Page 22 of The Girl from Greenwich Street

[A] very clear day but very blustery. . . . The trial of Levi Weeks for the murder of Miss Sands came on this morning—scarcely anything else is spoken of.

—From the journal of Elizabeth De Hart Bleecker, March 31, 1800

New York City

March 31, 1800

“Hang him!”

“Hanging’s too good for him! Crucify him!”

There hadn’t been such a mob around Federal Hall since President Washington’s inauguration ten years ago, when New York was still the nation’s capital and the building around which the crowds were thronging the seat of government. The crowd, however, was in far less sanguine a mood than they had been that day.

In fact, thought Cadwallader Colden, rather than sanguine, they were sanguinary. It was a clever turn of phrase; he would have to remember it to repeat to Maria later, that evening, once Levi Weeks had been pronounced guilty.

“What is the matter? Why have we stopped?”

Catherine Ring leaned forward, trying to see out the window.

Cadwallader had taken the precaution of fetching the Rings and Hope Sands in his own carriage. It had been a strange atmosphere in the Ring house that morning, everyone in their Sunday best, some coming to be called by the prosecution, some the defense.

Of Richard Croucher there had been no sign. He had married his widow the day before, and left his room at Mrs. Ring’s to spend his wedding night with his bride before coming to beguile his honeymoon testifying against Levi Weeks. Cadwallader hoped he made it to the court in a timely fashion, although he would have to fight his way through the press of spectators to get there.

Elias Ring stuck his head out the window. “They’re clearing the street.”

Constables with sticks were pushing the people back, making way for a phalanx of city militia and volunteer guards. In the center, closely guarded all around, marched Levi Weeks, back straight, head up, staring straight ahead.

“Murderer!”

The crowd had sighted him and surged forward again. “Devil!”

“For Elma!”

Someone lobbed a clod of dirt—or possibly something other than dirt—at Levi, hitting one of his guards instead.

From his high position in the carriage, Cadwallader saw Levi flinch, but his head never turned.

“Stone him!”

One enterprising soul was attempting to pry a cobble from the street, and was overborne by members of the volunteer guard—paid by Ezra Weeks, Cadwallader had no doubt.

“It’s the people, raising their voice in your cause,”

said Cadwallader, trying to keep the excitement from his voice.

Surely thousands of New Yorkers couldn’t be wrong? The jury would be made from New Yorkers such as these.

Hope Sands lifted her chin. “Good for them. Levi Weeks is a positive villain and it’s only fit the whole world knows it.”

“I only want it to be over,”

said Mrs. Ring faintly. “The children . . . I don’t like to leave them.”

Her sister reached out and took her hand, squeezing it. “Mr. Colden’s maid has them well in hand. They won’t miss thee for the one day.”

No neighbors had been found who were willing to mind the Rings’ four children while all the family and the boarders were at court. No one wanted to miss the trial. They were all going as either witnesses or spectators. So Cadwallader had brought with him one of his own housemaids, with strict instructions to stay at the Ring house as long as was needed.

That had been Maria’s idea, of course.

“Polly will mind them as if they were her own,”

said Cadwallader heartily, although in truth Polly was only thirteen. But she could at least be trusted to change the baby’s clouts and make sure the little boy didn’t burn down the boardinghouse.

The carriage rattled into motion again. “Make way for Mr. Colden!”

his coachman bellowed. “Make way for the attorney general!”

A cheer rose from the crowd, from a thousand throats, shouting his name. Admittedly, interspersed with cries of “Hang Levi!”

and “Justice for Elma!”

but his name all the same, with a grand huzzah such as he’d never thought to hear.

The steps clunked down and the coachman opened the door, grinning broadly. Dazedly, Cadwallader stepped out, and the cheering rose to a crescendo.

“Huzzah for the attorney general! Hang Levi!”

Cadwallader bowed to the crowd. He rather hoped Maria could hear. Was she in the courthouse? She’d said she meant to attend with Josiah.

A light cough from the interior of the carriage reminded him of his duties. Cadwallader handed down Catherine Ring, her gloved hand cold in his. He’d never seen her in gloves before, always with bare hands, engaged in a domestic task—and then Hope Sands, who stepped lightly from the carriage like a lady born.

Elias Ring clambered down by himself, his broad hat and baggy trousers drawing some guffaws from the crowd. It was not the best start, Cadwallader thought, as he hurried them under the grand arched loggia into Federal Hall. Cadwallader had meant to call Elias directly after his wife, but now that he thought about it, perhaps it might be better to call Hope Sands second, and push Elias Ring back to third. He wasn’t needed for much, anyway. His primary purpose was to testify to the relationship between Elma and Levi while Mrs. Ring was in the country, and to confirm Mrs. Ring’s account of Elma’s mental state on the day she disappeared.

Catherine Ring and Hope Sands, on the other hand, in their Quaker brown and gray, made just the impression Cadwallader desired. Mrs. Ring’s nervousness was only what one would expect of a common person confronted with the grand workings of the law. An honest woman, a good wife and mother.

He could see her eyeing the soaring ceiling, surmounted by L’Enfant’s grand glass cupola, which bathed the lobby in light—the light of truth, Cadwallader thought poetically.

He took Mrs. Ring by the arm as he maneuvered them around the crowd. “Try not to be overawed by the grandeur of your surroundings. The jurors will be good citizens like yourselves.”

Elias Ring glowered at him from under his broad hat. “And why should we be overawed? Awe we owe only to the Lord, not the children of Mammon.”

If he was going to take that sort of tack, he wasn’t going to make a good impression on the stand. Ring appeared determined to be displeased and displeasing. Cadwallader reassured himself that Elias Ring could be hustled on and off the stand as quickly as possible. He was only a side character in this drama.

“Pardon—excuse me—”

Cadwallader employed his elbows to clear a path into the courtroom, almost unrecognizable for the press of bodies. Every inch of space was jammed with people, shoved together on the benches, hanging from the balconies, pressing forward nearly to the bench itself, where Chief Justice Lansing, Mayor Varick, and Richard Harison, recorder of the court, sat clothed in majesty and their robes of office.

“Hear ye, hear ye!”

bellowed the clerk of the court. “All manner of persons that have business to do at this court of oyer and terminer, held in and for the county of New York, let them draw near and give their attendance and they shall be heard! If they can,”

he added, sotto voce.

Chief Justice Lansing banged his gavel. “Bailiff! Clear the court of unnecessary persons!”

Cadwallader shepherded his little group closer to the front of the room as the bailiff pushed people out the door, some putting up more protest than others.

“Ah, Colden, there you are!”

called Brockholst Livingston, from the table where the defense sat, all looking annoyingly unruffled. “Thought you’d changed your mind!”

“I was delayed by the people raising their voice in Elma’s cause.”

“The mob, you mean,”

said General Hamilton. He raised his voice so all could hear. “When once you let the mob have their voice, there is no hope of justice.”

Was that to be their tack? Well, they had to have something, and the evidence was all quite firmly on Cadwallader’s side. On Elma’s side, he meant.

With the room cleared, the prisoner was called to the bar, taking his place in the dock. Someone—Burr, perhaps? Or Brockholst?—had made sure Levi had been given a clean coat and that his hair was brushed and neatly tied. The only signs of his weekend in the Bridewell were the circles beneath his eyes and a faint smattering of bug bites.

The clerk, Coleman, called forward the panel of jurors. “Levi Weeks, prisoner at the bar”—his sonorous voice turned the rote invocation into grand theater—“hold up your right hand and harken to what is said to you. These good men who have been last called and who do now appear are those who are to pass between the people of the state of New York and you upon your trial of life and death.”

A delightful shiver went through those who had been permitted to remain. Cadwallader spotted Maria in one of the galleries, in her new paisley shawl, sitting by Josiah. He resisted the urge to wave.

“Gentlemen of the jury.”

Coleman faced the jurors. “The prisoner at the bar stands indicted in the words following, that Levi Weeks, laborer, not having the fear of God before his eyes, but being moved and seduced by the instigation of the devil, in and upon one Gulielma Sands, feloniously, willfully, and of his malice aforethought did cast, throw, and push the said Gulielma Sands into a certain well. . . .”

Cadwallader had to stop himself from mouthing the words along with the clerk. He had crafted this indictment, chosen the charges, alleging two counts: first that Levi Weeks had pushed Elma into the well, causing her to drown; second that Levi Weeks had assaulted Elma Sands.

“Upon this indictment, the prisoner at the bar hath been arraigned, and on his arraignment hath pleaded not guilty.”

Levi Weeks stood stony-faced at the bar.

“He is now to be tried by his country, which country you are, so that your charge is, gentlemen, to inquire whether the prisoner at the bar is guilty of the felony whereof he stands indicted, or is not guilty, so sit together and hear your evidence.”

Catherine Ring clasped her hands in her lap. Elias Ring slouched down so he was all but invisible beneath the brim of his hat. Maria’s paisley shawl was a splash of color in the gallery.

“Mr. Colden?”

Cadwallader started as the chief justice pronounced his name. “I believe you may wish to open your case.”

Cadwallader lurched to his feet, sending his copy of State Trials tumbling to the floor, and the pages he’d marked with it. He hastily scooped it back up.

“Yes, Your Honor, as it please Your Honor. Gentlemen of the jury . . .”

Cadwallader fumbled in his pocket for the closely scribbled pages on which he had written his opening statement. Thank goodness it was still there. He knew that neither Hamilton nor Burr would read—no, nor Brockholst Livingston—but he had thought hard about it and decided there was no point in pretending he was their equal as a rhetorician. The whole point was that he wasn’t their equal as a rhetorician. He was just a simple man, a journeyman lawyer, with truth as his standard.

Cadwallader settled himself firmly on his feet and faced the jury, twelve men who knew they were participating in the most momentous trial of a generation, all looking to him. It was just as he’d told Mrs. Ring two weeks ago. All he needed to do to win was tell the truth, because the truth would hang Levi Weeks.

“Gentlemen of the jury, in a cause which appears to have so greatly excited the public mind, in which the prisoner has thought it necessary for his defense to employ so many advocates distinguished for their eloquence and abilities, so vastly my superiors in learning, experience, and professional rank”—Cadwallader bowed to the trio of eminent attorneys clustered at the defense table—“it is not wonderful that I should rise to address you under the weight of embarrassments which such circumstances excite.”

There was a decidedly sardonic expression on Brockholst Livingston’s face. As always, it was impossible to tell what Colonel Burr was thinking. General Hamilton, however, seemed to genuinely enjoy the praise.

Cadwallader hastily addressed himself to his paper. “But, gentlemen, although the abilities enlisted on the respective sides of this cause are very unequal, I find some consolation in the reflection that our tasks are so also. While to my opponents it belongs as their duty to exert all their powerful talents in favor of the prisoner, as a public prosecutor, I think I ought to do no more than offer you in its proper order, all the testimony the case affords, draw from the witnesses which may be produced on either side all that they know, the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”

He lifted his head, making sure to look all around the room: at the spectators in the gallery, Weeks in the dock, the jury in their box. No tricks, no legal feints. Only the truth. This was what he pledged them.

He could see Josiah nod, just once, but it was enough.

“Levi Weeks, the prisoner at the bar, is indicted for the murder of Gulielma Sands. The deceased was a young girl, who till her fatal acquaintance with the prisoner, was virtuous and modest, and it will be material for you to remark, always of a cheerful disposition, and lively manners, although of a delicate constitution.”

That was why they were here. For a girl who would never have a chance to be a woman. A girl seduced and betrayed. A girl whose murderer sounded the depths of the well in which he meant to drown her.

“We expect to prove to you that the prisoner won her affections, and that her virtue fell a sacrifice to his assiduity, that after a long period of criminal intercourse between them, he deluded her from the house of her protector under a pretense of marrying her, and carried her away to a well in the suburbs of this city and there murdered her—”

Cadwallader’s voice broke. He took a moment, letting the image haunt the jury as it haunted him.

“No wonder, gentlemen, that my mind shudders at the picture here drawn and requires a moment to recollect myself. I will not say, gentlemen, what may be your verdict as to the prisoner, but I venture to assert that not one of you, or any man who hears this cause, shall doubt that the unfortunate young creature who was found dead in the Manhattan Well was most barbarously slain.”

In the galleries, he could see enterprising souls scribbling away, recording his words for later publication. He was suddenly very glad Maria had insisted on his wearing his new coat and tying his cravat for him.

But this wasn’t about him. This was the story of a girl betrayed.

Cadwallader gestured grandly at a tidy woman in brown, her auburn hair covered by a neat white cap.

“For our first witness, the people of New York call . . . Catherine Ring.”