Jarrettsville

by Cornelia Nixon

  Martha’s hands were shaking, and she made no move to lift the veil. Mine trembled, too, but I pulled off each finger of my gloves, unpinned her veil, and folded it into my lap. Martha turned red, then pale. But surely the sight of her, still young, her beauty softened by motherhood, would work its way under the skin of any man! And one thing I knew for sure: The twelve jurors in that box were men.

  Stump bent close to her again and spoke low. “You are our Joan of Arc. You are the noblest woman I have ever seen.”

  With a proud tread and his head held high, he walked back to his seat.

  A murmur rippled through the court, as heads craned to gape cruelly at her naked face.

  “Remember, stare at Jimmy.” I squeezed her hand hard till she obeyed.

  But the look he gave her was too close and eloquent, his eyes going red. Maybe they had somehow taught him to read at his deaf school. He might have seen the newspapers.

  “Deceptively small stature,” a man’s voice said clearly nearby.

  “Don’t believe it,” another answered. “She’s strong as an ox. And a crack shot, too.”

  I turned toward the sound of their voices and glared. On our right was a long bench equipped with slanted writing desks and inkwells, and it was packed with men in cheap check suits or worn tweed jackets, giving off a mixed scent of cigars, whiskey, coffee, sweat, mothballs, and ink as they scratched their pens on cheap foolscap. A man with a sketchpad walked a few steps out onto the floor, the better to study Martha’s face as he made swift charcoal strokes.

  I closed my eyes to him, sorry I had taken off her veil. If only he could see how well she had been drawn, how many times, by a far better and more loving hand!

  But Martha could not stand it. All refuge gone, she covered her face with her palms. I put my arms around her, shielded her, and rocked her back and forth.

  Finally she seemed to resign herself. Sitting up, she fixed her eyes on the broad expanse of polished floor.

  THOMAS ARCHER

  Member of the Jury

  I WINCED TO SEE that poor girl’s face. Some things should not be brought into the light where anyone can gape at them. It was clear she had been lovely once, but now she looked like something hatched too soon or something flayed. She had been exposed enough. Where were the men who should have sheltered her? Where were her brothers? It was a disgrace, letting a girl take up a gun to defend her own honor.

  But I hoped no one expected me to pity her, when she had taken up a loaded gun and killed a man. It hurt my chest to think of it. No family hereabouts could spare a son, because sons took over what aged fathers had to let go. They led and protected their women and children and put food on the table for grandparents and unwed sisters and aunts. No, sir, here in Harford County we had no such thing as idle men. And God knew, of bloodshed and lost sons, we had seen enough.

  Some might say that I should not be seated in the jury box, with three members of my family serving as lawyers for the defense. But you could not throw a rock in Bel Air without hitting an Archer, and the jury would not have represented this fine place without one of us. My people had founded this town, with a few other old Scots and Englishmen, and they had kept out the Romanists, despite the name the state got saddled with, for Queen Mary, the bloody Catholic. That lady also had a drink named after her, and that might have told you a few things you needed to know about this state.

  Not that we were drunkards, no sir, not me by a long shot, and not Catholic either. But no state was more divided than this one—not even Kansas, where white men had scalped each other, pitchforked women, and burned homesteads to decide if they would cleave unto the North or South. Half the young men here had signed their lives away for States’ Rights, and the other half had done the same for the trumped-up sovereign in Washington. Right here in the jury box were turncoat Yankees sitting cheek by jowl with Southern loyalists. I myself was of the latter camp, my own brother a colonel in Lee’s army. Our first cousin was the general who had led the Rebel charge at Gettysburg, fired the first shots, and sacrificed his life.

  So there we sat, unhappily, twelve men in a box, facing the prisoner. At right angles to us, the judges’ bench stood like an altar, high as organ pipes, the lawyers’ tables straight across from it.

  And you should have seen the firepower lined up at the lawyers’ tables on both sides. On the prosecution side, the state had sent its heaviest artillery, the attorney general himself, Isaac D. Jones, backed by the state’s attorney, P. H. Rutledge. Both of them were well-groomed men in formal morning coats and crisp white stocks, and they sat with papers stacked in front of them and their elbows on the table as they whispered to each other behind their hands. They looked brisk and confident, like they thought to wrap this skirmish up by dinnertime.

  But if they thought that, they were not counting the cannons on the other side. Leading the charge for the defense would be my cousin Henry Archer, brother to both the great general and to Stevenson Archer, former secretary of the Peace Party, which had selected Henry Archer as its candidate for governor. After him would come the great Secessionist statesman Henry Farnandis, and bringing up the rear would be two younger advocates, my cousins Archer Jarrett and Herman Stump, both of them large in local lore, legends as big as their mustaches.

  In fact, all four of the defense lawyers were local Rebel heroes, most with recent bounties on their heads, and I wondered if it was quite wise to have deployed them all so visibly. I did not know the prosecution lawyers, but the government of Maryland had been forced to make accommodations with the military rulers we were subject to for four long years and with the Federals in Washington since then. Situated as they were inside the government, Jones and Rutledge had probably been Union men. Idly I wondered if that meant we would replay the War Between the States right here. It made me queasy just to think of it.

  But I had no time to think about that now. A murmur swept the crowd as the court crier strode onto the floor and rapped his staff. The clamor in the courtroom stilled.

  “All rise!” he proclaimed. With a great phawhump, several hundred people stood.

  The door behind the bench opened, and three balding judges paced out in swaying velvet robes and climbed the steps to sit up high behind their bench, their faces expressionless. The judge in charge would be His Honor Richard Grason, a white-haired man with a round, smooth, hairless face like a moon rising over the bench. I knew nothing of his politics, and I wondered why three judges had been sent. What kind of stake did the state have here?

  Grason declared the court in session, and the lawyers started opening remarks in solemn tones that sometimes rose to sermon pitch. Attorney General Jones stood first. He wore a short gray beard and moved with calm precision till he stood in front of us, exactly at the center of the jury box. He claimed to feel sorrow at this terrible event, though he did not look sad.

  “You all must know how little wish I have to speak of it. And yet it must be said, a murder was committed, and the state will show that blood was cold when it was done. No passion could excuse this act, and of passion there was none. The defense may attempt to show that the prisoner’s mind was deranged at the time the act was committed and that she is therefore not responsible. But I must caution the jury not to listen to a word of that kind. The state is sympathetic toward the injuries done the accused, but from all evidence the prisoner was of sound mind and cool the day she committed this awful act. The state will also show that the defendant’s brother Richard Cairnes was accessory, and his assistance was premeditated and therefore murder of the most awful kind. The jury may decide to deal with mercy toward the tender nature of the accused and hold her brother culpable instead.”

  Well! That was more like it! Had her brother tried to protect her? I turned to look and spotted him with ease, his hair an uncompromising red, the only splotch of color in the surrounding black of morning coats. His eyes shone bright, and he looked young, too young to know what he was doing, and quite proud of himself. I felt uneasy for hi
m. If he had tried to protect her, he certainly did not succeed. What good would it do now for him to throw his life away?

  But a commotion in the courtroom drew my attention to the prisoner in the dock, who had shot to her feet and seemed to want to speak. I shrank back in alarm.

  “Watch out, she’s trying to escape!” a man murmured behind me.

  “Does she have a gun?” another whispered urgently, as if in fear for his own life.

  The sheriff stood up and blocked her way, both hands on the pistols at his sides.

  Her voice rang out raggedly. “I want to speak to my lawyers!”

  The sheriff shook his head and said something I could not hear. But I saw Mr. Farnandis gaze at her and press one hand toward the table, as if trying to press her back into her chair.

  She seemed to straighten up as tall she could get, though she was quite small.

  “Give me something to write with!” she cried.

  Grason tapped his gavel and leaned far over the bench as if addressing a small child. “Miss Cairnes, you are not to speak unless called upon. You will sit down and be silent.”

  She sank into the chair and glared at the floor, and I wondered what she would have said if she were allowed. Did she dislike the imputation that she had not acted by herself? I wondered if she had no modesty at all. But she was brave, I had to give her that.

  Henry Archer stood up next to state the case for the defense. He was a thoughtful man and had been a thoughtful boy, or so had seemed to me. He used to lie in the shade and read while all the rest of us were galloping our ponies or catching frogs. The corners of his eyes drooped down, as did my own and those of several other members of the family. It gave us all a look of sorrow, like retrievers begging humankind for food.

  “Your Honors,” he began. “Esteemed gentlemen, the defense will show that this defendant’s name is purity itself to all who know of her. Here is beauty wronged, and no force on Earth can find her guilty when all heaven has proclaimed her innocence. We are confident the jury will acquit their duty and find her act entirely justified. However, should any of them feel a qualm at this defense, we’ll further show beyond a doubt that the defendant was not of her normal mind when the act occurred, as many subsequent attendant facts will show. So the good gentlemen may put their minds at ease, assured that they will have an easy choice, with two clear routes to proclaim innocence where innocence can never be in doubt.”

  I wondered why he did not take the lead the state had given him, of deflecting blame onto the brother, where it might belong. Surely they ought to address it, if the state pursued the lad.

  Opening arguments done, the prosecution began to make its case.

  The first witness called was a Union veteran named John Ware, a red-faced young man with a mighty beard. Ware kept his wool coat buttoned to the throat, though it was too warm for the day, and rivulets of sweat coursed down his broad forehead.

  “Where were you on the evening of April tenth?” Mr. Jones asked him.

  “At the hotel in Jarrettsville,” Ware said. “I was standing on the porch right by the door. And I saw a woman cross the barroom and run through the door.”

  “Where exactly were you on the porch?”

  “I guess about six feet to the left of the door.”

  “And did you know who the woman was?” Jones asked in the silence of the court.

  “It was Miss Cairnes, but I didn’t rightly know her at first.”

  “Did she have a gun?”

  “I didn’t see it good at first, but then I did. It was a big Colt’s, too big for a lady’s hand.”

  Someone said low behind me, “Maybe too big for some ladies’ hands.”

  Jones raised his voice. “What happened then?”

  Ware looked rattled, and his eyes went red. But he took a long breath and told the story levelly. “When she got out the door, she put her hand right up, and that’s when I saw the gun. And she just fired straight off. Then she looked shocked, like she didn’t know what she did. But darned if she didn’t look like she was going to shoot again.”

  “And did she fire a second time?”

  “Yes, sir, you bet. Five more times in all.”

  I could hear whispers fly around the crowd. Six shots! The three robed judges looked stern, gazing around, and the room went still again.

  Jones went on. “Did you hear her say anything?”

  “Yes, sir, I did. She said, ‘Now I’m gonna shoot you dead.’”

  I could hear the crowd squirm now.

  “The hussy bragged the moment she shot him!” a voice hissed behind me.

  “Did you try to stop her?” Jones asked.

  The witness’s eyes widened. “No, sir, I didn’t think to. I jumped off the porch and crouched down low.”

  “Why did you do that?”

  “Well, I was trying not to get shot at the time.”

  Low laughter greeted this—the man had run.

  “And did you know anyone was hit?”

  “No, sir. I did not. Well, we all knew who she was shooting at, I guess. I told him, ‘Run! Run for your life!’ But he just fell off the porch. And she wouldn’t let him go, no, sir. Darned if she didn’t chase him down to the yard. She slammed them balls right into him real fast, blam blam blam blam blam blam. Just like that.”

  The witness seemed agitated and held his fingers like a gun, imitating what she’d done.

  A few ladies in the courtroom let out fainting sounds.

  The judge broke in again. “That will do, Mr. Ware. Just answer the questions.”

  Jones waited while several ladies were escorted out into the air. In a hushed voice he asked where the victim had stood, the distance of the fall, how she had followed him.

  “Could you have interposed to prevent her from firing her weapon?”

  “No, sir. I don’t believe so. I was much excited myself.”

  “And Miss Cairnes? Was she excited?”

  Ware wiped his wet eyes frankly with the back of his hand. “No, sir. She was not. She was considerable more calm than any soldier in an affray where life got took.”

  Farnandis rose to cross-examine, and he had a very pleasing voice, almost like the operatic baritone I heard once in Baltimore. “Let me ask you something, sir, concerning one of your last statements. Have you been in an affray where life was taken?”

  The witness looked stubborn, his beard jutting from his chin. “I served my country putting down the Insurrection.” He savored the word, one letter at a time.

  A murmur of assent went round. But Mr. Farnandis wasn’t satisfied.

  “Yes, but were you ever actually in an affray where life was taken?”

  Ware’s face flushed almost purple, and I felt sorry for him. Why humiliate him further?

  “No, sir, not but this one time. But life got taken there, you may be sure of it.”

  I was embarrassed for the man, he had so little shame.

  But he had certainly done nothing to deflect guilt from the girl, and when the laugh wore off, I felt disturbed. Ware had seen her kill a man, and even now he seemed deathly afraid of her. If he was to be believed, she had dispatched her victim coldly, calmly, singlemindedly. She did not hesitate or show remorse, and that thought made my belly sink and took me down with it.

  Would we really have to send her to the gallows by tonight?

  G. RICHARD CAIRNES

  Distiller of Fine Whiskey

  I LOOKED AT MY SISTER, who was dead pale and seemed to weave as she sat. It would not hurt a thing if she were to faint, and I looked at Isie with approval when she began to wave a good black mourning fan at her. Our prettiest cousin went out and came back with a glass of water and a cold cloth for my sister’s head, attracting the crowd’s attention to her delicacy. All to the good. That sniveling Yankee Ware had done us damage, but it might not ruin all our plans.

  The year before, I had told my darling Belle we should not marry yet, because I might be hanged soon and I could not bear to leave her alone, s
o young, perhaps with child by then. But she was so brave, she humbled me. She would not hear of a delay.

  “I will be your wife and worship you, whatever comes,” she said the night I first proposed, as she knelt before me, her sweet face glowing pink in the firelight. “I will stand with you and proclaim to everyone that you are right. They think the war is over, but they’re wrong. The South will never die. And if you need to raise your gun for it, I will stand by your side. I want to have the right to stand there, and for that I need to be your wife.”

  I had not said what might end my life, but there was no need. She knew. Everyone knew, whose minds were set like ours, back to the grand traditions of the past. Seducers of chaste women had to die. It was a brother’s duty to kill the man and save his sister’s honor and his own. My two older brothers were unfit for it, one a man of the cloth and the other sealed inside of silence, knowing nothing—though if he had seen our sister big with child and still at home, he might have understood.

  No, it was mine to do, and I had planned it for the day after the child was born.

  But a month before that, my sister had faced me, trying to look fierce despite the comic belly she had then, her small stature leaving it nowhere to go but straight out. Really, she looked like a prime turkey fattened for the county fair. But what she said made me cease to laugh.

  “You are not to lay a finger on him. You hear me? It is none of your affair. I will shoot you if you try to do it first.”

  This was just bluster, and it made me laugh again. “And if I kill him, do you think they’ll let me live for long? One way or the other, I’ll be dead. And so will he.”

  Her eyes had blazed up at me, ice blue. “But not at your hand. Do you think you are more wronged than me? Marry Belle and keep her safe. You have to live for her and your children. I have only one thing left to do, and when it’s done, I don’t want to see another day. I’ll wait my chance to do it in front of witnesses who have no sympathy for me. I want to be hanged.”