Old Street could not look at me now. He sat breathing with his mouth open as he stared at the floor. Sweat shone on his balding pate. “She was headed there already, on foot. I saw her walking there quite fast before he came along.”
“So in your opinion Miss Cairnes was already on her way to town, and her brother only brought her horse to get her there faster?”
Street nodded, now quite pale. “And maybe to help her get away after.”
Jones thanked him, let him go, and called his sister, Hannah Street. Old Miss Street repeated all that he had said, almost word for word, but with none of his hesitation.
“They took her off pell-mell. Just that fast, pell-mell,” she said and lifted a liver-spotted hand to snap her fingers.
“And did you think that they were taking her somewhere against her will, or was it, in your opinion, where she meant to go?”
“Oh, no doubt about it,” she said enthusiastically. “She was already headed there. It was her own idea, I would say it was. She’s not the sort of person who needs her brother’s direction to go anyplace, no sir. She’s not like that at all. She’s a firecracker, that girl is.”
At that she seemed to look toward the prisoner’s dock, and Martha Jane and our girl cousins all gazed back at her as if they understood each other in some witches’ pact. I looked from them to Farnandis to see if he had caught that, too. Good God, couldn’t he do something?
But Farnandis did not cross-examine either aged Street, and Jones next called a local bachelor farmer, John Deets. Deets lived farther west, past Jarrettsville, and he testified that less than an hour before the shooting, he saw me ride past on the King’s Road with a little girl behind me on my horse. Prompted by questions, Deets told the tale.
“I saw Charles Nelson catch up to Richard Cairnes, and they went up King’s Road a bit and stopped a minute. Nelson seemed to say something to Richard Cairnes that made him ride back to the crossroads by my house and wait. He sat on his horse at the fork just by, with the little girl behind him holding on. And sure enough, pretty soon I saw Nick McComas ride past on his horse toward Jarrettsville. He was with a pack of other men in uniform, for the celebration, you know, and he didn’t seem to notice Richard Cairnes there waiting, and Richard turned and followed him from a distance.”
Now this was more like it. That scene shone in my memory, that beautiful sunset when the sky glowed like my wife’s eyes, and how easy it had been to ride two hundred yards behind that swine, knowing I could have galloped at him with my pistol out!
Jones went on unperturbed, “Did you see Richard Cairnes again that night?”
“Yes, I did,” Deets said. “Richard rode back and continued on where he left off, toward the west, and some minutes later he came galloping back toward Jarrettsville, fast as you please. No one was with him then. He’d put the girl off by that time.”
Jones thanked Deets and recalled Joshua Jarrett, and I looked at Josh sharply. What was he doing, testifying twice for Jones? His first time on the stand had been a near debacle, and I was not eager to hear him put his boot into his mouth again.
But in response to what Jones asked, Josh said that he had seen the same scene from a distance, and he added one new, wonderful detail: “That little girl was on Richard’s horse when he met Nelson there at the crossroads. She heard what was said.”
Jones regarded him with intensity, as if he had not thought of this before. “Do you know the identity of the little girl?”
“No, sir,” said Joshua as if pleased with himself, and shook his head briskly.
A low rumble rose out of the crowd and particularly from the newsmen on my left.
“Call the girl!” most of them said.
“She’ll know what was said, all right. That’ll prove premeditation, right there.”
Grason tapped his gavel lightly once. “Does anyone know the little girl’s identity?”
I thought fast, wondering if I should answer. The girl was my cousin Ella Hope, Isie’s half sister, from her mother’s second marriage, and she had come to visit our farm for a few days. I had been taking her home to Hope Place, a few miles west of Jarrettsville. I suppose she did hear what Nelson said to me, though she was only seven and might not recall it well. Nelson had been excited, and he had shouted that McComas was there and headed to the hotel.
There had been no need to say more, since Nelson knew of Martha’s plan—our plan, that is, because it was mine, too. His color was high, exhilarated, as we raced each other back toward my place. We almost galloped right by Martha, who was on the road, half running toward the hotel. Somehow she knew, as if an angel had appeared to her. I had given her a Colt’s Navy revolver and taught her to load and use it, and she had it in her skirt pocket.
Now, damn! What a chance missed to teach little Ella what to say and have her say it here! It would prove premeditation and that the gun was mine, not Martha’s.
But we had not thought of that in time, and Ella was a child and might say the wrong thing. So I did not speak up. I glanced at Martha to see if she would. But Martha knew Ella might help to send me to the gallows in her place, and she firmly closed her lips.
At last the prosecution thought to call John Deets back up and ask him if he knew.
“Why, sure, it was the little Hope girl, Ella, I think it is. Father’s James Hope. Mother was widow to one of the Cairnes men, and she married Hope later on and had the girl. Hope Place is down the road a piece from mine. That must be where Richard Cairnes was taking her.”
Jones conferred with Rutledge before he turned to the judge. “Your Honor, the prosecution asks to be allowed to call Ella Hope, and to summon her if she is not in the court.”
Grason tapped his gavel. “The court calls Ella Hope.”
“Ella Hope!” the crowd said low at first, then loud. “Where’s Ella Hope?”
I had no more need to look at Martha Jane. My heart was a hawk that soared above the courthouse, taking in the view, horizons shining blue and brilliant. Did she really think she could take all the glory and the blame?
MARY ANN BAY CAIRNES
Mother of the Accused
MY SON WAS A FOOL. Sometimes in ways you could forgive, like his father at his best, so sure that he could mend the world and that it would not swallow him.
But now Richard thought to sacrifice his life to save that chimera, the South, its honor and its chivalry—in the person of that bigger fool, my daughter. I had chosen her name, but I would not say it again. For her he meant to leave his dear young wife and me with no man to watch over us and earn our daily bread?
My Richard, my George Richard. I had named him for his father and grandfather, who was one of the great men who had led our clan out of barren Scotland to the rich soil of this promised land. I had chosen to sit in the gallery, where I might be less subject to the stares of strangers, and from where I sat I could see my three sons below. They were all handsome, decent men. James, my first and tallest, had a sweetness in his nature that made you wonder if God blessed those he had afflicted most. He had been blessed, too, in his wife, a resourceful widow who had removed him to her farm and made it possible for him to run it as well as any man. My William sat next to them, clean and upright in clerical garb, and what mother was not proud to have a son called to God? But God was a tough master and had taken William far from home.
So I had one son left to be my comfort in old age. No, Richard should not pay for what she did. Why then was he sitting there with flashing eyes, like he could see a host of angels coming down for him?
Beside me in the front row of the gallery, his young wife gazed at him like she could see the angels, too. I wanted to shake her. Did it occur to her that they might hang Richard and Martha both, brother and sister side by side, or imprison both and throw away the key, dooming us to poverty, to taking in embroidery and lace-work? Ladies could not stoop to taking in laundry, and how else would we eat?
I could see that thought in other ladies’ eyes, up in the gallery, thei
r looks slicing cruelly to where I sat. I should not have come, and indeed I had not asked to. It was Henry Farnandis who said I must so that everyone could see I still believed in her. As if I did!
“I would rather see you in your grave than pregnant and unwed,” my own mother had said to me, and it still chilled my heart. But I should have said it to that foolish girl. Perhaps it would have saved her from a ruin more complete than ever a lady suffered or allowed.
Oh! She made me wish she were the one who had gone to an early grave, instead of my Rebecca, who had not lived to see three years. Rebecca had flown straight to heaven, a place her sister would never see. The night that scoundrel left her at the altar, I told her that.
“I wish you were never born,” I said as she sat weeping in her wedding dress at midnight, all the guests gone home. We had not spoken since.
A rumble from the crowd below made me sit up. It seemed no one was coming forward with Ella, and the whole crowd was muttering.
“They’re trying to hide her! Ella Hope! Get Ella Hope!”
Even the judge seemed caught up in the question and did not silence them.
The state’s attorney rose. Mr. Rutledge was a less impressive figure than Mr. Jones, thin and clean-shaven and stoop-shouldered as if he were afraid to take up space. But he had a surprising voice, deep and firm. “Your Honor, the state asks the indulgence of the court. We have only become cognizant today of additional facts we wish to prove and have immediately issued subpoenas. We’re not to blame, and we suggest the case go over till tomorrow.”
Judge Grason scowled. “The court cannot allow the case to go over. The life of the prisoner is involved, and witnesses should not be detained here at this busy season of the year. We must proceed to the defense so as to conclude today.”
Mr. Rutledge sat down to confer with Mr. Jones, hands shielding their mouths from view.
Mr. Rutledge stood back up. “Then, Your Honor, we suppose the state must close its case, though we beg further consideration if the trial goes over for another day.”
It was midday already, and the court recessed for dinner. When Richard came up to the gallery for Belle and me, I put a hand on his arm and reached up to move a stray red lock off his cheek, as high as I could reach. “I am afraid for you. Don’t do that for her.”
He shook his hair back the way it had been, his eyes so bright it was like looking at the sun. “Won’t you come back to the hotel and dine with us, Mother? Please. It will do you good.”
I declined, having no desire to eat or see my daughter there. When I was sure they had both gone, I went downstairs to look for Henry Farnandis. The bailiff said the lawyers had all gone to dinner. Mr. Farnandis had been a friend to my dear husband, and I begged a scrap of paper and a quill and jotted a note to him.
“I must speak with you before the court resumes. If you have any care for my family, you will come and listen to me.”
The church across the street was Presbyterian, and I said I would wait there for him.
The bailiff said he would deliver it, and I retreated to the tall church, its spire stretched to the sky, like a conduit to carry up my prayers. It was cool inside, and no one was there. I chose a pew in the middle of the vast space, in view of the altar and the beautiful stained glass above.
Presbyterians do not kneel in church, but I felt a need for it, and I pressed my knees to the cold floor, closed my eyes against my clasped hands, and put myself into the space of prayer, allowing my thoughts to lift up as they would. I thought of my husband and my parents and Creolia and my little girl who died. When your loved ones have betrayed you or left the earth, what is left? There is truth and justice, honor and purity, and Jesus Christ. There is forgiveness, which my daughter should have given that poor man. She should have stayed pure and let the peace that passes understanding enter her and give her rest.
And would I have to forgive even her? A tear squeezed from my eyes and wet my hands. I supposed so, but I did not have the strength. I supposed I ought to ask for it. I said the Lord’s Prayer and the Nicene Creed and let my mind go silent, listening. Forgive, because His Son died. That was the mystery, as if it paid for every wrong.
But what of my son? Why did he have to die to save that wretched girl?
Unwillingly, I saw her as a baby. She had been tiny, wiry, energetic, and demanding, early to do everything. She had been so bent on keeping up with her big brothers James and William, she stood up by herself at six months old and walked two months later, a peanut of a thing with tiny legs. She would dash after the boys, themselves just two and four years old, James’s affliction then becoming clear, though we denied it for another year. Some restless spirit seemed to have possessed her, and her father used to laugh and say it was a Cherokee maiden we had borne, not a real Scot like us. She never grew as tall as me, or filled out, womanly, even after the child. She had always been extremely odd, a girl who wanted to ride ponies bareback with her legs hanging on both sides, bloomers exposed. She climbed trees, swam rivers, ice-skated on ponds at breakneck speed. She never gave way to the boys, never let them win at shooting matches, footraces, croquet, or twenty questions, careless of what they thought.
How had I spawned this pint-sized Amazon? I had never been the slightest bit like that. From an early age I had tried to speak softly, do fine embroidery, make pies with flaky crusts, and tat lace by hand with pins to show off on my collars and cuffs to beguile some worthy man.
And that I had done, but never touched so much as his hand until my wedding night. Even after that, I was a lady, and a lady’s blood runs cool. Of course I did my wifely duty, as my bearing five children would attest. I loved him as a wife should, and I mourned him still.
But I could not imagine what possessed a woman to behave in such a lewd, lascivious fashion as my daughter had, the like of which had never been seen in our whole county, much less in our own family. I knew what people said, how they defamed the South and said our bloodlines were all mixed because of lewd behavior by our men. I did not doubt it had occurred on plantations with five hundred slaves, masters and foremen swaggering with drink and lust, corrupted by their power over so much human flesh. Those places must have been like sultans’ harems, down in the deep South in all that sultry air and even in the low-lying cotton-growing region on our eastern shore.
But here on the Maryland Piedmont, we breathed a cooler air. Our farms were small, and of the few slaves we had ever owned, most were freed ahead of the decree. It enraged me how Northerners assumed it must be Mississippi here, as soon as you crossed the Mason-Dixon Line. My brothers, my father, my grandfather, my uncles, my husband and his father and grandfather? All of them were upright men, God-fearing, their eyes on heaven rather than on the flesh. Our family was far too proud to risk disgrace, and how was it that my girl was not? She seemed to have run straight at it, arms open to embrace.
Now the spirit of forgiveness had deserted me, and I felt no peace. Lifting my eyes, I mopped my face until my handkerchief was wet. I heard someone clear his throat.
Surprised, I turned to see Henry Farnandis, looking reflective as he waited at the end of the pew. I slid back onto the seat and beckoned him to come to me.
“I am sorry. I did not realize you were here.”
He sat beside me and folded my hands into his. “Dear Mrs. Cairnes, I would not have disturbed you for the world, in this holy place. Is there some service I can do for you?”
“There is.” I started to weep again, my soggy hanky useless now.
Mr. Farnandis offered me his, of fine linen embroidered with his initials and pressed by his loving spouse or faithful servant, two advantages I no longer had, and I cried harder at that.
“Please, you must stop them from pursuing Richard. It was my daughter’s doing all alone. Ask anyone who knows her. She is a better shot than Richard! She meant to shoot that man, and I am sure she did. I know Richard wants to sacrifice himself for her, and that is a noble wish. But he is not guilty, and he is all I have left. I
f they take him from me, I will have nothing, and neither will his young wife. We may starve.”
Mr. Farnandis nodded. “Let me take you in our confidence. We think Richard may get off for insufficient evidence. But that isn’t true in your daughter’s case. She has given them all of the evidence that anyone could want. If the prosecution wants to cast doubt on her guilt and deflect it onto Richard, we ought to let it happen. It may be her only chance.”
“I won’t have him risked to save her. She alone must bear what she has done.”
He bowed his head as if in prayer, and when he lifted it, his bright green eyes searched mine. “Do you realize your daughter will be hanged?”
My heart stumbled, but I kept my eyes on his. “I do realize that. But it is what she deserves, and what she wishes for. I do not see what life is left for her, after what she did. But my Richard! You know him. He has been young and impulsive, but always with good cause. Can you say anything so good of my daughter? I cannot. I would wish she had never been disgraced or moved to this extreme. But since she has been, I think justice must be done.”
Mr. Farnandis sighed. “Let us pray on it a moment. All right?”
I agreed, and we both bowed our heads. I could not pray, afraid to open my mind to it, when I had just pronounced my daughter’s death sentence.
Overhead in the steeple, slow, ponderous bells began to swing, bonging out the hour when the trial would resume. We lifted our heads.
Mr. Farnandis took my hands again. “I will try to save your girl. But I cannot promise anything. And if we stop the prosecution from pursuing Richard, I will have to ask you to take the stand in her defense. You must pour out your mother-love in all its purity and let them feel it in their hearts, especially those twelve good men charged to put your child to death.”
The thought made me sick. To be pilloried on the witness stand, exposed in front of everyone as the mother of that awful girl!
“More than love I should have given her, that much is sure,” I said with bitterness. And yet my heart began to beat more calmly at this inkling I had won. “She can’t be saved, Mr. Farnandis, no matter what you do.”
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