Her chest was heaving, a faint flush running across it just above the yoke neck of her nightdress and spreading upward toward her shoulder bones. Her cheeks were flushed as well, a stray strand of blond hair falling loose from the pink ribbon to cascade across one of them, as though lending rebellious support to the ardor of her speech and the flaming intensity of her eyes.
“Well, then?” she demanded.
“Well... yes, then,” Lizzie said, and Alison clutched her fiercely, and showered kisses upon her cheeks and her hair, and said, “Oh my, perhaps there is a God after all.”
10: New Bedford — 1893
It often seemed to Lizzie, sitting in this courtroom, listening to the witnesses and the contending attorneys, that she was as much a prisoner of a relentlessly unwinding fate as she was of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. This crowded, humid, cramped and swelteringly hot room had become a battlefield upon which both sides fought unremittingly, one hoping to condemn her, the other to exonerate her, but both — it seemed to her — oddly removed from the reality of her predicament.
In the way that soldiers had no true vocation until a war was declared, so had the attorneys here — and she included her own among them — been without meaningful occupation till they’d responded to a battle cry they might have heeded regardless of the cause. She sometimes felt that none of them recognized the fact that they were here neither to defend nor attack some lofty ideal, but instead to persuade a jury of twelve men that they should vote in favor of or against the hanging of a human being.
The newspaper reports maintained that she was not an adventuress. Yet this was surely the greatest adventure in her life, a life more dear to her than to any of the warriors who daily fought over it, a life that in the welter of claim and counterclaim had become increasingly more cherishable. She had lived that life, the newspapers wrote, without making any other history than that which came to the ordinary New England girl who lived in the home of her parents and busied herself from morning till night to add to its comforts. But yet another history was being made in this time, in this place, an intensely personal history that could end abruptly with a verdict of guilty. For the attorneys the history was only of the moment. The warlike outbursts from each side would undoubtedly culminate in handshakes and accolades of “Well done, comrade, well fought,” once the verdict was in. The field of battle would be cleared, and the only true casualty — if history went against her — would be she herself.
The newspaper reports claimed she was not handsome nor did she look particularly refined, little realizing what pain those words caused even when the criticism was tempered with the observation that there was a certain old-fashioned simplicity in her countenance and an absence of anything that implied the ferocity, at once calm and audacious, that must have moved her if the prosecution’s story was to be believed.
The prosecution’s story.
Ah, yes.
And the defense’s story.
The relating of events in what must appear but a fanciful fiction to those twelve solemn jurors, an entertainment contrived for the pleasure of men with nothing to do but while away time on a hot June day.
It was all very real and immediate to her.
Every bit of it.
But here were the generals in command again, and here again came the parade of foot soldiers to tell of their derring-do, lost in their memories of events long past, mindless of how great a loss she might suffer, depending on whether their tales were believed or not.
It is my life we are quarreling over in this room, she thought fiercely.
Mine!
My name’s Everett Brown, I’m eleven years old.
I live at 117 Third Street in Fall River. I was in Fall River on the day of the Borden murder, down there at the Borden house. Went down with Thomas Barlow. Walked down Third Street from my house, over Morgan, and down Second. I don’t know whether it was before eleven or after eleven when I left. I couldn’t say if it was nearer eleven or twelve that I left the house, because I didn’t notice the time. When I went down Second Street, I saw Officer Doherty come out of the yard, run across the street and down Spring Street.
So I went in the Borden yard.
Went into the side gate and went up along the path to the door, tried to get into the house, and Charlie Sawyer wouldn’t let us in. I asked him to let us in, but he wouldn’t. So the party that was with me, Thomas Barlow, said, “Come on in the barn, there might be somebody there.” We thought we would go up and find the murderer. I didn’t open the door, Thomas Barlow did. I don’t know if the pin was in the hasp. I didn’t open the door. We stood a minute to see who’d go up first. Who would go upstairs first. He said he wouldn’t go up, somebody might drop an ax on him.
So we went upstairs and looked out of the window on the west side, and went from there over to the hay, and was up in the barn about five minutes. Upstairs.
My name is Thomas Barlow, I’m twelve years old.
I work for Mr. Shannon, the poolroom on the corner of Pleasant and Second streets. Clean up around there and set the balls up. On the day of the murder, I wasn’t working then. I wasn’t doing anything then. I’ve been working there now about a month.
I got to Everett Brown’s house about eleven o’clock. He lives at number 117 Third Street, a little ways up from my house, it ain’t very far apart. He’d had his dinner when I got there. We left about eight minutes past eleven. I know because I looked at his clock when we left his house.
“What time is it now?” Knowlton said. “Don’t look at the clock.”
“I can’t say.”
“What time was it when you came up here to testify?”
“I don’t know.”
“Have you noticed the time today at all?”
“No, sir.”
“And yet you did look at the clock just when you were going out?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And remember it was eight minutes past eleven?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Did you go right down to the Borden house?”
“We took our time.”
“How far was it down to the Borden house?”
“I can’t say. I never measured it.”
“Well, how many squares is it?”
“About three, I should say.”
“You walked three squares?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You didn’t stop?”
“Oh, we stopped, Fooling along, going down.”
“What do you mean by ‘fooling along’?”
“Playing. Going down.”
“What do you mean by ‘playing’?”
“He was pushing me off the sidewalk, and I was pushing him off.”
“How long do you think it took pushing him off the sidewalk, and he you?”
“About ten or fifteen minutes, I should say.”
“How do you fix that time?”
“I don’t fix it. I say it was about between ten and fifteen.”
“Wasn’t it twenty?”
“No, sir.”
“When you arrived near the Borden house, did you see any person leave the yard?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Who was it?”
“Officer Doherty.”
“Do you know what part of the yard he came out of?”
“I should say the front gate.”
“Where did he go to?”
“Across the road, over toward Spring Street.”
“What did you do then?”