“If you find in your hearts that this girl deserves to die, then say the word. I have seen fairer women than she, and younger, but I have turned from them in loathing because all was rotten within. I have never yet offered my hand to one I deemed dishonored. But the moment you pronounce this girl guilty, I will take her by the hand and say, ‘I think you as pure and true as woman can be.’”
Handkerchiefs flapped open in the gallery, and I caught a whiff of smelling salts.
But Mr. Farnandis was still warming up, and his voice swelled, consuming all the space, melodious, for two more hours. Gradually the courtroom walls glowed pink with sunset light, then blue, and evening freshness breathed in from the fields. Lamps were lit along the walls, and dark consumed the world outside, before Judge Grason interrupted him.
“The court regrets we must recess for the day. If it will please Mr. Farnandis to continue in the morning, the trial will be held over yet another day. But I tell you now, we will make an end before tomorrow afternoon.”
A sigh from the whole courtroom seemed to sweep the gavel down, and cold fear shot down my spine. Tomorrow. The lovely speeches had lulled me all afternoon, as if it could go on like this, nothing but words. I had only wanted her to suffer, be humiliated, and understand how wrong she had been, why she should have listened to me more. But that was all. I did not want to hear a verdict! How long could it be till she was hung?
The sheriff rushed her out, all three of her brothers and their wives close behind. They seemed to have forgotten me, and I got caught in the crowd leaving the gallery. Some of them stared at me with presumptuous hot eyes, and I fell back, letting them go. My daughter was gone before I got downstairs, and it made me feel helpless. I felt a sob well up.
Immediately someone held me, and I looked up to see Mrs. Stevenson Archer, the vision in black lace. “Come with me, dear Mrs. Cairnes,” she said softly.
She led me to the room where I had rested that day at noon. She brought me a glass of water and a cool cloth to wipe my face. She pulled a chair up close to mine and took my hands.
“There is something we must do to save your girl. Mr. Archer says there is just one way she will survive. The law is—it seems it’s quite inflexible, and she will hang unless we can convince the jury that she is deranged, or that it’s possible for her. He says it is the only way they can acquit her. He says they may want to acquit her, but they have to have a legal reason. They can’t make it manslaughter, because Mr. Deets saw Richard in the crossroads, and Richard followed Nick, and Joshua Jarrett saw it, too. And the Streets saw her walking toward town already, and they saw Richard dash off and get her horse. So, either way, she knew McComas was there. It was not the impulse of a moment. It was planned murder, so there’s no chance of acquittal now unless she was of unsound mind. We must convince her to walk into that court tomorrow morning and do something wild, just for a minute. She could shriek and tear her hair, or dance a caper and sing. If she does not, they will hang her.”
Her eyes searched mine, but seeing only bewilderment there, she closed hers a moment, as if to gather courage to go on. “They have already built the gallows behind the jail. The sentence can be carried out before this time tomorrow night.”
Something hot rushed in my breast, something I had squashed out of myself.
“Can you take me to Glenn’s Hotel?” I cried, leaping up, ragged and thoughtless.
“My carriage is outside. I’ll go with you.”
She whisked me to the hotel, where we had to fight our way inside, reporters catching at my arms. “Miz Cairnes! Mary Ann Bay Cairnes! Won’t you speak to us a moment? Please?”
Dragoons and Rifles choked the stairs, but I spied Colonel Stump up at the top and called to him, my voice strong and clear. He looked down, saw my distress, and ordered his men to clear a path for us, men parting like the Red Sea.
Once at the top, Stump took my arm, Mrs. Archer on my other side, and they swept me to a door I knew must be the prisoner’s, because the sheriff stood outside.
“I will speak with my daughter,” I told Mr. Bouldin quietly.
His face closed like a bulldog’s, eyes focused above our heads. He adjusted his holster on his girth. “Miz Cairnes, Miz Archer, I am sorry. She says she won’t see anyone tonight.”
“I am her mother. Tell her I am here. She has to speak to me.”
He seemed to know I would not go away, and he gave up and gave the door a timid rap.
“Miz Cairnes? Your mother wants to speak to you. Can she come in?”
She did not answer, but I had had enough. The door was unlocked, and I strode right in, leaving Mrs. Archer in the hall. The room was dark, and in the faint light from the hallway it took a moment to make out my daughter, lying on the bed, one arm over her eyes. She seemed to be fully clothed, even her shoes on, as if ready to depart. The nurse and baby were not there.
“Where is my grandson?” I demanded.
She bolted upright with a cry. “Who let you in here? Please leave at once!”
I stopped, stunned. “Dear girl, I am your mother.”
I could not see her face, but her voice was hard. “Not anymore. You said you were sorry I was born. And as for my son being your grandson, that certainly never occurred to you before. You couldn’t wait to get rid of him!”
I had forgotten how prickly and unpleasant she could be.
But I would still fight to save her, and we had so little time. “Of course I’m sorry that you bore a bastard, but he’s still my grandson and you are still my little girl.”
She flung herself back on the bed. “Not for long. Isie took Orlind home. She’ll take care of him when I am gone.”
So she had named the boy and not told me. Well, why should she? My knees felt weak, and I sat abruptly on the sofa. Isie, poor disgraced Isie, would take another child for her?
“You know I would raise him,” I said faintly. “Who did you name him for?”
She gave a harsh laugh. “Who did I name him for? No one in this family. He is not one of you. He never will be. Now go home, please, and leave me be.”
If I had not known before that she was lost to me, I knew it now. I suppose I had wanted her to be lost, preferably somewhere else. But not dead! Not dead! I never wanted that.
I started to cry like I might never stop, went to the bedside, and got down on my knees. She lay still with her eyes covered, and if she knew I was there, she did not let on.
“I don’t blame you for hating me. So I’m not asking for myself. But there is something you must do, for yourself and your little boy.”
I repeated everything Mrs. Archer had told me.
“You could spit on someone, anyone you like! Spit on that awful, cold-blooded Mr. Jones. Or spit on me! Sing and dance around the room! Anything, so long as they think you are mad, or that you could have been that night.”
Martha bolted to her feet and paced away, as if she could not stand to be so close to me.
“My mind was clear enough. I knew I was doing wrong. I meant it to be the last thing I ever did. You taught us not to lie. Is life worth so much that it is all right to lie, just to hang on to it? And to steal? I would have to steal my life back from the state of Maryland.”
“No!” I cried. “They haven’t taken it yet. They don’t want to! You were desperate. It was like being crazy, wasn’t it? Can’t you let them think it just this once? Everyone knows you’re not crazy now. But if you could just show them it was possible—”
Her voice was gentler now. “I am sorry, Mother.”
I cried with so much bitterness that I could not say more, and soon I left the room.
MARTHA JANE CAIRNES
The Accused
ON THE LAST DAY of my life, I woke early. It was dark still, and I lay and thought about the baby, as I always did first thing. Isie would have put him in a cradle, and he would be on his stomach, hunched up on his knees, his cheek pressed down, one great lump. His breath would move as quiet as a mole under the grass, while hi
s heart thump-thumped. He had not been there a year before, and he began from nothing, from a moment’s touch. Where had he been before? Where was Nick now? I saw him in the sheep meadow on a spring day. He gave me a lively, laughing glance and looked away.
My window faced the east, and it grew faint gray, then slowly pink. Outside of it a treetop showed new tender leaves, faint green. Something in my mind began to sing.
For the beauty of the earth,
For the beauty of the skies,
For the love which from our birth
Over and around us lies.
Did I believe in God? If I did, I did not feel much benefit from it. Someone or something made the world deliberately—it was too beautiful to be an accident. But whatever it was, it did not care for you or listen when you called, and there was no use in looking to the sky.
Yet the hymn had risen by itself and made me calm. It was not the Savior holding out His arms, forgiving me and granting me eternal life. It was not clouds parting, God’s hand reaching down to lift me up. But I still felt a certain peace. Whatever came this day would be all right.
A hotel servant brought a tray, and it seemed like I was tasting coffee for the first instead of the last time. The oranges smelled sweet, and I was happy they were there. I held one in my hand, though I had no need to eat nor ever would again.
I put on clean underthings, the black silk dress. The hoops would hide the tremor in my legs, and it would do to die in public, scrutinized. I wondered idly where the hanged were buried. Probably not in the graveyard of their ancestral church. I would not have cared, except that Nick was in the ground there now, and I would have liked to lie by him.
I brushed my hair, not sure how I should do it up. How did a murderer arrange her hair? If I knew, I would do it that way in a minute to convince them it was true. I settled on a tight, neat wrap anchored with pins, no tendrils hanging down, nothing to soften it. I would sit like stone, like those eyeless figures Nick had shown me, carved in rock, their blank faces turned up to the sky.
But I could not face the street without a veil, and I threw on a black one and secured it with a flat black hat.
Did the Dragoons and Rifles never sleep? They were packed along the hall, looking brushed and clean and half-ready to weep. I did not know how much to blame on them, and it did not matter anymore. They had protected me in my last days, and as I passed I took the hand of each one, no one saying anything.
The sheriff took me to his buggy, where we climbed inside and waited while the men mounted around us before we started a last rocking drive along the now familiar streets.
A few ladies stood out in their yards in black dresses to watch me go. A few blocks from the courthouse, a young girl in white rushed at the buggy, lifted her arm, and pitched something straight at me—I flinched, sure it was a rock.
But it landed harmlessly in my lap, a small bouquet of lilies of the valley tied with white ribbon. I turned to look back, and the girl was standing in the street with her hands hanging down, gazing after me. I did not wave.
Outside the courthouse, the rows of spectators were silent now, solemn and respectful, though every one of them had come to see me die. More of them had filled the lobby and the courtroom and the gallery, hundreds of citizens, and all so quiet I could hear my bootsteps on the hardwood floor. Isie was already in her chair beside the dock, and I settled beside her gratefully.
“Make way, make way,” voices called out from the lobby, and the courtroom door opened to let in Mr. Archer with a huge bouquet, long-stemmed white calla lilies and star lilies and peonies tied with excessive quantities of white ribbon that fluttered to the floor, opulent enough to be a bride’s. A rustle rippled through the crowd as he bowed and held them out to me.
“Prepared by the hands of Mrs. Stevenson Archer,” he said.
My hands shook as I took them, thanking him. I held them up under my veil so I could breathe their fresh and dusky scents.
When the judges processed in for the last time, Mr. Farnandis paced out to the center of the floor, and all waited for him to continue where he had left off the night before.
But he looked at me and gave the smallest gesture toward his own forehead. I knew he meant I should remove my veil, but I had no desire to feel a courtroom full of hostile eyes.
I felt Isie’s gentle fingers at my temples, unpinning it, and saw she was already weeping silently. I kept my senses trained on the sweet, fragile bouquet rioting across my lap, as preposterous claims were made on my behalf, words thrown up like castles in the air.
“Here is a girl of great tenderness and mercy, as good and pure a mother as the world will ever see,” Mr. Farnandis proclaimed in his lush voice. “Her seducer was a monster of lust and cruelty, an artful, lazy, practiced seducer and a blight on human society. Pure hearts know that the tender girl he so injured is already forgiven under the eye of heaven.”
He went on at least two hours more about my supposed gentleness and purity, and when he stopped, applause and cheers burst out, despite the gavel banging down. It lasted so long, Mr. Farnandis had to stand and bow, accept the ovation while he waved at the crowd to stop.
Then it was Mr. Archer’s turn to round out the case for my defense.
“Under common law,” he began, “not all killing is considered murder, and when the heat of blood is present, such charges are always reduced. But our plea is not guilty. We have established her insanity without doubt. We have seen the causes operating upon the mind of the young lady while in a delicate condition. We have the nights of anguish and tears, the false vows of her lover, her seclusion from society. We see a young girl who has never hurt a worm, who rushes hastily and hurriedly upon a scene and comports herself in such a way that she convinces bystanders she was insane. Do you suppose it possible that a young girl, tenderly nurtured, brought up as she was, could shoot down a man and an hour afterwards go to a neighbor’s on a friendly visit and talk as if nothing had occurred? Could any sane woman even witness such a scene and an hour afterwards show herself unmoved? She committed the act without any attempt at concealment. She saw only one man, while all present saw her.”
He went on to denounce the prosecution for trying to connect Richard with the affair, when there was not one word of proof. “A man may take the law into his own hands to protect his home, his honor, and his property. It is right to protect our homes against invasion, whether that invasion be by force or comes in the clothing of a sheep to take that which is most precious. If a father may protect his child, if a mother may protect her daughter, if a brother may protect his sister, may not a fatherless girl protect her own rights?”
Out in the lobby cheers broke out, and the bailiff went to silence them. But even he could not stay away while eloquence was being lavished on the air. It went on for hours and became almost a game, bursts of applause in the lobby and the bailiff rushing out, then quickly stepping back inside the court. Then more demonstrations of enthusiasm in the lobby.
It was noon before Mr. Archer made an end and returned to his seat.
An electric feeling charged me, dread and excitement both. The time had come for the attorney general to have the last word, calling for my death. Neat and compact as always, he rose and spoke in crisp and reasonable tones.
“Your Honors, ladies and gentlemen, gentlemen of the jury. I do not complain of the bias displayed by the counsels for the other side, and I find my task here unpleasant. But it must be recalled that we have to do here with the conscious, calculated murder of an industrious and hardworking man. Nicholas McComas was just thirty-five years old, a fine example of sobriety and a faithful son who helped support his mother, an aunt, and three sisters, and all will miss him sorely now. She shot him in a public place, with no attempt at concealment, exactly as the beloved president of this great Union was killed four years ago, and I must strenuously protest against the invocation of some ‘Higher Law’ to which the jury might appeal to acquit her. ‘Higher Law’ was the doctrine that drenched this co
untry in blood, when some men claimed it sanctioned keeping other men as slaves. That supposed ‘Higher Law’ tore our Union asunder and forced us into a conflict that stained our soil forever. Are we ready to listen to those words again, so soon after that awful war? I appeal to you in the name of all that’s right. The only law we must obey is that laid down by our great forebears, by Washington and Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln. For God, for Union, for justice, I charge you to honor them and bring in a verdict of guilty.”
Only silence issued from the lobby, but a rustle of applause swept round the courtroom, and Mr. Jones held up a restraining hand—he was not finished, and the crowd quieted. He apologized for the attempt to implicate Richard.
“I am sorry her brother’s name has been brought into this case. I have not one harsh word to say of him, and he will not be charged before you with any offense. Nevertheless the evidence concerning him shows that Miss Cairnes knew her victim would be in the town, and she went deliberately to kill him. Therefore you must find her guilty of premeditated murder.”
I felt Isie shudder next to me, and I gripped her hand and looked into her eyes.
“It’s all right,” I whispered. “It’s the truth. It’s what I want.”
Isie stared at the ceiling, not bothering to wipe the tears that streaked her wan cheeks.
“I submit, furthermore,” said Mr. Jones, “she was in full possession of her faculties. No evidence has proved her otherwise. The jury must understand that no excuse for murder can be offered except self-defense or insanity, and there is no evidence of either. It should be noted that the prisoner’s mother was not even asked to attest to her insanity, and it can be deduced that she could not have done so. Her daughter has lived at home all her life, and her mother knows she has never been insane. This act was conscious, cold, premeditated, and therefore homicide. If the jury would be so unreasonable as to find against the evidence, the only verdict of acquittal they might bring in is ‘not guilty by reason of insanity.’ But the duty of the jury is to find in accordance with the evidence. And since her mind was clear, I very much regret to say it, but your only choice is to bring in a verdict of guilty.”
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