Erwin.
He looked in the direction I indicated, and groaned. “Damn! Cousin Mary is poking about, is she? Never a moment’s peace, is there?”
“She does take an interest in civic matters,” I said tactfully. I was, after all, a rather new connection to the Erwin clan.
Colonel James Erwin snorted. “Your father-in-law ought to marry her off, Burgess. Preferably to someone heading west.”
I permitted myself a discreet smile. “It would serve the Indians right, wouldn’t it?”
“Maybe having a house to run would keep Mary’s nose out of everyone else’s business. She would have made a lawyer for sure, if she hadn’t been born female. Be glad you didn’t marry that one, Burgess!”
Mary Erwin is an elder sister of my Elizabeth, but I can see little resemblance between them. Where Elizabeth is gentle and reticent, Mary is a strong-minded woman with intellectual pretensions and more opinions than God gave Congress. If she was taking an interest in this cause célèbre, then all her connections in the legal profession would be grilled upon the matter at great length, probably at the next dinner party. Heaven help us all—her list of victims included the colonel, Mr. Wilson, and myself. I wondered what Miss Mary made of this case, and from which quarter she planned to stir up trouble.
The young girl was the last witness to be called. There was a murmur of sympathy from the crowd as the slight, fair-haired girl stood up to take the oath.
Thomas Wilson turned to Magistrates Burgner and Brittain. “I consider Miss Margaret Silver the most important of my witnesses, sirs. I would like her to tell her story in her own words, without being interrupted by questions from me. The witness is understandably nervous to be speaking before such a congregation, and I think she will come through it better if she can lose herself in the telling of her testimony.”
The justices of the peace had a brief whispered conference. Then John Burgner said, “We’ll allow it. This is merely a hearing, and we may relax the rules a bit, especially to accommodate a young lady in distress.”
Mr. Wilson turned to the witness and gave her a reassuring smile. “Now, Miss Silver, just a word or two to begin with, so we’ll know where we are. Would you state your age, please?”
“Sixteen.”
“And your relation to the deceased?”
“Sister. Well, half. Half sister, that is, but we didn’t take any notice of that. We were all just family. Our daddy was a widower when he married my mother, Nancy Reed, that was, in October of 1814, when he
first came into the Carolina backcountry to settle. Charlie was two years old. That first wife in Maryland, she had died in 1812, giving birth to Charlie. I was born on December 2, 1815.”
Young Margaret seemed to be reciting these facts to herself, for she did not so much as glance at the audience. Wilson must have decided that he had let her ramble enough to put her at ease, for he stopped the flow of family reminiscences. “Now, Miss Margaret, I’d like you to remember the events of just a few short weeks ago, when your big brother Charlie went missing. Can you speak up loud and clear now and tell us exactly what happened?”
The girl took a deep breath and nodded, closing her eyes for a moment to compose herself before relating the difficult tale. Thomas Wilson handed her his linen handkerchief and she wound it around her fingers, tugging and picking at it until I thought it would unravel into threads.
“Tell us about your brother Charlie going missing,” Wilson prompted.
“Reckon it was two days before Christmas when Frankie showed up at our log house with the baby on her hip, and Charlie nowhere to be seen.”
“The day before Christmas Eve.”
“Yes, sir. I wasn’t thinking on it being nearly Christmas Eve at the time, mind you. We don’t make much of Christmas up home, so there was no decorating or presents, no fancy dinner being prepared. Menfolk mostly use it as an excuse to get liquored up. They shoot their guns in the air to make a joyful noise unto the Lord, I reckon.”
There was a ripple of amusement in the audience, but the witness ignored it and plunged ahead into her story. “Us women didn’t pay Christmas much mind, unless there was a church service near enough to go to, so it was just an ordinary day in the dead of winter, but real cold. The ground was hard as slate