She finished penning the final sentences of her letter.
J'embrasse ma sœur que j'aime de tout mon cœur, ainsi que tous mes parents. N'oubliez pas ce vers de Corneille:
Le Crime fait la honte, et non-pas l'échafaud !
C'est demain à huit heures, qu'on me juge. Ce 16 juillet.
It was a letter to her family, back in Normandy. Élise put down the pen. Her hand trembled. She had written so many drafts, trying to find the right words.
She had become passingly familiar with the prison guards over the last couple of days. The most kind one, a mustached, middle-aged man named Dubeau, was whom she most trusted. Élise had trusted him to deliver her first letter. She would give him this one. He usually passed her cell around his hour
Sitting in her cell alone for two days had given her ample time to think: to think about the turbulent life she had led, about her the turbulence of her own country, about how many lives she had ended, but most of all about her family in the north.
She could have accepted her life as a woman, but lived a mundane existence in the green hills of Normandy: bearing children, doing farm work. But she had rejected nature's plan. Then, as a result, she was sent to Paris, and rejected her life as an Assassin.
Élise was almost certain she would get no response from her family, she would be dead before it reached them, or at least before it got back. Executions happened swiftly these days. If she did, she would be afraid to read it. Perhaps she had found some redemption in their hearts with the truce, but could that ever conquer the shame they felt at her defection?
A cockroach scurried across the floor.
Then she heard footsteps. She turned and it confirmed her assumption.
"Monsieur Dubea!" she called. He looked over. She picked up the letter and promptly walked over to him.
"Please, please! Deliver this to...Charlotte Gouze, at Le Cafe Theatre." She would not tell the location of the Normandy Commune to a stranger.
He took it, skimmed it over, and then gave a faint nod.
He turned to walk away, and she said a gushy, "Thank you, sir!"
Only now did she really realize how much that letter had been weighing her. She was exhausted. She walked over to her prison bed and collapsed upon it. She closed her eyes.
Was her time really over? The Templars could be planning a rescue, but they had not rescued Etienne or Madam Roland. Realistically, it was over. And what lied in the great beyond? She was taught to be skeptical of religion, but that did not mean there was no God. Was there a just afterlife? Did God care about intentions, or results? Was anyone truly knowingly evil?
She thought back to Arno. For years she had been paralyzed by fear, too full of questions to confess her feelings. Did he feel the same way about her? Was he a loyal Templar to still an Assassin at heart? And was it morally right to pursue a romance with a man at all, when the Templars relied so heavily on her deathcraft?
Élise remembered their initial dance at the Fête de la Fédération. She remembered the electric sensation of their hands first touching. She still wondered if he had noticed how rough and muscular hers were.
She drifted off to sleep, but an unwelcome and familiar voice woke her.
"So, the foul murderess, confined at last. I truly had to see it with my own eyes."
It was Robespierre: Short stature and a neotenous face, but his demeanor so cocky. Élise sat up, no doubt looking a pathetic mess.
"Come to gloat, Maximillien? It seems a childish exercise."
Certainly, though, this would be the best time for it.
"I simply came to confirm my suspicions. This 'Mademoiselle Corday' was not a new demon, but the one that's troubled us for years. The people are eager to see justice after you took the life of their beloved revolutionary. You're about to see what happens when you make a great man into a martyr."
"You should consider your own wisdom. How many martyrs have you made?"
"I've simply instilled fear into those who would rob our society, a righteous thing."
"What society can be based on freedom and fear at once?"
"What society cannot? Virtue without terror is impotent. And you've spawned a new impetus for terror."
He spoke of terror as a virtue. What madness had claimed her country?
But she could not argue with his logic.
She had only a pathetic comeback:
"You delight in such things, don't you, Max?"
"Irrelevant, ma chère. Many find delight in charity, in instruction, in all sorts of good deeds! If they find pleasure in righteous killing, so what?"
Élise had no words, merely stared. Perhaps if she had not been woken mid sleep, she could have produced a better response, but what words would matter now, anyway? Robespierre, and perhaps all of Paris, was set in his course.
He walked away.