The Ballad of Frankie Silver - By Sharyn McCrumb Page 0,140

shooed them away again like mayflies. They will want a piece of the rope for a keepsake.

Gabe Presnell took hold of the horse’s halter to steady the cart, for the animal was frightened by the crush of people around it.

A minister who had approached the cart laid his hand upon Mrs. Silver’s shoulder and spoke to her in an urgent undertone. I knew that he was beseeching her to confess her sins, so that she might be forgiven and be spared the fires of hell in the Hereafter. She made him no reply, however, and a moment later he began to pray aloud in a sonorous voice. “Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy loving kindness. . . .”

“The fifty-first Psalm,” muttered James Erwin. “The Tyburn Hymn, it’s called, because they always said it over the condemned at the scaffold in London.”

“. . . Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God. . . .”

Frankie Silver was pale, and her breath was coming in great gulps, but she seemed unmoved by the oration. She looked at the sky. Perhaps her thoughts were elsewhere, and the intonations of the minister were a fly buzz among the roar of the crowd.

“. . . For thou desirest not sacrifice; else would I give it: thou delightest not in burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart. . . .”

Someone shouted, “Get on with it!” and others in the crowd took up the chant.

A few moments later the parson stepped away from the prisoner’s side, and Sheriff Boone clambered into the cart and motioned for Mrs. Silver to rise. She swayed for an instant as she got to her feet, and one of the deputies took a length of rope and bound her hands to her sides. The sheriff, his furrowed face still streaked with tears, untied the black poke bonnet and removed it from her head. The crowd gasped to see that the prisoner’s blond hair had been cropped as short as a boy’s. It could not be allowed to entwine in the rope, which might have caused her more pain, but nonetheless it was a final indignity, and I grieved to see her shamed so.

The sheriff slipped the noose over her head and tightened it, placing the knot on the left side of her neck.

“Frances Stewart Silver,” he intoned, “it is my duty as sheriff of Burke County, North Carolina, to carry out the sentence handed down by Judge Henry Seawall of the Superior Court, that you be taken to the place of execution, and therein hanged by the neck until you are dead. And—” His voice faltered for a moment. He took a deep breath and managed to say, “And may God have mercy on your soul. Have you any last words?”

She had not been able to speak in court. She had kept her silence for the long months after the trial. Even those few of us who had heard her confession had not heard all of it, for she would not talk about the cutting up of Charlie Silver’s body, nor would she speak of her ill-starred escape from the county jail. This was her last chance. Her last chance, too, to make her peace with Almighty God so that she might be received into paradise. Many a highwayman confessed his guilt upon the scaffold for fear of torments in the Hereafter. Surely this poor creature would do no less.

She nodded, and took a step away from John Boone, toward the surging crowd, who suddenly fell

silent, for she had begun to speak. “Good people . . . I . . .”

“Die with it in you, Frankie!”

Isaiah Stewart’s voice rang out across the meadow. The words were a harsh command, and for a moment they hung there in the air, echoing in that charged silence, and then the roar from the spectators resumed louder than ever.

Frankie Silver hesitated for a moment, and a look passed between her and her father. He stared at her, stern-faced, arms crossed, waiting.

She stepped back and nodded to John Boone that she was ready. He was weeping openly now, but she was calm, and I’d like to think that her thoughts were on the Queen of Scots, whose story I had told her that morning, and how that Stuart woman had died bravely and with the dignity of a queen.

“The father has silenced her,” said James Erwin, after a startled silence. “Where was he when the Silver boy