The Ballad of Frankie Silver (16 page)

“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
not
a 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
she
was 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?”