him, but he nodded in agreement to my suggestion. “Yes, we must hear his tale, Burgess.”
“He will have to speak with the tongues of angels to persuade me of the daughter’s guilt. I cannot speak for the other two, for I barely glimpsed them, but indeed I am convinced that an error has been made in arresting her. Wait until you see her, Butler! She looks scarcely more than a child.”
“If the prisoner is, as you say, a pretty young woman, they must be sure enough of her guilt in the west county to bring her in at all. The trial will be in March, though, at the spring term of the court-but if worse comes to worst, the consequences of that trial will not occur until after my time. I don’t envy my successor his job.”
I took his grisly meaning at once, but I doubted his prediction. “It will not come to that,” I told him. “They will not hang a woman.”
I left Will Butler to his duty and went back to my office and my record books. I had extracted a promise from him to fetch me when the prisoners had been safely locked away into Gabe Presnell’s care. The Morganton jail is but a short walk from the courthouse, a two-story log structure with two rooms on the ground floor for the jailer’s lodging, and four rooms upstairs for the incarceration of prisoners. It is hardly a fit place for women to be kept, I thought, but I suppose it is better than the dirt-floored stockade that had served as the jail ten years ago. I had heard my father-in-law, Squire Erwin, speak of it, for he was clerk of Superior Court before me, and for much of his tenure that rude byre was in use as the county’s prison. Once he described to me the stench and the straw and the dirt floor.
“Like a stable,” I had remarked.
“Not at all,” said the squire. “No one would keep good horses in the wet and foul- smelling darkness of that log pen, but Burke County in its wisdom reckoned that such accommodations were good enough for its prisoners. We even locked up debtors in those days, poor wretches. Still, I suppose it was fit enough for most of the villains we got.”
The new wooden jailhouse was a far cry better than the old log pen, and I had made light of its discomforts to the young woman prisoner, but, really, I’d sooner sleep on the courthouse lawn than up there in that tiny room, in too close proximity to the stink and the body lice of the other prisoners. Outdoors could be no colder, and at least the air would be clean.
I went back to my ledger, and my breath still clouded the air above my desk. Still, a new year had begun and I had much to be thankful for, most of it due to my late brother, whose untimely death these two years past still grieved me. I had come to Morganton on Alfred’s coattails, courted his wife’s sister, and won her, though Alfred did not live to see us wed. My bride, Elizabeth, was three years my senior, intelligent, well- spoken, and every inch a lady, for all that she was no great beauty. She was an Erwin, though, and that counted for everything. Erwin was a name to conjure with in Burke County, for the Erwins
William Willoughby Erwin was a lawyer himself, and he had been father-in-law to my older brother Alfred, who had married Miss Catherine Erwin in March of 1828, so I felt emboldened to speak frankly to him, since we were brother attorneys, and all but family in kinship. I told him that I had hoped that Alfred and I might have set up a law practice together, but that was not to be, for he died before I had even completed my training for the law, and I was forced to conclude my studies under the tutelage of Judge Caldwell. The Gaithers were educated and wellborn, but we were not well off. My father had died when I was twelve, and Alfred, the eldest child in the family, had taken on the duties of father to the eight younger Gaithers. He had been my guide, my friend, and my companion in the law, and I missed him sorely. With Alfred’s passing went my hopes for partnership and prosperity, and I admitted my penury readily enough, as I was sure Squire Erwin knew of it already.
“But,” I told him, “I am an honest, God-fearing man, not afraid of hard work, neither accustomed to nor in need of luxury.” It was a pretty speech to make, standing on the squire’s turkey carpet, surrounded by his library of a thousand leather volumes. I waved my crystal wineglass for emphasis, nearly hitting the cut-glass chandelier that shimmered above me.
William Erwin remained solemn at my declaration, but I fancy that there was a twinkle in his eye. “You’ll do,” he said. “We’ll see what can be done about your prospects, sir.”
Perhaps he was thinking of the fact that his daughter Elizabeth had seven sisters, and that eligible young lawyers on the frontier were not so plentiful that one could afford to be too particular about prospective sons-in-law. So Elizabeth and I were married, and within a few months Squire Erwin resigned his post as Burke County’s clerk of Superior Court, a position he had held for forty-four years. The job was given to me.
It was a steady income, and a respectable civil position that kept me on good terms with the legal community, and it provided me with a chance to learn more of my craft by observing more seasoned attorneys at work. In a few years’ time, my experience and my standing in the community would be such that I could afford to establish a law practice of my own. Until then, I was content to toil as a learned clerk in the halls of justice. I had been clerk of Superior Court for eighteen months, well liked and well content with my profession and my family, for Elizabeth and I had a son, whom we named William, after the old squire. We would name the next one Alfred.
I had been at work for less than an hour when the sheriff and the messenger appeared at the door of my office. “Come with us, Burgess,” said Will Butler. “Constable Baker promises us a tale worthy of a tavern, but we had better get the news in private. Come to my house, and warm yourselves by my fire while we learn what this is about.”
A short walk took us to Butler’s house. He settled us in the parlor, a simple enough room, but as warm and comfortable as a man could wish for. He offered us some corn whiskey that he kept in an earthenware jug-not the crystal decanter of brandy that Raleigh’s gentlemen lawyers might have proffered, but it was welcome nonetheless, and it chased away the last of the chill from our bones. Soon enough Constable Baker was sitting by the fire, thawing his muddy boots on the hearthrug and stroking the head of one of Butler’s hounds. We waited while the sheriff read the warrant from Justice of the Peace Baker.
After a few moments of silence, Will Butler put aside the documents and looked at his guest. “Now,” he said, “tell me what has happened.”
Charlie Baker warmed his throat with a swig of whiskey and began: “You know Jacob Silver from the other end of the county-along the Toe River, his land is-”
“I do not know him,” I said.
“Has someone killed this Jacob Silver?” asked Butler. He reached for the papers again, but then shook his head, remembering that another name was on the warrant as victim. He settled back in his chair then, seeing that Baker was bound and determined to make a tale of it. We might as well hear him out.
“No, sir. No one killed the old man, though I think the grief of this has dealt a blow to his constitution. Jacob Silver is a well-respected man in the community. He’s got a smart bit of land over the mountains from a soldier’s grant. He came down from Maryland about twenty years ago, after the English war, him and some of his brothers. With him he brought his boy Charlie, whose mother had died birthing him. Not more than a lap baby, Charlie was then.
“Old Jacob has a passel of children now. He married Nancy Reed over at Double Island, more than seventeen years ago, and they have about eight young ’uns. Charlie, the one that got killed, was that son from Maryland, by Jacob’s first wife. He wasn’t but nineteen years old. Two years ago he married Frankie-”
“The name is probably Frances,” I murmured to Butler, who nodded in agreement.
“That’s right,” said Baker. “Miss Frances Stewart she was before she married into
