Sleeping Medici

There was dead people’s furniture everywhere. I swore that Louis XIV painting just winked at me. Twice.

That was my introduction to France. Not the glossy France of postcards but the France of ancient shadows and ancestral wallpaper.

I’d pictured a trip involving French kisses (purely for cultural immersion), beignets with too much powdered sugar, and at least one photo from the top of the tower. Instead, here I was at the Château de Fontainebleau, marinating in centuries of other people’s dust.

History, for me, had always been a bad date: too long, too loud, and too interested in things I couldn’t care less about.

We shuffled from gilt room to gilt room while our guide droned about the Bourbons, the Valois, and someone called “the Sun King,” who sounded like a Vegas stage name. I stayed at the back, letting the herd of classmates clear the doorway before I wandered in, pretending to read the plaques but really scrolling through my phone until the Wi-Fi died.

And then we came to her room—Catherine de Medici’s. Queen of France. Widow, poisoner, schemer. The kind of woman who could probably kill you with a look and have a sonnet written about it before lunch.

The others filed out when the guide finished. I lingered.

The bed was absurd—an enormous ancient mattress under a canopy, all faded luxury and whispered decadence. It looked... soft. I meant to just sit for a moment. My legs ached, my eyelids drooped. Then I stretched out, lifted my feet, let the mattress take me.

The next thing I knew, someone was shaking me.

“Catherine. Catherine!”

I opened my eyes to find a man standing over me. Dark hair, serious eyes, clothes straight out of an oil painting. Not a tacky costume—real fabric, real weight.

“Uh—sorry,” I mumbled. “Didn’t mean to lie down. I know it’s, like, historical and all, but it just... happened.”

He frowned. “You speak nonsense. What are you talking about?”

“W—what—?”

“There is a body in my chamber.” He said it in a low voice, as if afraid the walls might hear.

“Okay...?”

“A dead body.”

I blinked. “Are you speaking metaphorically—”

“No! There is a dead girl in my bed! She’s not breathing. And I may have... killed her.”

“Excuse me?”

It was then I caught sight of myself in a blurry mirror across the room. The hair was the first thing—red, impossibly red. My hair is red! And then the dress, the sleeves, the corset. That wasn’t me.

I almost screamed, but the man clapped a hand over my mouth.

“Silence, woman! You’ll wake the whole damn castle!”

I mumbled against his palm. He let go, and I gasped, “Who... are you?”

“Your sovereign!” He stressed the word as if I were some kind of illiterate, then continued with that same strange intensity. “Your king. Your husband!”

I laughed. He did not.

Three seconds later and the truth slapped me in the face.

“You think I’m—Catherine? No.” I shook my head but the look on his face was slowly making me realize the situation. “The Medici Serpent? Catherine de Medici?”

“Yes!”

I stared at him. “You’re Henry—Henry III?”

“Henry the Second! My God, you have lost your wits entirely,” he muttered. “I told you to stay away from that Nostradamus. He fills your head with smoke.”

Did they put something in those waffles we ate at the hotel, because how the hell am I here?

“Catherine! Now, will you help me move this body or not?”

The dead woman was the daughter of some international prince, and apparently, if they found out Henry killed her, we’d have a war on our hands.

Inside the room I saw her lying on the bed white as the sheets. My mind just started working like clockwork and I felt a certain calm within me, like I suddenly knew what to do.

“Pull the covers,” I told him like instinct.

It was heavy as hell, but we rolled her up.

“And now?” he panted.

“Where’s her room?”

“Below this one.”

“Perfect.” I ripped the decorative ropes from the wall, tied them onto the covered body, and told him my plan: lower her to her balcony while I distracted the guards outside her door.

He looked relieved, as if my sudden efficiency was exactly the Catherine he remembered.

By morning, the official story was suicide: a love note to women, a refusal of marriage. Henry wrote it as I dictated.

As the foreign emissary droned on, Henry looked appropriately grief-stricken for someone who’d accidentally killed his harlot while fucking her.

Sitting beside him, I wanted to slap him so hard. The bastard deserved an ovation on his performance.

“You were exemplary last night,” he whispered later, cornering me. “I knew I could always count on your wickedly brilliant mind.”

“Stop talking.”

He smiled in a way that made me notice—against my better judgement—that he was handsomer than any textbook illustration. But he was also a murderer, and a philanderer, and I didn’t like the way my pulse reacted to him.

“We should do this more often,” he pressed.

“What? Covering a homicide?”

“No. Working,” he said with a grin. ”Together."

I pushed him away and returned to my chamber. The bed I had slept in still looked the same—but how was I supposed to get back?

I lay down and closed my eyes. Maybe I just needed to sleep, and when I woke up, I’d be back in the present.

--

The next morning, I woke with Henry sitting beside me.

“You’re so peaceful when you sleep,” he murmured.

I smacked him in the nose.

I’m still here!

He yelped, holding his face. “God’s wounds! Why?”

“Don’t watch me sleep, creep!”

“Catherine, we’ve slept together before. Why behave like a Catholic virgin now?”

“Not one step closer!” I snapped, storming out.

--

Somehow, over the next weeks, we grew... closer. Not in a fairytale way—he still made me furious, still had that arrogant tilt to his head—but there were moments. Little ones. Shared meals, midnight conspiracies, his hand brushing mine in a way that didn’t feel accidental. Henry stopped parading lovers through the palace, though he denied doing it for me.

It was around then I met Nostradamus—less mystical than I expected, more like your eccentric uncle who always smells faintly of herbs and ink, or prophecy.

“I know you are not my Catherine,” he said before I’d spoken a word.

“Damn, you’re good.”

“Have a seat, Clark.”

That made me like him immediately.

I told him everything. He listened, nodding as if I were merely describing the weather.

“I’ve seen your path. I can help you, if you want to go back.”

“Yes, I do.”

“I already made a draught before you came to me,” he said. “Drink this, sleep in your bed, and you will wake in your own time. But I can only make it once, I’m bound to die in a few days. You only have one chance to do this.”

The vial pulsed warm in my palm, like it had a heartbeat.

And then, just as he foretold, he died.

--

Henry found me one night in the corridor.

“You’ve been avoiding me,” he said.

“You’ve been... everywhere.”

He grinned. “It’s my palace.”

“Right,” I said, walking past him.

But his hand caught mine, warm and calloused. “Catherine, I’m sorry about Nostradamus. I know he meant great deal to you,” he said softly, and I hated that my chest tightened at the words.

“He knew it was his time.” I told him. “He saw it happened.”

“I’m sorry,” he said again, pulling me close. “Let me stay with you tonight.”

“No.”

“Please,” he pleaded. “I’m not going to touch you, I swear.”

--

Weeks passed. The draught stayed hidden in my drawer. Henry and I kept spending time together. That annoying twist in my stomach whenever he drew close had softened into something almost tender.

More and more it was beginning to be difficult to leave him.

It was made even harder when he suddenly got sick—a fever that made his skin too hot and his voice too soft. I stayed by his bed, feeding him broth and listening to him rambling nonsense.

“You’re always the best of them, Catherine,” he said once, eyes half-shut.

“Don’t lie.”

“You never believe me when I tell you I—” He stopped. “I brought them in, one after another. Just to make you care, you know. But you never did.”

“You’re delirious, Henry.”

I might not be the most patient history student, but I knew the story. He never loved Catherine. All these words were just the sickness talking.

“I sent them all away. The women. All those you knew, and those you didn’t.” He squeezed my hand tight. “I sent them all away.”

--

That night I stood on my balcony, holding the draught. The wind tugged at my hair. I thought of my university classes, my half-written assignments. I thought of Henry’s smile when he thought no one was watching.

Clark, you don’t belong here...

Do not waste your chance...

Flee while you can...

Those were the whispers in the wind. As if someone was watching, giving me a warning.

I tipped the vial, let the wind take it.

I stayed.

--

The next morning, the guide called out her name...

“Clark Parker?”

No answer.

Security footage later revealed her lying down on Catherine’s bed. There was a frown on her pale, white face—the kind that said she’d been in a nightmare rather than a sweet dream.

No prince came to wake her. She was cold as death, and so a black knight came instead.

Capitaine Clarence of the gendarmerie was called to the scene. He was new and young, almost distractingly so. Handsome in a way that hinted at quiet intelligence, steady composure, and unshakable calm.

He stood over the girl’s still body, the hush of the ancient chamber pressing in on him. Carefully, he sat on the edge of the bed, leather gloves creaking as he reached out to touch her cold but beautiful face.

“She’s far too young to die,” he murmured, and he could swear he felt the bed shudder slightly.

The other officers shifted uneasily. Clarence straightened, voice firm now.

“Seal the chamber. Cordon the hall. No one enters without my order.”

A caretaker by the door whispered, “It’s happened before, Capitaine. Every seven years, the bed takes someone—sells them a dream... and, strangely, they never seem to wake.”

Clarence’s jaw tightened. “Then why haven’t we heard about all this?”

“We tried. But the one before you didn’t believe it, you see,” he said. “Besides, the foundation running Fontainebleau has refused to close this wing. The tourists—they’re always looking for the bed of the Serpent Queen.”

“Well then, you will shut it now.”

--

Seven years later, another class was herded through the Château de Fontainebleau. Catherine’s room stood locked and sealed, the kind of lock that suggested Very Sensible People had gone to a great deal of trouble to make sure it stayed that way.

“I’ll be right there!” called one girl, who had stopped to tie her shoelaces. (Shoelaces, you see, have a curious habit of coming undone at exactly the wrong time. This may be coincidence. It may not.)

When she looked up again, the door to the forbidden room was standing politely open, as if it had been waiting just for her.