Frankie Silver seemed less wounded by this turn of fate than did her attorney. Perhaps she did not understand the calamity that had befallen her; perhaps she simply expected less of her fellow man, or of this witness in particular. She huddled in her black shawl and listened with the blank stare she had effected for much of the trial to block the stares of the curious onlookers, but once I saw her smile. It was a sad, terrible smile, and I knew that the memory of it would stay with me always. Such a look might Mary Queen of Scots have worn upon hearing the death sentence signed by her cousin Elizabeth I. It was the brave smile of a gambler who knows she has lost everything, not through any fault of her own but through the treachery of her companions. For an instant I found myself wishing that Miss Mary Erwin had come back to court today. She would not have borne this in silence. I did, but I had no choice. I was an officer of the court. I could not stop it.
It was all over but the waiting. The jury had gone out to deliberate, and the rest of us awaited their pleasure, milling about inside the courthouse and out, seeking sunshine despite the chill of lingering winter. It was just past noon, but no one wanted to abandon the vigil in search of dinner. Some of us were not hungry.
The morning had been taken up with a parade of witnesses, each of whom had shaded his testimony to reflect the guilt and malevolence of the defendant. The certainty of Frankie Silver’s conviction for murder seemed to seep into the minds of those who testified, tainting their recollections with the memory of strange looks or suspicious behavior where none had been observed before. The girl was a murderer, they reasoned: surely she must have acted like one. From one day to the next, a young woman who had spent her life in the company of these people, and married into their family, was transformed into a stock villain of melodrama. No one seemed to find it odd.
Nicholas Woodfin had tried to undo the damage caused by the witnesses’ premature condemnation. Again and again he asked, “Did you not tell this story differently before?” And always the answer was: “Upon reflection, I remembered more clearly what took place.”
At last the questioning was over, the witnesses were dismissed a final time, and Judge Donnell gave his instructions to the jury before sending them forth to begin their task anew. His summation was stern but fair, although he did not touch upon the matter of the altered testimony. He was careful to explain to the jurors that reasonable doubt did not mean conjuring fanciful solutions to the crime, and that although the defendant was a fair young woman, the law was no respecter of persons.
“There is a blindfold around the eyes of the goddess of justice,” he reminded them, “so that she may not see who is rich or poor, young or old, fair or ill-favored, and thus base her judgments upon these superficialities. Gentlemen of the jury, see that you, too, are blind to the temptations of offering mercy where none is warranted.”
I was surprised by the anxiousness that I felt in anticipation of their verdict. Usually, cases in Superior Court, even quite serious or tragic ones, leave me unmoved. I have no stake in the verdict; nothing that transpires in the courtroom reflects upon my ability as a lawyer or affects my purse. I am merely an observer, a procedural referee, if you will. Somehow, though, this time I found myself wishing with all my heart that Nicholas Woodfin would carry the day, and that little Mrs. Silver would be set free.
I made a point of seeking out Mr. Woodfin, who was standing by himself on the courthouse lawn, seemingly oblivious to the white flowering trees around him heralding spring. It will be winter for him a good while longer, I thought, watching him. His colleague Thomas Wilson had gone home to dine, and none of the spectators had cared to approach the young attorney. The man who defends a heartless killer is not a popular fellow.
“I feel sure that she cannot have done it,” I said to him in a low voice, for I did not wish to be overheard by anyone else.
Nicholas Woodfin smiled at the urgency in my voice. He was tired now, and he wanted nothing more to do with hope. “Have you another theory, Mr. Gaither?”
I shook my head. “None. I dismiss all the theatrics of today-all that wild talk of Mrs. Silver’s strange looks and malevolent behavior. That was the embellishment of people wishing to enlarge their roles in the one drama of their lives. It is yesterday’s testimony that puzzles me. The witnesses were quite firm on the point of her lying. Frankie Silver said that her husband had not come home, and yet pieces of his body were discovered in the cabin. I cannot explain that fact away.”
“No.”
“Yet it was a crime involving gore and dismemberment, done in stealth rather than in the heat of passion: this argues madness. But the woman I saw in the courtroom was clearly sane. No one could fault her self-control.”
“I wish she had a good deal less of it,” said Woodfin. “She is keeping back the truth.”
“Surely not,” I protested. “Do you know what she is hiding?”
He looked uneasy. “I cannot be sure.”
“She must speak out. Her life depends on it.”
The young attorney nodded thoughtfully. “I wonder if she knows that,” he said. “I have told her so often enough, and Mr. Wilson has impressed it upon her in the sternest manner, but I cannot be sure that she believes us. She is so young and pretty that I am sure she cannot take in the enormity of dying. Perhaps she thinks that because she is a young woman with an innocent child, the court will show her mercy.”
“Perhaps they will,” I said, but my words rang hollow even to my own ears. We stood there in the pale sunshine and shivered, Nicholas Woodfin and I, for we knew what was to come.
This time we had little more than an hour to wait for the return of the jury. The bailiff summoned us all back to court, and I found myself searching his face for some sign of the verdict, as if I were the rawest oaf in a crowd of drunken spectators. His face betrayed nothing; if in fact he even knew what the verdict would be, he was careful to give nothing away. In his place I would have done the same. We will all know soon enough, I thought.
I resumed my seat at the clerk’s table and arranged my papers over and over to control my apprehension. Out of the tail of my eye I saw Mrs. Silver led in to take her place beside Mr. Woodfin. She was pale, and I thought I detected a tinge of red around her eyelids, but she was as composed as ever, walking slowly, oblivious to all. As she reached the defense table, and the bailiff let go of her arm, she looked up at her attorney and smiled, as if to reassure him that all would be well. As ifhe were the one whose life hung in the balance. He tried to smile back, then looked quickly away.
He is but twenty-one, I thought, and he has tried fewer than a dozen cases since he was called to the bar. He will never again feel such pangs of sympathy for a client. He will never again allow himself to care. I was sure that if God were to spare Nicholas Woodfin to practice law for yet another fifty years, he would never speak or write of this incident again.
The jury filed in, properly subdued and solemn, taking their places without meeting the eyes of anyone present.
“Gentlemen of the jury, have you reached a verdict?” He said. The wordsat last hung in the air unspoken.
“Reckon we have, sir,” said the foreman. A glare from the judge sent him scrambling to his feet as he answered, “She done it.”
Only the solemnity of the occasion kept Judge Donnell from uttering a blistering rebuke to this stammering yokel who was so heedless of court procedure. He continued to glare at the foreman several seconds during which a shocked silence prevailed in the courtroom. A few heartbeats later the gallery burst into a clamoring babble, with even a few whoops of triumph thrown in by some callous drunkards.