There is nothing to be argued now.
I saw her set her lips in a tight line, and I knew that she would not ask for her erstwhile champion, not even if they put the rope around her neck this very minute, but I wished that someone would explain the circumstances to her.
Thomas Wilson was a local attorney. He had attended this session of Superior Court because he had other clients to represent, but out of courtesy, or perhaps sympathy for this poor lost girl, he came to stand by her side for the formal delivery of the death sentence, so that she might have an arm to lean on if she needed it, or someone to comfort her in her hour of need. I was glad to see Wilson there, an unsmiling scarecrow in a black suit, but I liked him all the better for it. What a cruel thing it would be to stand up all alone among strangers to hear your death sentence passed.
I glanced about the courtroom. Although the hour of nine was already upon us, the judge had not yet appeared, which meant that we all must wait upon his pleasure with but little to do. I left the day’s notes and papers at my desk and strolled over to Wilson, extending my hand as if it had been days since I had seen him instead of hours.
“Good morning, sir! I hope you and Mrs. Wilson are keeping well.”
“Tolerable,” said Wilson. A flicker of bewilderment crossed his face at my sudden effusiveness, but he shook my hand with perfect civility.
I inclined my head in the direction of Mrs. Silver to acknowledge her presence. To do more, I felt, would be unseemly, given the sad purpose for which we were assembled. She stared back at me without interest for a moment, and then she looked away, directing her gaze to the courtroom window, as she had throughout most of the trial.
“What do you hear from Mr. Woodfin these days?” I asked Thomas Wilson. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her shoulders stiffen, and although she looked away quickly, I knew she was listening now.
“Nicholas Woodfin?” Wilson blinked, wondering no doubt what had possessed me to inquire of him. “Why, I believe that he is well. I have not heard otherwise.”
“Nor have I,” I said heartily for the prisoner’s benefit. “No doubt he is very busy with his legal practice
these days, for he is an excellent trial lawyer. I think that we shall not see him today, though. I have the court docket, and I know that none of those who stand trial here today are represented by him.” I paused to make sure my words had sunk in. “For those who have already been convicted, no doubt Mr. Woodfin can help them more effectively outside the courtroom, with his letters and his influence.”
“No doubt,” said Wilson with a trace of asperity. “Good day, then.” Thomas Wilson is an able lawyer, but not much given to subtlety, and I am sure he thought my conversation was the babble of an eccentric. His client understood, though, for she gave me the faintest smile, and I took my leave of them.
I resumed my place at the front of the courtroom, and we waited for the circuit judge. That dour Scotsman John R. Donnell, who had presided over the trial of Frankie Silver, had served out his tenure in the Western District, and he had been replaced by a newly designated judge who was no stranger to the far reaches of the piedmont: Mr. David Lowry Swain of Asheville. I had never met him, but I knew him by reputation as an able and ambitious man. In anticipation of his visit to Morganton, I had overheard several persons in town mention the story of his naming that I had heard from Elizabeth: Swain was called David Lowry in memory of his mother’s first husband, who had been killed by Indians on the Georgia frontier. I remembered, too, that when David Swain was an up-and-coming young attorney in Asheville, Nicholas Woodfin had read law under him before passing the bar himself.
I wondered what Mr. Swain would make of this fragile young woman who waited to be sentenced to death. Had the judge heard about her case from his former associate Mr. Woodfin? I did not see what difference it could make, though. The jury had spoken, the State Supreme Court had upheld their decision, and the judge—whoever he was—would