Nancy Wilson entered the courtroom for her second turn on the witness stand looking uneasy. Wearing the same black dress as yesterday but not the same confident demeanor, she kept close to the bailiff’s side, making her way through the spectators with a worried frown, as if she were wondering what the jurors wanted from her now.
When the preliminaries were settled, William Alexander approached the witness with a perfunctory smile intended to calm her fears. “The jurors would like to hear your testimony again, Miss Wilson. Let us begin again. I will ask you questions, and you must answer truthfully to the best of your knowledge. Do you understand?”
She nodded. “Go on, then.”
“State your name, please.”
“Nancy Wilson.”
“You reside in the Toe River section of western Burke County?”
“That’s right.”
“No kin to Attorney Thomas Wilson of Morganton.”
“No. Not that I ever heard.” She shrugged. “Maybe back in England five hundred years ago.”
William Alexander permitted himself a genuine smile. “There is no need to deny Mr. Wilson so thoroughly, madam,” he assured her. “We are merely establishing that you have no ties to the court that might affect your testimony. That aside, it is no crime to be related to such a worthy gentleman as my learned colleague.”
“Even if he is a lawyer!” someone called out from the gallery.
This jest proved too much for Judge Donnell, and his own smile vanished as he banished the levity from his courtroom with the oak gavel.
“Miss Wilson, are you acquainted with the defendant Frances Silver?”
“I know her.” An emphatic nod.
“Are you related?”
“Her husband Charlie was my first cousin.” Nancy Wilson looked as if she intended to say more, or perhaps she meant to remind the prosecutor that he already knew these things, but something in Mr. Alexander’s expression must have counseled patience, for she contented herself with that brief reply, and the questioning continued.
“How did you come to hear about the disappearance of your cousin Charles Silver?”
“Last December I was visiting at my uncle’s cabin when Frankie”-she nodded contemptuously toward Mrs. Silver-“shecame in saying that Charlie was gone.”
“Did the defendant know where he was?”
“Frankie had already told the family that Charlie was gone the day before. She just came to say he wasn’t back yet from a visit to the neighbors over the ridge. We began to think that Charlie had come to harm on the walk home through the snow. He might have fallen through the ice and drowned in the Toe River.”
“Did Mrs. Silver seem concerned about her missing husband?”
“Not her. She was angry, more like.” Nancy Wilson tossed her head. “She was put out about Charlie being gone, in case he was having a good time without her. And she was all-fired mad about having to do all the chores herself. She wanted the cows fed, as if a big strong woman like her couldn’t do it perfectly well herself. And she kept saying that she was going to run out of firewood, and would one of the boys come over and chop some for her.”
“Did they?”
She shook her head. “There wasn’t no need. Alfred said he had seen a whole cord of oak and kindling already chopped and stacked, sitting right there by the side of the cabin a day or two back. ‘You can’t have used it all up yet, Frankie,’ he told her. Of course, now we know what happened to that wood.” Nancy Wilson looked defiantly around the courtroom, as if daring anybody to come up with another explanation for the missing woodpile.
“Did Mrs. Silver suggest that the family begin a search for her husband?”
“She did not,” said Nancy Wilson. “She knew it wouldn’t be no use. She kept saying that there was a party over to the Youngs’, and that Charlie would be along home when the liquor ran out, same as always. It wasn’t no use to go after him, she said, because he’d rather lay around with those no-account friends of his than do any work anyhow.”
“When Mrs. Silver appeared to report her husband missing, who was present in the Silver cabin?”
Nancy Wilson ticked them off on her fingers. “Besides me, there was Mrs. Nancy Silver, Charlie’s stepmother; his sisters Margaret, Rachel, and Lucinda; his brothers Alfred, Milton, and Marvel; and the baby, William.”
“When she was ready to leave, did Frankie Silver ask any of you to accompany her back to her own cabin, since she was now alone?”
“She did not. She didn’t want anybody going near her place at all. That was plain. Charlie’s sister Margaret offered to walk back with Frankie, on account of she had the baby with her, and I said I’d go along to keep Margaret company on the way back, but Frankie said she didn’t want any visitors. She said she’d go alone. She had an odd look on her face, too. Like she was a-skeered we’d follow her.”
This testimony was completely different from the account Miss Wilson had sworn to on the previous day. I had not made notes of the witnesses’ recitals, for it was only my job to see that legal procedure was correctly followed, but I remembered it well enough. Nancy Wilson spoke with conviction in a clear, carrying voice, and her words had impressed themselves upon my memory. Frankie Silver had been weeping, she had said. The young wife had been worried about her missing husband. She had asked Margaret Silver and Nancy Wilson to come back to the cabin with her, but they declined, saying that they did not wish to tramp through the deep snow to her cabin. This was the testimony as I recalled it; surely the jury would remember as well?
I scanned the faces in the jury box, but I saw no expressions of surprise or alarm. One white-haired gentleman with cold eyes and a mean-spirited mouth was nodding with satisfaction, as if this story dovetailed perfectly with-with what? His memory of yesterday’s proceedings, or his imaginings of the conduct of a guilty murderess? The other jurors listened to the tale with equal equanimity. Had I misheard? I found myself looking about the courtroom, searching for a countenance that reflected my own bewilderment at this turn of events. Did no one remember?
Miss Wilson’s revised version of the events of December 22 recast the defendant as a heartless monster, indifferent to the fate of her husband and transparent in her efforts to escape detection. Gone was yesterday’s image of the weeping young girl, worried about her lost Charlie and begging his kinswomen to come home and keep her company while the men searched the woods. With a few words, only half a dozen denials, Nancy Wilson had evoked the image of a cunning and cruel killer, someone who deserved no mercy and no pity, and who would surely receive none from those present in the court. The Frankie Silver that was described today deserved to die.
I had no way of knowing which version of the tale was the true one, though of course I suspected that the first telling was the real remembrance. At least I wanted the jurors to realize that they were hearing a vastly different account from the one that had been previously given and sworn to before God.
Surely someone else in this crowded courtroom remembered the previous testimony. Someone would want to know why the facts had altered so completely from the first testimony.Someone… I found the astonished face I sought at the defense table: it was that of Nicholas Woodfin. He had gone even paler as Miss Wilson spoke, and I saw his lips twitching as if he could control the sound of his outcry, but not the movement.
For an instant our eyes met, and we read dismay in each other’s expression. I looked away first, for I could not bear to see this courageous and idealistic young man in the very beginning of his profession lose all his faith in the majesty of the law. Juries do not mete out divine justice, I wanted to tell him. They are the arbiters that we mortals deserve: imperfect, credulous, and above all fallible. He was seeing the end of his client’s hopes, and he knew it. I wondered ifshe did.