The Ballad of Frankie Silver

by Sharyn McCrumb

  “It is monstrous!” my wife announced to the gaggle of family in the hall one evening. “North Carolina actually means to hang a woman. I cannot believe it!”

  Her father has little liking for bold talk from the ladies. “What would you have them do, Elizabeth?” he said harshly. “Should we give her a medal for butchering her husband? The state of Massachusetts once burnt a woman at the stake for murder. Would you prefer that?”

  Elizabeth turned horrified eyes upon her father. “Burnt a woman? I do not believe that.”

  I cleared my throat and said softly, “It was a slave woman, my dear. In colonial times.”

  “Oh. Well. It is terrible nonetheless,” she said, stabbing at her embroidery with the needle until I feared for her fingers beneath the fabric. “And I am sure that hanging is no less cruel.”

  “It will indeed be terrible to watch,” said her sister Catherine.

  “We shall not go,” said Miss Mary Erwin, before her father could utter the same words.

  We all turned to her in speechless wonder. Mary Erwin had been the champion of Mrs. Silver from the beginning. I could not believe that she would willingly abandon her cause at the last, although I was certain that the squire would have forbidden her to go in any case. “We shall not go,” she said again, and her voice was calm, but it brooked no argument.

  “Why not?” asked Elizabeth.

  “Mrs. Silver would not want us to see her die-shamed in front of a jeering crowd. The hanging will be her last violation, and then she will be at peace. We must remember her as she was in life. It is the last gift we can give her.”

  The ladies all nodded in agreement, and the squire very wisely refrained from adding that he would not have permitted them to attend anyhow. It seemed that I was the only one of the immediate family who would be present at the death of Frankie Silver.

  Miss Mary went back to her sewing. I watched her there, haloed in candlelight, making the tiny even stitches on the wool tapestry cloth, and I wondered what she was thinking behind that calm facade. Without looking up at me, she said, “Mr. Gaither, there is something I’d like you to take to the jail tomorrow.”

  The governor had fixed the time of the hanging for Friday afternoon the twelfth of July, between the hours of one and four o’clock. I thought the actual time of the execution would be close to four: the late hour would allow the prisoner’s family time to make the journey if they wished, and it would enable most of the onlookers to travel to town from the farthest reaches of the county to view the spectacle. I arrived at the jail just before noon, to find the town streets already choked with people and horses, churning up great quantities of red dust in their wake.

  A guard with a rifle was posted on the porch of the white frame building, but the fellow knew me by sight, and he nodded a greeting, offering no objection when I went past him. I wanted to make sure that all the preliminaries for the execution had been performed, and that no detail had been overlooked. I suppose I was half hoping that a special messenger had arrived from Raleigh granting an eleventh-hour reprieve. Certainly one had done so in my dreams these past few nights, but when I entered the hallway of the jail, I could see that no hope remained.

  John Boone looked as old and sick as I had ever seen him. He cannot have slept these past few days, for his eyes were bleak with weariness and his skin was gray as worm flesh. “Is all in readiness?” I asked him.

  He nodded. “The preparations are made. The rope and the wagon stand ready, and all the constables will be present in case anyone tries to interfere with the execution.”

  “Interfere?” The thought of an attack had not occurred to me until then. “The Stewarts, you mean?”

  “Perhaps. She will not say who helped her to escape. Feelings are running high about the execution. We can trust no one.”

  I saw that he was eyeing the white bundle under my arm, and I hastened to assure him that he had nothing to fear from me. “Miss Mary sent this to the prisoner,” I said. “It is only cloth. You will want to open it and examine it carefully, of course, but I think I can vouch for my sister-in-law.”

  Sheriff Boone did not smile. “I can’t have anyone slipping her poison,” he grunted, unwrapping the package and fingering its contents. “It seems all right. From Miss Mary Erwin, you say? Will you want to give this to her yourself?”

  I nodded. “I think I should. The ladies have asked me to say good-bye to her for them. I won’t stay very long, if you’ll allow me to go up now and see her.”

  “All right. I think she’s calm enough, though she will not eat. Sarah Presnell has been with her most of the morning, but she left a little while ago. I think she’s making a last meal for Mrs. Silver. I reckon she’ll be glad of some company, to take her mind off her sorrow. The preacher came, but she wouldn’t see him.”

  “What about her family?”

  “Her father and brother are here in town, but I cannot allow them in the jail because of the escape. She has not asked for them.”

  He clambered up the stairs, pausing for breath at the top step. “I hate to see this happen, Mr. Gaither. She’s no older than my children, poor lass.”

  I patted his arm. “I know. We must try to ease her suffering all we can.”

  I stood back while John Boone unlocked the door to the prisoner’s cell. “Visitor for you, Frankie!” he called out. “I’ll be downstairs,” he told me, and as he walked past me, I saw his eyes glisten with unshed tears in the dim light.

  I clutched the bundle to my chest and stepped inside the little room. “Mrs. Silver? It’s Burgess Gaither here.”

  She was sitting on her camp bed, swollen-eyed from weeping, but calm now. When she saw me, she shrank back against the wall and whispered, “Is it time?”

  “No. It is early yet. The sheriff will come for you in a few hours, not I. I only wanted to bring you a gift from the ladies of the Erwin family. They send their regards, and they asked me to tell you that you will be remembered in their prayers.”

  “They won’t be coming to see me, then, sir?”

  “They thought it best not to, in case their tears upset you. They are grieving. They sent you this.” Again I held out the bundle, and this time she took it, walking the length of her chain and stretching her hands out to me like a toddling child. Her face brightened as she accepted the offering, and I thought what sad creatures we mortals are, to delight in gifts even as we are dying. I watched as she set the package down on the camp bed and carefully untied the twine that bound it. She unfolded the fabric and held it up to look at it in the sunlight from the window of her cell.

  “Oh, sir,” she whispered, pressing the white linen against her body.

  Miss Mary had sent the prisoner the dress of white lace and linen that she had worn last summer when the Erwin sisters first visited the jail. “Take her this,” my sister-in-law had said, thrusting the bundle into my hands and turning away with the first tears that I had ever seen upon her face. “It’s little enough that we can do for her.”

  I remembered that little Mrs. Silver had admired the garment, touching it reverently as though it were the robe of a queen instead of the ordinary morning dress of a country gentlewoman. It pained me to think that her only hope of ever wearing such a garment was to come to town under a sentence of death.

  “It’s a handsome dress,” said Mrs. Silver, fingering the delicate cloth. “Better than I ever had. She means me to have it?”

  I nodded. Miss Mary had spent the evening sewing hour altering the dress to fit Frankie Silver’s tiny frame.

  “They visited me, and read me stories to pass the time. I thank them for that.”

  I nodded. “We all wish we could have done more.”

  She turned her gaze to the window, and I think she was on the verge of weeping again, but after a moment she said, “I wish they’d tell me a story now. The time is heavy on my hands, and I am afraid.”

  I wanted nothing more than to flee the narrow cell and take refuge in the July sunshine of the Presnell
s’ garden, but I could not leave that poor lost creature to contemplate her death alone. “Has the preacher been to see you?”

  She nodded. “I wouldn’t see him. Last time he came, I wanted him to tell me about heaven, but he would not. He kept saying that unless I named all my sins I would burn forever. He asked me who set me free that night. I wouldn’t tell him, though. Do you think I will go to hell for that, sir?”

  “No. I cannot think so.”

  She sighed. “I’m weary of praying. Reckon the Lord and I will be talking it over face-to-face soon enough. I asked the preacher to tell me a story once, and he told me about the good thief who was crucified with Jesus but went with him to paradise.”

  I had promised the ladies that I would do what I could to comfort Mrs. Silver, and there seemed no other way that I could help her. “I’m not much use as a storyteller,” I said, “but if it will ease your mind, I will do my best.”

  I searched my memory for some tale that would distract the poor lost girl from the thought of her death, and perhaps it was her maiden name of Stewart as much as her present circumstances that suggested the only one that came to me. “It isn’t a happy story,” I warned her, “but it is about a queen, and it is true.”

  She nodded. “Happy stories mostly ain’t true.” She hugged the dress to her and sat down upon her bed to listen.

  “Long ago in Scotland there lived a beautiful young queen whose name was Stuart…”

  “Same as mine.”

  “Yes. She was called Mary, Queen of Scots, and her father had been the king, but he died and left the throne to her. She was said to be very beautiful, but she had a sad life. She married a handsome young man called Darnley, but he was blown to pieces in an explosion at a place called Kirk o’ Field, and afterward people said that Mary had killed him.”

  “What happened to her? Did they hang her?”

  “Well, she was put in prison at first.” I paused for a moment to collect my thoughts, and then I told her, as simply as I could, the long tale of the intrigue between Mary, Queen of Scots, and her cousin Elizabeth of England.

  Frankie Silver sat listening to me, rubbing the sore on her ankle where the chain had rubbed, but her eyes were wide and she seemed transported by my clumsy attempt at telling the tale of two great queens. Perhaps for a moment or two she even forgot her own unhappy circumstances, but as I neared the end of the story, she was reminded all too clearly.

  I came to the account of Queen Elizabeth signing the death warrant of her beautiful cousin, after being convinced that Mary was plotting to seize the throne of England. “And so, because she was charged with committing treason by planning to overthrow the rightful queen of England, she was condemned to die.”

  Frankie Silver nodded.

  “She was to be beheaded.” I began to wish that I had not embarked upon this particular tale to divert the prisoner, but as there was no turning back, I thought that perhaps Mary Stuart could inspire her fellow prisoner to courage on the scaffold. “They say that she went to her death very bravely. She spent the night in prayer with her ladies, and in the wee hours before dawn she walked to the block with the courage of a martyr.”

  “She didn’t scream or cry when she saw the knife?”

  “The ax. No. It does no good to weep at such a time. It only gladdens your enemies. Mary believed that she would shortly be in heaven.”

  “Did she wear white?”

  I remembered the histories I had read, and I recalled seeing an illustration in a book once that showed the Queen of Scots going to the block in a wimpled headdress and a deep black dress in the Tudor fashion. “Yes,” I said, “I believe she wore white.”

  She considered this for a few moments. “She died then?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you think she killed her husband?”

  I took a deep breath. “If she did, I’m sure that she was very sorry, and I think she made her peace with God before the end. She died bravely.”

  “Why wasn’t she afraid? I am. I have prayed and prayed, but I’m still afraid. So afraid.”

  “Three years ago I watched my brother Alfred die,” I said. “He was a young man-not as young as you, but still in the bloom of his youth. He sickened, and when the doctor knew that all hope was lost, the family gathered at his bedside. Alfred had been in great pain, I think, from his illness, for he thrashed in his delirium and he soaked the sheets with the sweat of his fever, but in the end… in the last moment before his soul took flight, he grew calm and still, and a great peace settled over his face, almost as if someone had shone a light upon him, and he smiled at us-or, rather, beyond us-and then he was gone. I had never seen him happier.”

  She nodded. “But it will hurt.”

  “Only for a little while. And then it is finished, and you have come out on the other side. You are free.”

  She nodded. “I will wear the dress, sir. Tell the ladies that. I will wear white for paradise.”

  I left her then, and spent the hours of the early afternoon pacing the lawn of the courthouse and then sifting through the papers on my writing table, as if my mind could address any matter other than the execution. I stayed close to the courthouse all afternoon, for I wanted to be easy to find.Surely the reprieve will come to me, I thought.They must be able to locate me when the messenger arrives. I had read the finality in the governor’s message, but the death of that gentle young girl seemed so improbable that I could not help persuading myself that she would be saved.

  At last the hands on my pocket watch advanced toward the hour of three, and I knew that it was time for the ceremony to proceed. With great reluctance I picked up the copy of the death warrant from among my papers, for it would have to be read to the prisoner before we escorted her to Damon’s Hill.

  I returned to the jail to find that a small open cart had been drawn up to the porch, and the guard was now engaged in keeping at bay a great crowd of noisy onlookers, who were cheering and shouting for the hanging to commence. I looked for Isaiah Stewart and his eldest son, but I could not find them in that sea of faces.

  When I went inside, I found that Sheriff Boone had already brought the prisoner downstairs to make ready for departure. Frankie Silver stood there, small and silent, surrounded by Burke County deputies. Sarah Presnell hovered nearby, shedding silent tears as she watched the preparations.

  Mrs. Silver was wearing the white dress that Miss Mary had sent her, and I was reminded once again of a bride, as I had been months before when the prisoner had entered the courtroom with her head held high and proceeded down the aisle almost in triumph. The only hint of mourning in her present attire was a black satin bonnet tied with ribbons under her chin. It was trimmed with one red rose. I knew that the bonnet would have to be removed when we reached the place of execution, but I saw no harm in letting her wear her finery until then. Mrs. Silver’s ankles were still shackled in the great iron chain, but her hands were unbound-another kindness on the part of Sheriff Boone, and one that I approved of, for it would only compound the ordeal for all of us if the poor girl became terrified and screamed all the way to the hanging tree.Please, God, keep her calm, I thought.

  John Boone noticed me then. “We are nearly ready,” he told me.

  I withdrew the death warrant from my pocket. “I must read her the sentence,” I reminded him.

  He nodded impatiently. “Be quick about it then, sir. Let’s have it over with, if it has to be done.”

  I turned to the prisoner. “I am required by law to read to you the judge’s order for your execution. Do you understand?”

  She nodded. “Go on.”

  I found that the paper was shaking as I began to read from it, and it was then that I realized I was as unstrung as the rest of them. With many pauses for breath and composure, I managed to make it through the few sentences that ordered the death by hanging of Frances Stewart Silver on Friday, the twelfth day of July, in the year of our Lord eighteen hundred and thirty-three.

  When I had finished, I look
ed at the prisoner, but she gave no sign of having heard me. I thought that to press her further would only increase her suffering, so I took my leave of them and turned to go.

  “Mr. Gaither?” Frankie Silver’s voice called me back. “Do I look fitten?”

  I looked at her, a tiny slip of a girl in a cast-off linen dress and a poke bonnet over her flaxen hair. “You look like a queen,” I said.

  They took her outside then, and bundled her into the back of the little one-horse cart. The shackles around her ankle caught on the side of the cart, and one of the sheriff’s men lifted it and laid it gently in beside her. She moved to cover the leg iron with her skirt as if it had been a delicate undergarment. People crowded around for a close look at the condemned prisoner, and some of them shouted encouragement, but she ignored them. She put her hand to her mouth when the rope was placed beside her, but after a moment’s alarm she was calm once more. Just as a constable slapped the reins and the cart began to move, Sarah Presnell hurried down the steps of the jail holding out half a fruit pie on a wooden plate. I could not make out the words she shouted above the roar of the crowd, but I saw that the pie was blackberry, and I remembered that Frankie Silver had spoken of her fondness for it. She leaned out the back of the cart and took the plate, with a little smile of thanks for her last friend. I went to my tethered horse and prepared to ride ahead and await the procession at Damon’s Hill. As I walked away, I saw Frankie Silver biting into the wine-dark pie, while Sarah Presnell stood on the jail porch, her apron to her face, and wept.

  I was waiting at the top of Damon’s Hill when the sad procession arrived some twenty minutes later. I had thought it best to arrive in advance of the prisoner in case any trouble awaited them at the place of execution. I did not dismount yet, for the saddle would give me a greater vantage point to scan the throng for troublemakers, though I saw none. An even greater crowd awaited the arrival of the prisoner, and the atmosphere in that summer meadow was that of a fair day. Children and dogs ran, laughed, and chased one another in and out among the clumps of spectators, and here and there a few cows grazed, untroubled by the mass of people invading their field. I was sorry to see a good many women in the crowd, but they were a very drab and common sort of female, and I saw no gentlewomen present. Such sights are not fit for the eyes of a lady.