Chapter Twenty-One - Pecorino Romano Pecker

"SUMER IS ICUMEN in, lhude sing cuccu." Cheddy's infectious baritone echoes across every brick in the room. I don't have a clue what he's singing, but his cheeks are rosy and his eyes tight as he pulls up on a handle for a machine that looks like a cheese torture device. Cloth dangles over the sides like a bridal veil.

"Growet sed and…" Cheddy's voice strains as he hefts up a pail filled with water. "…blowet med. Ah." He hangs the bucket from the farthest notch on the handle, then he places his hands on his waist and sings out, "and springt te wde nu. Sing cuccu. Oh hi, Vi."

I'd been doing my best to keep out of everyone's way while the cheese cultures itself. Brie let me help clean a little before he was ordered to do something else by Roq. Cam kept drifting in and out, always offering me a nibble of his cheese despite him having none in his hand. But then he too was sent up to help clean and organize the store for Tuesday. It left him grumbling about how Roq was just trying to keep me all to himself while I followed the strange song from the back of the cellar.

Accepting I've been found out, I say, "I didn't know you could sing."

"All knights can."

"Is it part of knight training between jousting, sword fighting, and dragon slaying?"

Cheddy laughs and wipes his hands off on a mess of cheesecloth. "Not exactly. We pick it up, long roads, bawdy taverns with bawdier women. If you don't sing, you're worth less than a squire."

"I didn't, um, recognize your song?"

"It's old. My mum loved it. She'd sing it every planting season, harvest, winter. Sometimes summer too." He smiles wide at the thought, but his hands clench the cloth like he intends to strangle it.

"Are you…?" My eyes dart to the way he's twisted the cloth up in a near knot, then back to him. "Okay?"

"Hmm? Oh, yes. Why?" He blinks and follows my gaze to the cloth. "Just prepping another round of cheesecloth." He folds it in half, pulls a knife from his boot, and slits the cloth in half. "Got to keep moving. You know how it is."

I do?

"We need another two wheels of cheddar from the stores. Can you handle that, Cheddy?"

"I'm on it." He moves to salute with the knife in his hand. Luckily, the flat part bounces off of his forehead. After slipping the blade back into his boot, Cheddy faces the wall hiding the mystery vault. "Um, can you…?"

Sighing, I put my hands over my eyes and turn away.

"It's nothing personal. Roq's just paranoid after what happened in… Ah! You can look now."

Happened where? Was this the Marseilles incident? I want to ask so badly I can taste it, but the hulking shadow in the chair keeps me quiet. Maybe if I ask Cheddy instead he could spill the secret without even knowing.

Whistling the same old song, Cheddy slips down the barely lit alleys between shelves of cheese piled on top of each other. I chase after, trying to keep up. Cold air stings my naked back and arms. Rubbing them for warmth, I stop beside Cheddy as he pries up a shelf to reach for a wheel of cheese.

The scent is nearly overwhelming, not pungent, but not exactly roses either. I'm not sure if I want to cover my nose or breathe deeper. He tucks one wheel under his arm, then reaches for a second. All those bulging muscles dotted with freezing sweat cause me to pull hair out of my ponytail and curl it around my finger.

He's working without end, not even pausing to take a break. They all are.

"What did you mean back there?" I ask.

"Oh, Roq's not so bad once you get to know him," Cheddy says. He places the two exhumed wheels onto a small table, then lowers the shelf to squish down the remaining stock below. "He's just very private. Which I guess makes it hard to get to know him."

"I meant when you said that I understand why you work so hard. Or without end."

"I did?" He reaches for the cheese wheels but stops to stare at me.

"Not in those words, but you implied that I also work to keep moving. I think."

"Wow. I didn't know I could imply. Here I thought my darning was awful."

"What?" I shake my head, fearing I'm losing my mind. "It isn't about sewing, it's…"

The goofy man crosses his arms and leans back against the table. "Do you really wish to speak of this?"

"Yes," I cry out, before a sense of dread squelches in my stomach. "I think so?"

The words I've been dreading for two weeks fall from his lips. "The way you lock the shop…"

"It's not—" I race to stop him, but it's too late.

"You get the voices."

Oh god. They're going to think I'm possessed. That I'm crazy and can't control myself. Okay, I can't control myself, that's the whole point of the diagnosis. I so badly want to tell him that he's imagining it. But where will that get me? They'll start watching, start counting just like I do, to prove I'm a liar.

"Do…?" I lower my voice and lock my fingers together in a self-prayer. "Do you?"

He shakes his head and my heart drops. For a second, I hoped… No. No one's haunted by a gremlin living in their head. I'm special that way.

"I knew a knight though who had to pray four times facing the four directions. If he didn't, he said he'd be shot by an arrow. Before battles, he'd do it four or five times, always in sets of fours. ‘Blessed Mary, protect me from…' And so on."

A knight from long ago had OCD? My mother blamed it on cell phone towers, microwaves, too much sugar—all things a medieval knight wouldn't have had. "What, um…what happened to him?"

"Joined the church. I guess that religious fervor served him well. Last I'd heard he made it to bishop before I was cheeseified."

A bishop implied a man of means and respect. People had to see it, to understand, and maybe even respect him.

"Everyone else in the retinue thought he was a pompous ass, flailing his piety around to impress the Lord. But he'd do it in the middle of the night. Sneak out to take a piss, drop to his knees, and I wondered why."

They saw it. Everyone always sees it. Doesn't matter how hard I…how hard he tried to hide it. They still found out.

"I try to stop," I cry out. "I really do. Locks, they're the worst. Sometimes, in the kitchen, I wash my hands five times after handling meat. But the voices are always there telling me if I don't lock up, if I don't do it enough then…" Oh no. All of that slipped from my lips. I touch them as if I can reel back in the damning words. "I'm sorry."

"What for?" Cheddy asks, hurling me for a loop.

"For being wrong?"

"You're not wrong." He tips back and openly stares down my body. "You're real right from where I'm standing."

"That's, um…" I boil under my apron—the apron with nothing but my underwear on underneath. That reminder causes me to gulp just as Cheddy leans clear over me. He slaps a palm to the wall so his grinning face is almost on mine.

"If I said you were beautiful would you take up arms against me?" he whispers.

My body reads all of his intentions, then my ears filter his words. "What?"

"I want to—"

"Roq's asking for you, Violette." Brie comes out of the dark to tell me.

"—fuck you!" Cheddy shouts, undeterred by the arrival of one of his friends. "Hey, Brie."

"Hi. So, should I tell him…?" Brie waves a hand out to the main room.

Placing a hand on Cheddy's heaving and scarred chest, I tell Brie, "I'm coming." Then I stare into Cheddy's eyes. "You'll have to wait." I give the tiniest of pushes, and he stumbles back looking half drunk.

"Awe, but I'm bad at that," he complains as I slip after Brie to find Roq and Cam both staring at the vats.

"It's fine," Cam says.

"No, it's off by… Look at this!" Roq shakes a tiny strip of colored paper in front of Cam's eyes. The man's response is to roll them and sigh. At my arrival, Roq spins around. "Where were you? The milk is—"

"Fine," Cam interrupts. "It's good. Ready to go. For god's sake man, not everything needs to be perfect."

That's clearly not what Roq wants to hear. He snarls and hurls the tiny paper at the wall where it sticks to a brick. "You are—"

"Petulant? Capricious? Slippery? Indolent?"

Roq snorts and turns away. "Exhausting," he says, before honing in on me. "You. Violette." His tone softens with my name, and he picks up a small bottle. "The next stage is the rennet. This will bind the milk together to help create curd. Please add all of this into that vat."

"Okay. Rennet. What is rennet?" I take the bottle and climb up my little step stool.

"Here it comes." Cam leans his ass against a table as Roq launches into a dissertation on rennet, where it comes from, how it works, and the amounts needed for a multitude of varying cheeses. It goes on for so long the words slip from my brain. I keep nodding, hoping he'll stop, but Roq's in his own world. At least he looks happy there.

He's so excited to talk about the right rennet ratio, his glasses start to fog up. I'm trying to remember what he last said when he stops and looks at me. Oh no. Was it a question? Getting nervous, my body tries to relax as if that will save me.

Just as I'm about to rest my elbow on the lip of the vat, Roq grabs my whole arm. "Don't disturb the rennet. One small shake could ruin the entire batch."

"Okay," I mumble, my legs quivering so badly the three stairs grow into a million. "Can someone get me down?"

"Gladly." Cam glides in past Roq and scoops his arms around my waist. Like a gentleman helping a lady from her coach, he hefts me up and carries me across the room to one of the tables. I land next to a pile of the metal molds left drying. At least there's no chance of me accidentally hitting the vat from here.

"How long do we have to wait for the rennet?" I ask.

"Another hour," Roq answers. He drags his chair over, sits down, and stares at the vats. "I have to protect them from these fools."

"These fools don't much care what you're going to do with your milk." Cam sweeps his palm over my shoulder and toys with the back of the apron behind my neck. "We have our own tall cool glass to delight us."

At first, he teases my ponytail with an ornery flip. Then his palm trails down the right side of the apron. Almost like an accident, his fingers dip below the heavy canvas to trace around my breast hidden only by my bra. "Whatever shall we do for an hour?" Cam asks.

"Not work," Roq says.

"Love what you do and you never have to work a day in your life," Cam jokes. He draws the tip of his tongue up my neck and breathes in my ear. "And there's nothing I love more than doing you."

It's cheesy sure, but my panties flood at his voice rumbling in my ear. Cam hooks his finger under my jaw and turns me to his lips. Just as I kiss him, another hand sweeps around from behind. This one reaches right under the apron to hold my stomach.

I start to lean back, never expecting for the fingers to glide down, then flit right over my panties. "Umph," Cheddy moans. "She's soaked through."

"Chedward, there is a dance to this and you've jumped ahead to the rumba."

"So?" he says with a shrug and starts to finger me over my underwear. My legs part on their own and I tip back against his chest.

"Brie?" Cam calls to the one left standing by the sink. "Or do you still have chores to bother with?"

"No, I'm…I'm free." He says scampering over.

"Perfect. Shall we?" Cam asks.

Shall they what? Damn it, it's so hard to think with Cheddy's vigorous worship of my clit. I stare from a grinning Cam to a shy Brie, struggling to understand.

Three. He means for all three of them and me…at once?

"Oh, fuck!"

Cheddy's wild finger manages to slide under the edge of my panties and go full Hitachi on my clit.

Cam claps Brie on the shoulder with a great smile. "You're up to plate first, slugger."

What? I try to sit up, but Cheddy catches my arms and pulls me back. I land on the table with my legs dangling off of the floor and find myself staring up at Cheddy's chubby.

"What are you going to do to me?" I ask.

Cheddy stretches a line of cheesecloth between his hands and laughs. "Whatever you want."