Sharyn McCrumb - The Ballad of Frankie Silver

“That’s kind of her,” I said, backing toward the door. “I’m glad to know that the prisoner isn’t left alone right now.”

“It’s more than she deserves,” said Presnell.

“Well, I suppose it is,” I said, not wanting to debate the matter on the threshold. “But we are bidden to be merciful, except in that last measure of justice which she must shortly undergo.”

“That’s as may be,” said Presnell, “but charity is hard to come by with all these rowdy sots a-knocking on the door every whipstitch, and that caterwauling from herself up yonder to be borne.”

“It will all be over soon enough,” I told him.

I rode home in the chill March wind, taking no joy in the signs of spring around me. It had been a long, wearying day, and I found that I could not rejoice in the verdict, whether justice had been done or not. The red-tipped branches of the budding oak trees made me think of fingers dripping blood in the forest, and I shuddered, thinking of Charlie Silver’s red hand lying in a clump of snow, clutching at nothing. The trial was not over for me. I had yet to write the appeal. I dreaded an evening of toil by lamplight, while my wife and her family enjoyed a pleasant conversation by the fireside.

Five of the Erwin sisters and their young cousin Miss Eliza Grace McDowell were waiting for me in the great hall at Belvidere, sipping tea and taking turns pacing with anticipation. One of the younger sisters was making a halfhearted attempt to piece out a tune upon the rosewood piano. When I appeared in the doorway, they stopped and stared at me openmouthed, waiting for a sign.

I shook my head and they shrank back with soft cries of distress, but while I saw dismay upon some of their faces, and polite regret on others, I did not detect surprise. We knew, we all knew, what was coming.

I sank down wearily on the sofa and stretched my hand out for a cup of tea before I let them prevail upon me to tell what had happened at the trial.

“Please, Mr. Gaither,” said pretty little Eliza McDowell. “Mr. Woodfin seemed so eloquent and so… noble. Could he not persuade the jury to be merciful?”

“He tried, Miss Eliza, but to no avail,” I said, suppressing another spark of irritation at Woodfin’s pervasive charm. The Erwin ladies grouped around me so that I felt like a honeybee smothered in the petals of a dozen silk frocks as I told my tale. They all looked so concerned, but so puzzled, over the turn of events we had examined in the courtroom that day. How could a young woman kill her husband? How could a poor woman receive second-best justice? They knew no more of Frankie Silver’s frontier existence than hothouse flowers know of ditch lilies. How could I stem their questions when I had no intention of enlightening them about the realities of the world past Belvidere?

I looked into the sweet, childish face of Eliza Grace McDowell, so similar in age and feature to Frankie Silver herself, and found myself wondering what seeds of murder might lie in that child’s innocent heart. Eliza Grace is the granddaughter of the two McDowell brothers, one a colonel and the other a general in the Revolutionary War, and the old folks tell tales of Miss Eliza’s great-grandmother Margaret O’Neil McDowell, who faced down the Tory soldiers as they were sacking her very home. With such ruthlessness in her bloodlines, surely Eliza Grace should be capable of the same ferocity that the jury found in Frankie Silver, and yet I could not imagine this cosseted young woman striking anyone in anger, or summoning up any passion that would unleash a whirlwind of violence. That patriot lady Margaret O’Neil McDowell might have understood the hardship and danger of the frontier, but she had lived generations ago, and since then her descendants had known only wealth and privilege.

Is it their upbringing, and the fine character of the aristocrat, that separates them from the sins of the murderess, I wondered, or is it only a matter of simple good fortune? Is Eliza Grace as capable of violence as any murderess, but innocent only because she has never suffered whatever torments led Frankie Silver to her crime? I put the thought aside. The law is my profession, and it must judge people by what they have done, without concerning itself with whether or not life has treated them fairly, for to do so would be questioning God’s will. There are some things we are not given to understand. But I did not pity Frankie Silver any the less for it. She was a fair and tender young creature, and she would have a hard life and an early death, while the fine ladies here before me lived measured, ornamental lives, innocent of drudgery or danger. They were no more beautiful or clever than the defendant, but they were wellborn, and that counted for everything. I could find no justice there. Perhaps there is a different kind of justice in heaven.

“Do tell us what happened, Burgess,” said my wife Elizabeth, tapping my arm. “You seem quite dazed, my dearest.”

“I am weary,” I said. I took a sip of my tea and withdrew from my reverie. “The trial was most unusual. Instead of a quick session convened to hear the verdict and set the sentence, there was more testimony this morning.”

“Surely that is most irregular.” Miss Mary Erwin was watching me closely, and I hoped she would not ask me what I thought of the day’s events.

“Well,” I said, “it is unusual.” They pressed me for more details, and although I hesitated to discuss such delicate matters with gentlewomen, their demand for the particulars overcame me, and I told them as best I could what had happened today in the courtroom.

“The witnesses changed their stories?” said Miss Mary when I had finished. “But this is monstrous!”

“Surely the testimony was a lie,” said Elizabeth. “They cannot hang the poor girl on the basis of false witness, can they?”

“What did Mr. Woodfin say about their treachery?” Eliza McDowell wanted to know.

I shook my head. “The witnesses claimed that they had reconsidered their testimony, and that upon reflection they had remembered the events more clearly. This may, of course, be true.”

“So they found her guilty,” said Miss Mary Erwin. “I feared that they would. Was judgment passed?”

“Yes. Mr. Donnell pronounced the death sentence. In a case of murder, there is no other remedy. Of course, it may not come to that,” I added hastily, seeing their stricken faces. “I am writing the appeal myself, and I shall take care to stress the change of testimony and the unsequestered witnesses.”

Elizabeth looked around the room triumphantly. “There!” she said. “I told you it would be all right! Burgess will save her!”

Her sisters, undeluded by wifely affection, looked as doubtful as I felt. Juries’ decisions are rarely overturned by the State Supreme Court unless grievous errors have been made in the trial procedure. The Erwin sisters, wives and daughters of attorneys, would know this as well as I when they put sentiment aside, but no one contradicted my loyal wife. We found ourselves talking at cross-purposes in our haste to change the subject.

Miss Mary sat in glowering silence for a good while, and then she said, “We must not forget this poor creature who languishes in the jail. We must visit her.”

I had opened my mouth to protest this outrageous suggestion when my sister-in-law added, “Did our Lord not instruct us to visit those in prison as well as those who are sick?”

Mary Erwin can cite Scripture for her purpose.

The summer passed uneventfully in Morganton. We reveled in the hot weather, cast our woolen clothes aside, and savored the June tomatoes, glad to be released from the confinement of winter. Then, just when we had put the bitter cold and snow out of our minds as if December would never come again, the flies, the choking red dust, and the breathless heat drove us back indoors once more to wait for the cooling winds of autumn.