am sure she cannot take in the enormity of dying. Perhaps she thinks that because she is a young woman with an innocent child, the court will show her mercy.”
“Perhaps they will,” I said, but my words rang hollow even to my own ears. We stood there in the pale sunshine and shivered, Nicholas Woodfin and I, for we knew what was to come.
This time we had little more than an hour to wait for the return of the jury. The bailiff summoned us all back to court, and I found myself searching his face for some sign of the verdict, as if I were the rawest oaf in a crowd of drunken spectators. His face betrayed nothing; if in fact he even knew what the verdict would be, he was careful to give nothing away. In his place I would have done the same. We will all know soon enough, I thought.
I resumed my seat at the clerk’s table and arranged my papers over and over to control my apprehension. Out of the tail of my eye I saw Mrs. Silver led in to take her place beside Mr. Woodfin. She was pale, and I thought I detected a tinge of red around her eyelids, but she was as composed as ever, walking slowly, oblivious to all. As she reached the defense table, and the bailiff let go of her arm, she looked up at her attorney and smiled, as if to reassure him that all would be well. As if hewere the one whose life hung in the balance. He tried to smile back, then looked quickly away.
He is but twenty-one, I thought, and he has tried fewer than a dozen cases since he was called to the bar. He will never again feel such pangs of sympathy for a client. He will never again allow himself to care. I was sure that if God were to spare Nicholas Woodfin to practice law for yet another fifty years, he would never speak or write of this incident again.
The jury filed in, properly subdued and solemn, taking their places without meeting the eyes of anyone present.
“Gentlemen of the jury, have you reached a verdict?” He said. The words at lasthung in the air unspoken.
“Reckon we have, sir,” said the foreman. A glare from the judge sent him scrambling to his feet as he answered, “She done it.”
Only the solemnity of the occasion kept Judge Donnell from uttering a blistering rebuke to this stammering yokel who was so heedless of court procedure. He continued to glare at the foreman several seconds during which a shocked silence prevailed in the courtroom. A few heartbeats later the gallery burst into a clamoring babble, with even a few whoops of triumph thrown in by some callous drunkards.
Frankie Silver seemed to sway for an instant, steadied by the arm of Nicholas Woodfin. He looked like a man who has steeled himself for a blow and has finally felt it delivered: it was as bad as expected, but at least it was over. He took a deep breath and murmured something to calm his client.
I looked for the Stewarts among the seething crowd, half fearing violence toward them or from them in reaction to the verdict, but they stood still. Isaiah Stewart had bowed his head, whether in prayer or submission I could not tell. His son Jackson stood with clenched fists, red-faced and breathing hard, as if the fight were just beginning, not ending. Neither of them made any move toward the defendant, and I felt a twinge of sorrow for her. She would be alone regardless, though, I thought. In this terrible moment when she has come face-to-face with her own death, she would be alone even if ten thousand hands were reaching out to comfort her. She did not spare a glance for her father and brother. She was looking up at Nicholas Woodfin with a face so full of trust that it made me ashamed of the powerlessness of all professional men. We doctors and lawyers and preachers and judges act as if we hold the power of life and death over those who pass before us, as if nothing frightens or dismays us, but really we are so many pawns in the game. Too often Death brushes past us to claim his prize without even sparing a glance for those of us who have set ourselves up as humanity’s defenders. People trust us so much; yet we can do so