So now that this story is getting a lot more reviews I'm super excited and I hope you all enjoy the story.
The next morning, the duo left for the village in the early morn, just before day break.
John had made a few last minute pleas with his wife to remain behind at the house for at least a few days more to ensure her safety but Sarah would have none of it, dour and resolute as stone.
"You don't look well"
"I feel just fine."
"Come here" John pulled her forward and pressed a solid hand to her forehead and neck. "You have a fever" He stated firmly and Sarah rolled her eyes before pulling away.
"You insisted we spend all night under the covers with the windows shut and a fire going just so I wouldn't get a fever, of course I'm a little warm"
"You look pale."
"I'm always pale."
"Sarah!"
"John!" she whipped around with the kettle in her hand and an exasperated look on her face. "I. Am. Fine, and I am going to Salem today even if I have to walk there."
In truth she did not feel all that well, her body was still weak and she had been having terrible cramps and spasms all night but she said not a word of complaint.
John grumbled through breakfast and in the carriage and into town bitterly.
"Ah, Mr. Hale!" A tall man with a firm looking face and a voice that commanded the attention of all approached them as they stopped by the courthouse. "Good marrow to you mister."
"Good Marrow Judge Danforth." Hale shook the man's hand before helping Sarah out of the cart.
"And who is this fine lady, sir?" Danforth asked, motioning to Sarah who curtsied deeply out of respect for the deputy governor.
"This is my good wife, Sarah. She has been providing counsel and comfort to the afflicted girls. We thought it wise she be here today for that reason, sir."
"Ah, the famous Goody Hale." Danforth noted with favor, "I have heard of your good works missus, but have you not been afflicted yourself these past five days?"
"I feel perfectly fine now sir, thank you. And I shall not let the attack influence my duty to these children" She smiled. "Though I have no doubt my good husband has worried half the village sick over me."
"With good reason, I marvel that you come so bravely to court today. Having gone through what you have." Danforth's voice was laced with praise and eyed Mr. Hale. "It is a fine soul that faces the devil and still does not waver."
"I only hope to bring light back to Salem sir, with the help of our Lord." She replied demurely. "If I do not sound too presumptuous my lord."
The Judge was pleased with her candor and looked to Mr. Hale, who looked more nervous than a mouse, with an approving eye. "A fine wife you have Mister. Very fine indeed."
He turned and left them to enter the court house and Hale let out a breath he didn't know he had been holding the entire exchange.
His wife's nerve had surprised him, to speak so frankly with the deputy governor of Massachusetts.
"What is ill, John?" she asked, gazing with concern at his pale features and he straightened up.
"Nothing, let's just…get inside." He led her in with an arm hooked around hers.
The Girls sat on long benches away from the rest of the patrons and Sarah broke off from her husband to approach them.
"Goody Hale!" Mary Warren looked to her with a look of absolute relief on her face. "You have come!"
"I would not be absent for the world Mary." Sarah assured the girl.
Abigail Williams gazed at the woman with passiveness, bit of worry, and genuine relief to see her well. She had begun to suspect that she had used too many berries and the minister's wife would not recover, which she simply could not allow.
Mrs. Hale was so kind, so understanding. She would believe everything she said and did.
In a way Abigail was reminded of her own dear mother, or at least what she imagined her mother to have been like from what she could remember.
Warm, kind, and determined. Just as Abigail was determined.
Perhaps that is why Abigail felt a connection.
Maybe, the girl thought with a bit of hopeful longing, maybe Mrs. Hale felt a connection to.
"I am glad to see you are well Goody Hale." Abigail said softly and Sarah smiled.
"Thank you child, I will be better still knowing the good we do here." She looked over them all kindly, taking in their youthful faces.
Soon the court began to fill up and Sarah sat on the women's side of the pews, in the front row on the nearest corner to the girls.
The church was packed to the rafters with onlookers, all muttering and whispering to each other.
The first on trial was Sarah Good, an old, wizen woman in dirty clothes from sitting in a jail cell.
To the relief of all she was quick to confess, stating when and where she saw the devil and when she sold her soul to him. She also named another in the jail, Sarah Osborne, who was with the Devil when she saw him first.
With Goody Good as a witness, Sarah Osborne was dragged in to the court house.
Sarah had only seen Goody Osborne once, begging in the streets for change, and she had felt pity for the dirty old woman dressed in rags.
But now was not the time for pity or a charitable heart.
As the old woman sat on the wooden bench before the judges, Judge Hawthorn took the lead.
"Now, Sarah Osborne, here is Sarah Good who has confessed to witchcraft. And therefore will not hang. I bid you, follow her example. She testifies that when the Devil came to her you were in his company."
Goody Good stood up at this; thin, pale arms outstretched as if telling a tale.
"Oh yes sir, big as life, him and her." She described it. "And Osborne writing her name in his book, with her own red blood!"
The court went up in jeers and hisses at this and Osborne stumbled forward to the judges table, protesting the idea.
"Your honors, I never see the devil!" she hissed before grinning. "But! I can dance as fast backwards as he can!" She laughed and began to jig across the floor to the rhythm of the jeers from the crowd.
Sarah Hale looked away from the sinful display.
"Sit down I tell you, sit! Sit her down!" Hawthorn ordered as Osborne jerked away from her detainers and stumbled towards the girls.
"You stop your funnin'!" She demanded. "You's give up your stories! You bring me to harm." She began to mutter and hiss under her breath and suddenly Abigail doubled over and howled in pain.
"OoOoh! Stop hurting me Goody Osborne!" She cried out and the other girls began to clutch at their sides and whine and whimper as well as Sarah darted forwards and began to comfort the girls, backed by a few eager women who tended to others as well.
"Help me Judge Danforth!" Abigail whined as she clutched Sarah's shoulder, nails digging into her frock.
The woman was hauled to the table away from the girls, who still moaned and rocked in pain.
"What are you doing to these girls?" Danforth demanded firmly, backed by Hawthorn immediately. "What do you mumble to make them so sick?"
"Why, I only sayin' my commandments, I hope that I my recite my commandments." The woman protested and Judge Seawell, a man with a well-trimmed beard and neat clothes nodded.
"Pray, let her recite her commandments."
"Your grace." Osborne sighed. "I may only say my commandments after dark."
"There are ten commandments." Danforth informed her tartly, "do you know any?"
The woman faltered and began to babble as the girls when on with their cries of pain, and Sarah and the other women tried to hush them.
"You have lied to the court." Danforth declared, "I say you have lied to the court. Have you not?"
Osborne snarled and hissed. "I'm innocent a witch! The Devil knows that!"
This sent the court howling as the woman was dragged out of the church, the second she was gone the girls stopped moaning and the pain seemingly vanished instantly.
The day went on and soon it was Sarah Bishop who was hauled into the court.
"That's the woman who bewitched you Goody Hale." Abigail whispered in her ear as the woman knelt down. "Are you not frightened?"
"No Child." Sarah lied, putting on a mask of bravado. "I do not fear this."
"I fear she will try to hurt you Goody Hale." She insisted.
"That is kind of you child, but worry not." Sarah pressed and returned to her seat.
"Sarah Bishop, you have been accused to dealings with the Devil, and the supernatural attack of Sarah Hale. What say you to these crimes?"
"I am innocent a witch your grace, and I would never do harm to a person." The older woman with a severe face and an upturned nose insisted.
"We have testimonies that state that one night before she fell ill, your spirit was seen over Mrs. Hale's bed, and that you placed six nightshade berries under her bed to bewitch her mind."
"I would never sirs!" She protested and looked to Sarah Hale desperately. "What reason would I have to harm a minister's wife?"
"Were you not heard, the day Reverend Hale and his wife arrived in Salem, to be speaking ill of Mrs. Hale?"
"I never meant…"
"Did you not call her…?" Hawthorn looked on a paper before him. "A doe-eyed fool, as well as a gullible lump of naiveté?"
"Only because she so easily fell for these girls' tricks!" Sarah Bishop hissed and pointed to the girls.
Sarah Hale frowned, indignant but said nothing.
"What tricks are these Goody Bishop?"
Before the woman could speak Ruth Putnam shot from seat with a look of horror on her face, followed by Abigail.
They pointed at Mrs. Hale and went pale as sheets.
"What is wrong child?" Hawthorn asked the girls and Abigail let out a shuttering moan.
"A Dark Man, he looms of Goody Hale's shoulder!" She insisted and Sarah whipped around, seeing nothing but feeling a prickle of pins and needles crawl their way up her body and spine. "He is reaching for her!"
The other girls looked and they too stood and backed away in terror. Some wailed for Sarah to move away, and others whimpered in fear as Mrs. Hale continued to look around.
Those around her began to shift away and Reverend Hale, who had been standing to the side on the Men's side, turned to look at his wife who grew pale and trembled.
Goosebumps formed on her arms and Mrs. Putnam, who sat beside her grasped her hand.
"Why Goody Hale, you're as cold as Death!" she gasped as Sarah began to shiver, growing more and more convinced of the presence over her shoulder until she was afraid to turn.
"Goody Hale, can you contest to a figure standing behind you?" Judge Danforth asked calmly and the woman swallowed.
"I can see none sir, but I feel as though there is a darkness around me." She replied in a hushed tone.
"Goody Bishop, what is this black man you have conjured to loom over Goody Hale?" Danforth interrogated and Goody Bishop gaped.
"Can you not see she is being fooled again? There is no one there!" she protested and Sarah gasped at a sudden pressure on her shoulder, unaware that Goody Putnam had touched her gently.
"What is it?" The woman asked as Sarah went dead pale.
"Something has touched me." she whispered and Goody Putnam touched her face.
"My Dear you are as white as a ghost." She insisted. "And you tremble like a leaf in the wind."
Sarah looked at her own hands and found them shaking terribly.
"Why do you torment this woman so?" The judge demanded and Goody Bishop growled.
"I have done nothing to her! It is not me! I am innocent a witch!"
Mrs. Hale's trembling turned to outright shaking, until her right arm jerked out of her control and a sudden, sharp pain stabbed through her upper arm, making her cry out suddenly, more out of shock than pain.
"It is hurting her!" Abigail cried out, "It has her arm! It digs its nails in her arm"
"Ow!" The minister's wife clutched at her arm in distress, the pain radiated from her arm into her shoulder and joints and to move was to send more pain through her body.
The noise in the courtroom grew louder and louder as curious spectators pushed and jostled each other to get a look at her.
The air around her seemed to grow thinner and the noise began to pound in her head until it consumed her and she closed her eyes tightly.
The heat radiating off of the bodies around her made her unbearably hot, and the painful tingle in her body grew stronger until it seemed to fill the world
Heat, noise, dull pain, all growing more and more intense until finally it became too much to handle.
"She's fainted!" A cry when up and John, who had been trying to push his way through the throng felt his heart drop.
"Move away! Move away! Give her some air!" He shouted and was aided by Mr. Parris and Judge Danforth who banged his gavel on the table loudly.
"Order, Order in this court room. Move away, Move I say!" He bellowed as the crowd dispersed and the two Ministers tended to the woman crumpled on the floor, having collapsed from dehydration, muscle weakness, and pure sensory overload.
"Someone open a window, give her some air!" Parris ordered as he and Hale reclined Goody Hale's body on the pew.
"Goody Hale, Goody Hale, can you hear us?" Parris shook her shoulders and she whined before her eyes fluttered open, dull and confused.
"She wakes!"
"John." She whispered hoarsely. "Is it gone?"
"Is what gone?" The Reverend asked and Sarah's eyes wandered around.
"The Dark Man." She groaned and the judges wrote this down as the crowd went wild.
"Order, Order!" Danforth bellowed and glared at Sarah Bishop, who was completely at a loss.
"This court is in recess for one hour!" He called.
Abigail Williams was amazed, she could not have planned it better herself.
She had expected Mrs. Hale to believe her assertions of a dark man, not for the entire court to hound the woman until she fainted.
But Goody Bishop, unable to make her case, was hauled to the jail protesting anyway.
"I should not have let you come." Reverend Hale muttered as he helped his wife to sit up and the rest of the court filed out of the room and the girls were gathered away from the rest of the village.
"Here we go." Sarah muttered and she held her pounding head.
"Well it's true."
"You know this 'I told you so thing' is getting very dull" She pointed out and Ruth Putnam approached the two with a tin cup in her hands.
"Water for you Goody Putnam." She chirped and Sarah smiled, taking the cup gratefully.
"Thank you child." She nodded and swallowed the water down; her body accepting the flood thankfully.
They waited for the girl to leave before they continued bickering.
"You should go home,"
"Halfway through the first day? I think not."
"You can come back tomorrow, you'll be well then."
"I was well just a few moments ago."
"Not well enough, you scared me half to death Sarah. Please…" He sighed and checked around them to make sure the courtroom was empty before slipping his arm around her in a rare display of semi-public affection.
"I fear that your need to face this evil makes you prideful. You are too sure, too bold…I wish not for you to take more than you can handle."
Sarah's heart softened at his declaration of concern and she sighed before conceding with a nod.
"Very well, if that is what you wish."
John pressed his lips to her temple firmly. "Go home, rest, and pray…I will be home tonight and I will tell you everything. You shan't be kept out of the loop."
"When you explain it to Danforth, can you try to make me wound less weak?" She asked, hoping to save face before the Judge and Hale smiled a little.
"I think he will understand my dear. Now go, take one of the horses with you."
Sarah nodded and looked around to ensure they were alone before kissing him swiftly on the lips.
"Sarah!" Hale hissed scolding, scandalized at her boldness in a house of God.
She fled before he could chastise her more, blushing furiously as she unhitched one of the horses and rode it home in the dull spring afternoon.