy Wilson said much the same. I missed some of their testimony because it was after Howell’s turn on the stand that I noticed a flash of red among the spectators and turned to see a familiar but formidable lady caped in black. She was thrusting her way forward in order to get a better look at the proceedings, and her expression suggested that if matters were not handled properly, the court would hear about it. I nudged Colonel Erwin.

He looked in the direction I indicated, and groaned. “Damn! Cousin Mary is poking about, is she? Never a moment’s peace, is there?”

“She does take an interest in civic matters,” I said tactfully. I was, after all, a rather new connection to the Erwin clan.

Colonel James Erwin snorted. “Your father-in-law ought to marry her off, Burgess. Preferably to someone heading west.”

I permitted myself a discreet smile. “It would serve the Indians right, wouldn’t it?”

“Maybe having a house to run would keep Mary’s nose out of everyone else’s business. She would have made a lawyer for sure, if she hadn’t been born female. Be glad you didn’t marry that one, Burgess!”

Mary Erwin is an elder sister of my Elizabeth, but I can see little resemblance between them. Where Elizabeth is gentle and reticent, Mary is a strong-minded woman with intellectual pretensions and more opinions than God gave Congress. If she was taking an interest in this cause célèbre, then all her connections in the legal profession would be grilled upon the matter at great length, probably at the next dinner party. Heaven help us all-her list of victims included the colonel, Mr. Wilson, and myself. I wondered what Miss Mary made of this case, and from which quarter she planned to stir up trouble.

The young girl was the last witness to be called. There was a murmur of sympathy from the crowd as the slight, fair-haired girl stood up to take the oath.

Thomas Wilson turned to Magistrates Burgner and Brittain. “I consider Miss Margaret Silver the most important of my witnesses, sirs. I would like her to tell her story in her own words, without being interrupted by questions from me. The witness is understandably nervous to be speaking before such a congregation, and I think she will come through it better if she can lose herself in the telling of her testimony.”

The justices of the peace had a brief whispered conference. Then John Burgner said, “We’ll allow it. This is merely a hearing, and we may relax the rules a bit, especially to accommodate a young lady in distress.”

Mr. Wilson turned to the witness and gave her a reassuring smile. “Now, Miss Silver, just a word or two to begin with, so we’ll know where we are. Would you state your age, please?”

“Sixteen.”

“And your relation to the deceased?”

“Sister. Well, half. Half sister, that is, but we didn’t take any notice of that. We were all just family. Our daddy was a widower when he married my mother, Nancy Reed, that was, in October of 1814, when he first came into the Carolina backcountry to settle. Charlie was two years old. That first wife in Maryland, she had died in 1812, giving birth to Charlie. I was born on December 2, 1815.”

Young Margaret seemed to be reciting these facts to herself, for she did not so much as glance at the audience. Wilson must have decided that he had let her ramble enough to put her at ease, for he stopped the flow of family reminiscences. “Now, Miss Margaret, I’d like you to remember the events of just a few short weeks ago, when your big brother Charlie went missing. Can you speak up loud and clear now and tell us exactly what happened?”

The girl took a deep breath and nodded, closing her eyes for a moment to compose herself before relating the difficult tale. Thomas Wilson handed her his linen handkerchief and she wound it around her fingers, tugging and picking at it until I thought it would unravel into threads.

“Tell us about your brother Charlie going missing,” Wilson prompted.

“Reckon it was two days before Christmas when Frankie showed up at our log house with the baby on her hip, and Charlie nowhere to be seen.”

“The day before Christmas Eve.”

“Yes, sir. I wasn’t thinking on it being nearly Christmas Eve at the time, mind you. We don’t make much of Christmas up home, so there was no decorating or presents, no fancy dinner being prepared. Menfolk mostly use it as an excuse to get liquored up. They shoot their guns in the air to make a joyful noise unto the Lord, I reckon.”

There was a ripple of amusement in the audience, but the witness ignored it and plunged ahead into her story. “Us women didn’t pay Christmas much mind, unless there was a church service near enough to go to, so it was just an ordinary day in the dead of winter, but real cold. The ground was hard as slate under drifts of snow, and the Toe River that runs brash past our mountain land was so hard froze that a body could walk on water. It was a day to run for shelter, if you had any call to be out in the elements at all, but I watched her coming, and Frankie Silver was walking slowly down the track in the frozen hillside, in no hurry to reach our place. And she may have been shaking, but we would have blamed that on the cold.”

Here the witness faltered, as if dreading what was to come.

“Tell us about Frankie Silver,” Wilson prompted her. “Your sister-in-law.”

“She’s just two years older than me, but prettier-I’ll give her that. I turned sixteen last month. Not that much was made of that, either, except that my brothers Alfred and Milton teased me about being their old-maid sister, seeing as how my sister-in-law Frankie was already expecting a young ’un by the time she was my age, and I hadn’t so much as kissed a man yet. I wasn’t studying to be like Miss Frances Stewart, I told them.”

Margaret Silver blushed. “The truth is, sometimes I wished I was more like her. She was little and fair, and she worked hard, too. Of course, she had to. Being married to Charlie and all.”

Margaret Silver ignored the rumble of laughter from the back of the court, but the noise drew scowls from both magistrates.

“Go on,” said Burgner. “And I’ll have less noise from the gallery, gentlemen.”

“About Frankie. Well, she kept that cabin clean, saw to the baby, tended the cows and the chickens, and did the cooking and the washing and kept the fire going. There are three of us girls to help Mama do what Frankie did all by herself. That set me against marrying up early, too.”

The two prisoners sat up straight when they heard these words, and they looked as if they might be about to chime in, but the lawyer silenced them with a shake of his head, and Margaret Silver hurried on.