The Ballad of Frankie Silver

by Sharyn McCrumb

  Another murmur began when Mr. Thomas Wilson strode through the crowd and took his place at the rail beside the prisoners. Wilson is one of the town’s most prominent lawyers, although he has been in Morganton just over a year. He is a former state legislator, and another of my kinsmen by marriage, though he came to it late, as befits a prudent man, I suppose. Thomas Wilson is forty, while his wife Catherine is but twenty-two. She is the first cousin of my Elizabeth, for their mothers are sisters, daughters of the late William Sharpe, an Iredell County patriot and statesman who served in the Continental Congress.

  Wilson, in his black suit and silk cravat, made an elegant and poignant contrast to the two shabbily dressed prisoners he represented. Here was the majesty of the law reaching out to the lowest and least of its citizens. He took his place beside them, courteously distant, as if to make it clear that duty alone had placed him in their company. I was glad that Isaiah Stewart had found such distinguished counsel for his wife and children, but I did wonder what town sentiments would be toward the Wilsons at the coming trial, and Wilson’s demeanor suggested that he, too, worried about the unpleasant association. These thoughts reminded me to look for Isaiah Stewart in the crowd, but I could not spot him in the crush of more than a hundred avid spectators.

  When the assembly began to close ranks behind the principals, I suddenly realized that something was amiss.

  “There are only two of them!” I said, rather louder than I had intended. Fortunately, a rising tide of muttering covered our conversation. “The victim’s widow is not with them,” I told the colonel. “Frankie Silver herself is not present. Can you see beyond the crowd, sir? Is there another constable approaching?”

  “None that I can see. Perhaps the widow will wait to take her chances in court.”

  I thought about it. “That is certainly possible. This is a hearing to determine if there is enough evidence to keep the prisoners in jail. From what I have heard from Constable Baker, there are witnesses aplenty to see that Mrs. Silver will stay confined until the trial, for she has lied to every one of them in saying that her husband had not returned home when-”

  “Yes. I have heard the tales,” said the colonel hastily. “No doubt you are right. Why should she demand evidence of her complicity when half the neighborhood stands ready to condemn her? Her trial is inevitable. What about the others?”

  I thought back to Charlie Baker’s recital of the facts of the case. “The others were scarcely mentioned,” I told him. “Perhaps he has left out some details of the events.”

  John Burgner called the hearing to order, adding an acerbic warning to the rabble that he would have order and silence in his court, or else he would empty it. He needn’t have worried. When the witnesses began to testify, those eager to listen would enforce the silence.

  The first witness called to the stand was Thomas Howell, a kinsman by marriage of the oldest Stewart son, Jackson. I wondered if the family tie was close enough to cause difficulty for the young couple. Howell seemed ill at ease on the stand, but he took his oath in a clear voice and began his testimony without flinching. His story echoed the one I had heard from Charlie Baker: Frankie Silver reports that her man has gone missing, followed by days of searching through forest snowdrifts, only to be summoned to the missing man’s own cabin by Jack Collis.

  At the end of Howell’s recital, the defense attorney rose and approached the witness. “Did the Stewarts have anything to say about the disappearance of Charlie Silver?”

  “Never saw them,” said Howell. “They didn’t come help us search, that’s certain.”

  “But they did not lie to anyone about the whereabouts of Charlie Silver?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “And did you see them near the cabin of Charlie and Frankie Silver?”

  Tom Howell answered, “I did not.”

  William Hutchins, Elendor Silver, and Miss Nancy Wilson said much the same. I missed some of their testimony because it was after Howell’s turn on the stand that I noticed a flash of red among the spectators and turned to see a familiar but formidable lady caped in black. She was thrusting her way forward in order to get a better look at the proceedings, and her expression suggested that if matters were not handled properly, the court would hear about it. I nudged Colonel Erwin.

  He looked in the direction I indicated, and groaned. “Damn! Cousin Mary is poking about, is she? Never a moment’s peace, is there?”

  “She does take an interest in civic matters,” I said tactfully. I was, after all, a rather new connection to the Erwin clan.

  Colonel James Erwin snorted. “Your father-in-law ought to marry her off, Burgess. Preferably to someone heading west.”

  I permitted myself a discreet smile. “It would serve the Indians right, wouldn’t it?”

  “Maybe having a house to run would keep Mary’s nose out of everyone else’s business. She would have made a lawyer for sure, if she hadn’t been born female. Be glad you didn’t marry that one, Burgess!”

  Mary Erwin is an elder sister of my Elizabeth, but I can see little resemblance between them. Where Elizabeth is gentle and reticent, Mary is a strong-minded woman with intellectual pretensions and more opinions than God gave Congress. If she was taking an interest in this cause célèbre, then all her connections in the legal profession would be grilled upon the matter at great length, probably at the next dinner party. Heaven help us all-her list of victims included the colonel, Mr. Wilson, and myself. I wondered what Miss Mary made of this case, and from which quarter she planned to stir up trouble.

  The young girl was the last witness to be called. There was a murmur of sympathy from the crowd as the slight, fair-haired girl stood up to take the oath.

  Thomas Wilson turned to Magistrates Burgner and Brittain. “I consider Miss Margaret Silver the most important of my witnesses, sirs. I would like her to tell her story in her own words, without being interrupted by questions from me. The witness is understandably nervous to be speaking before such a congregation, and I think she will come through it better if she can lose herself in the telling of her testimony.”

  The justices of the peace had a brief whispered conference. Then John Burgner said, “We’ll allow it. This is merely a hearing, and we may relax the rules a bit, especially to accommodate a young lady in distress.”

  Mr. Wilson turned to the witness and gave her a reassuring smile. “Now, Miss Silver, just a word or two to begin with, so we’ll know where we are. Would you state your age, please?”

  “Sixteen.”

  “And your relation to the deceased?”

  “Sister. Well, half. Half sister, that is, but we didn’t take any notice of that. We were all just family. Our daddy was a widower when he married my mother, Nancy Reed, that was, in October of 1814, when he first came into the Carolina backcountry to settle. Charlie was two years old. That first wife in Maryland, she had died in 1812, giving birth to Charlie. I was born on December 2, 1815.”

  Young Margaret seemed to be reciting these facts to herself, for she did not so much as glance at the audience. Wilson must have decided that he had let her ramble enough to put her at ease, for he stopped the flow of family reminiscences. “Now, Miss Margaret, I’d like you to remember the events of just a few short weeks ago, when your big brother Charlie went missing. Can you speak up loud and clear now and tell us exactly what happened?”

  The girl took a deep breath and nodded, closing her eyes for a moment to compose herself before relating the difficult tale. Thomas Wilson handed her his linen handkerchief and she wound it around her fingers, tugging and picking at it until I thought it would unravel into threads.

  “Tell us about your brother Charlie going missing,” Wilson prompted.

  “Reckon it was two days before Christmas when Frankie showed up at our log house with the baby on her hip, and Charlie nowhere to be seen.”

  “The day before Christmas Eve.”

  “Yes, sir. I wasn’t thinking on it being nearly Christmas Eve at the time
, mind you. We don’t make much of Christmas up home, so there was no decorating or presents, no fancy dinner being prepared. Menfolk mostly use it as an excuse to get liquored up. They shoot their guns in the air to make a joyful noise unto the Lord, I reckon.”

  There was a ripple of amusement in the audience, but the witness ignored it and plunged ahead into her story. “Us women didn’t pay Christmas much mind, unless there was a church service near enough to go to, so it was just an ordinary day in the dead of winter, but real cold. The ground was hard as slate under drifts of snow, and the Toe River that runs brash past our mountain land was so hard froze that a body could walk on water. It was a day to run for shelter, if you had any call to be out in the elements at all, but I watched her coming, and Frankie Silver was walking slowly down the track in the frozen hillside, in no hurry to reach our place. And she may have been shaking, but we would have blamed that on the cold.”

  Here the witness faltered, as if dreading what was to come.

  “Tell us about Frankie Silver,” Wilson prompted her. “Your sister-in-law.”

  “She’s just two years older than me, but prettier-I’ll give her that. I turned sixteen last month. Not that much was made of that, either, except that my brothers Alfred and Milton teased me about being their old-maid sister, seeing as how my sister-in-law Frankie was already expecting a young ’un by the time she was my age, and I hadn’t so much as kissed a man yet. I wasn’t studying to be like Miss Frances Stewart, I told them.”

  Margaret Silver blushed. “The truth is, sometimes I wished I was more like her. She was little and fair, and she worked hard, too. Of course, she had to. Being married to Charlie and all.”

  Margaret Silver ignored the rumble of laughter from the back of the court, but the noise drew scowls from both magistrates.

  “Go on,” said Burgner. “And I’ll have less noise from the gallery, gentlemen.”

  “About Frankie. Well, she kept that cabin clean, saw to the baby, tended the cows and the chickens, and did the cooking and the washing and kept the fire going. There are three of us girls to help Mama do what Frankie did all by herself. That set me against marrying up early, too.”

  The two prisoners sat up straight when they heard these words, and they looked as if they might be about to chime in, but the lawyer silenced them with a shake of his head, and Margaret Silver hurried on.

  “Charlie wasn’t much to bestir himself around the place, no, but he was dashing. People took to him. He and Frankie made a likely pair. It’s no wonder they married so young, and, of course, Charlie always did have an eye for beauty.”

  “A man of refined tastes,” murmured Wilson, and I heard no hint of irony in his voice.

  Margaret Silver nodded. “I guess Charlie must have taken after his mother’s people. We liked him fine, but we weren’t like him. He was handsome, and he could charm squirrels out of a gum tree with that smile of his, and he never said no to a jug or a fiddle tune, but…”

  The magistrates gave Thomas Wilson a look, and he leaned in close to the witness and said softly, “It’s time to tell us what happened to Charlie, Miss Margaret.”

  She took a deep breath and blinked back tears. “We were working when Frankie showed up. Of course, we always are, with ten folks to be fed at mealtimes, and a fire to be kept going, and young ’uns to be tended-my brother William, the youngest, isn’t but two years old.

  “It was early morning when Frankie came in. She stood there on the threshold, stomping snow off her shoes and shaking the ice flints out of her hair. She handed me the baby, and began to untie her wraps and rub her hands together to warm them. I took the little Nancy over by the fire, peeling off her blankets and checking her fingers and toes for frostbite. It isn’t more than a quarter mile over the hill to their place, but the wind was fierce.” Her voice softened as she spoke of the child. I had to lean forward to hear her.

  “Charlie’s baby is just over a year old.”

  “And what is the child’s name?”

  Margaret Silver smiled. “Why, it’s Nancy. Maybe Charlie named her after our mother that raised him, or maybe the name came from one of Frankie’s people, or maybe they just liked the sound of it. I don’t know what Frankie thought about that, but maybe she didn’t like her own mother’s name-Barbara-or maybe Charlie didn’t give her any say in the matter. Charlie would have his own way: if he could charm you into doing his bidding, he would, but if not, he could get ugly about it. It’s a pretty name, though… Nancy Silver… Folks said that if she got her mother’s looks and her father’s charm, she’d be a force to be reckoned with a dozen years hence.”

  Talking about her young niece seemed to comfort the poor girl, but Wilson could not allow her prattle to take up the court’s time.

  “You are dutiful to tell us so much, Miss Margaret,” said Wilson, and this time he was smiling gently. “But we do not require such detail, only the bare bones of the tale. Frankie turned up at your parents’ house that morning, then, with the baby, did she not?”

  “She did.”

  “And what did she say?”

  “She was bragging. She said she had been working since sunup, chopping wood and scrubbing the cabin floor…” She faltered a moment when the gasps from the spectators nearly drowned her out. Perhaps it was the first time the poor girl had realized the significance of those words.

  “What else did she say?”

  “She wanted one of the boys to feed the cattle. Said Charlie was gone from home. So we sent Alfred back with her.”

  “Did she say where Charlie was supposed to have gone?”

  “Over to George Young’s. Most of the men get their Christmas liquor over at George’s place.”

  “So you had no reason to doubt her story?”

  “No. It sounded like Charlie, all right.”

  Thomas Wilson permitted himself a perfunctory smile. “Tell us what happened then, Miss Margaret.”

  “Well, Frankie took herself off then, but the next morning she was back, saying Charlie still hadn’t turned up. After a couple of days we took to searching the woods, but we never did find no trace of him. Not ’til Mr. Collis went to the cabin, after Frankie went home to her people.”

  “Did you see the Stewarts at any time during all this?”

  Margaret Silver thought about it. “I never did,” she finally admitted. “They didn’t stop by to sit a spell with us, or to ask after Charlie, not one bit.”

  “But they said nothing about his disappearance? They were not seen at Charlie and Frankie Silver’s cabin?”

  “Don’t reckon they were.”

  Beside me Colonel Erwin stirred in his seat. “There it is, Mr. Gaither,” he murmured. “Wilson has established that there is not one whit of evidence linking the Stewart woman or her boy to this case. They said nothing and no one saw them. They will have to be let go. Wilson has done his best for that poor family, no doubt, but at what a cost!”

  “What do you mean?” I whispered back.

  “He has put a rope around the neck of Frankie Silver.”

  I am alone now, but I do not mind the solitude.

  I have lived all my life in one-room cabins, first with Daddy and Mama and my brothers, and then with Charlie and the baby. It seemed strange at first to have so much space on my own, and so much quiet. I had Mama and Blackston to talk to for the first week or so, but they were afraid that someone was listening, and we found that apart from that one big thing, we had not much to say to one another. Fear is like a stone in your mouth. When you have it, you cannot talk of anything else. So we passed the days in near-perfect silence, with dread kicking in our bellies. Then there was the hearing, and Mama and Blackston got bond and were let go. After that it was only me, to sit here and wait ’til spring.

  I think I would not mind the prison cell but for the idleness. I don’t know what to do with my hands. They move in my lap and will not stay still. I asked the jailer’s wife if I could help her do the chores so as to pass the time, but she said I mayn
’t be let out, and that she could not let me have an iron or a needle, for fear that I would use them for mischief. Her name is Sarah. She has a baby, and I ache to hold it, for it reminds me of my Nancy, but of course she will not bring it near me. I watch her sometimes when she plays with it out in the garden. Its golden curls glint in the sunshine, but if she looks up and sees me watching them, she frowns and takes the baby away. Her man has told her that I am mad, and although she sees that I am as mild as milk and never angry, she is still afraid, and hangs back, well away from the door of my cell, whenever she has cause to speak to me. I am a killer.

  “You can have a Bible,” she said.

  I shook my head and she went away, thinking that this was proof of my wickedness, perhaps even a sign that I am a witch. I did not tell her that I refused the Good Book because I cannot read.

  I pass the time at the barred window, looking down on the muddy road that passes through the center of the town. There are more people here than I have ever seen in my life. Some of the women have velvet cloaks and bonnets with white feathers. I wish I could see their shoes. Sometimes the people pause and look up toward my window, and I step back into the shadows because I don’t want them looking at me. I wonder where they are going, and what the fine houses look like on the inside, and what fancy goods are to be had over there in the store. I had me a store-bought china bowl up home. Someone gave it to us for a wedding gift-one of Charlie’s kinfolks, that was. It didn’t get broke, in spite of all that happened there in the cabin. I remember it sitting on the pine table when I went away, down to Mama’s, not knowing for sure that I was leaving that place for the last time, but thinking I probably wouldn’t want to sleep there ever again. When Daddy got home from Kentucky, I’d make him take me back there to get my things, I thought, but that wasn’t to be. I wonder what happened to that bowl. It was white with three marks like blue feathers painted on one side. I would like for the baby to have it when she is grown.