thick links of chain. She wriggled one small white foot and the chain rattled.
I intervened with a discreet cough. “Mrs. Silver is in restraints. There is an iron shackle around her ankle, which is chained to a ring in the center of the floor.”
Miss Mary rounded on me with a look of outrage suggesting that I was personally responsible for this indignity. I think she was on the verge of banishing me from the room when the prisoner spoke up softly, “It’s all right. I’m used to it. You can’t go too far in this cell anyhow.”
Catherine left my side and went to put her hand on the prisoner’s arm. “We are very sorry to see a woman in such straits,” she said. “Are you well?”
Frankie Silver shrugged. “Reckon I’ll live ’til September,” she said. September is the time of the next sitting of Superior Court, at which time the judge will set the date for her hanging. She is unlettered, but she is not stupid,I thought. Her answer had a pleasing irony that spoke well of her wits.
“Is there anything we can do for you?”
She hesitated for a moment before she whispered, “Can I see my baby?”
They all turned to look at me, and I was forced to play the villain once again. “That is not within our power,” I said as gently as I could. “Your child is back up the mountain with her grandparents.”
“Am I ever going to see her again?”
“It is a long journey for a young child,” said Catherine gently. “I have a little daughter myself, and I would not care to have her travel so far in the summer heat.”
“Let us hope that someday you will go home to her,” said Miss Mary.
“She’ll forget me.”
“Your family will not allow that,” I said, although I had no idea if this was true or not. I did not want to torment the wretched woman with false hopes, but neither did I want to add to her misery with agonizing thoughts of home.
We stood there awkwardly, trying to think of something else to say to this poor creature. She could hardly know or care about politics or the fashions of the day, and her concerns for her home and family in the wilderness were equally foreign to ourselves.
At last Miss Mary remembered the basket on my arm. “We have brought you some food,” she said, motioning for me to set it down on the straw mattress. “Are you hungry?”
Frankie Silver looked away, and I fancied that her pride was struggling with her hunger. The mountain people are shy about accepting favors from anyone; they do not care to be beholden,as they call it. A curious attitude, I have always thought, whereas we gentlefolk of the lowlands take care that everyone in our circle of acquaintances should owe us a debt of gratitude for something, be it a dinner party given for a traveling gentleman, or a political appointment arranged for the son of a prominent neighbor. We take care to see that these loans of influence and hospitality are repaid in kind and issued again to a widening circle of acquaintances, for such is the currency of polite society. Frankie Silver would not understand the mechanics of a system of interlacing benevolences. But she was hungry.
“I’m afraid you will have to eat it now,” I told her. “Mr. Presnell will not want us to leave the basket or its contents here when we leave.”
“Please don’t worry about us,” said Catherine. “We have had our dinner.”
We stepped away from the camp bed to let her approach it, much as one might leave scraps for a stray dog who was shy of people. Mrs. Silver sat down on the straw mattress and began to look through the contents of the basket. “Thank you,” she said softly, looking away from us. “You’re right kind to do this.” She balanced a chicken leg between her fingers and began to tear chunks out of its brown flesh. We fidgeted in silence, not wanting to stare but finding little else to do.
“Do they feed you well in here?” asked Miss Mary.
The prisoner gulped down a morsel of chicken before she answered. “Tolerable,” she said. “A deal of corn mush, and sometimes a little meat in a stew. Hardly nothing fresh, though.” She sighed. “I dream about tomatoes and onions. I used to tend the tomato vines up home, and keep the deer out by pelting rocks at ’em, and pick the bugs off