Chapter Nine - A Feta Fête

"THIS CALLS FOR wine!" Cheddy shouts as he dashes down the ladder.

I laugh as he less climbs and more slides before a loud crash is followed by a weak, "I'm okay."

To my delight and surprise, they let me help a little with their cheese-making. I was given the task of stuffing the curd into the molds. And every time Roq's back was turned, Cam would slip in behind me to assist. My arms screamed at me from all the pressing, and my legs and feet from standing on brick for hours, but I couldn't stop smiling. I was helping, finally.

We adjourned upstairs with a box of crackers and a sampler of the cheeses fresh off the shelf. Well, almost all of us. Roq stayed behind to clean up, and I rather doubt he'll be joining us when he's done.

"Tell me, my darling." Cam reaches across me to dip a cracker into the gooey cheese melting off the side of the sizzling hot slate. "What do you think of this?" He places the tip of the cracker against my lips. I take a bite, lost in the creamy butteriness of the cheese.

"It's good," I shout and crumbs spray from my lips.

Smirking, Cam dips another cracker into the melting cheese. Just as he's about to take a bite, he remarks, "You should try it straight from the bull."

"What'd I miss?" Cheddy shouts as he leaps across the floor, a massive wine bottle in hand.

"Just the camembert," Brie chimes in. While Cam is resting on his side partially behind me and I'm leaning back on my elbows, Brie is sitting rod straight.

"Really? I wanted to try that batch. Well, bottom's up!" Cheddy yanks out the cork with his teeth and spits it across the room.

I start to sit up. "I think there's a glass…"

He tips the wine back and takes a long chug.

"Or, never mind."

"Ah." He wipes off his lips. Staring at the bottle, his face crumples and he passes it to Cam.

"A sterling recommendation," Cam says before taking a careful sip. He coughs and shakes his head. "I see. All that time in the dark has sharpened the bite. For you, my lady?" He cups the bottle like he's a sommelier.

Two men have already drank from it. If I do, it'll be like making out with both of them. Um… Ha! I peer up at Cheddy from the side, the man's golden hair beaming, then back to Cam with his hair blacker than night. Feeling giddy at the taboo idea of kissing two men at once, I accept the bottle and take the tiniest sip. Notes of wine with hints of burning overwhelm my palette. I cough and the flames find their way up my nose.

"Wow, that's…that's something," I say and pass the bottle on to Brie. The lithe man puts down his plate then proceeds to chug the whole thing without a care.

"Yeah!" Cheddy collapses to his ass. He scoops half of the remaining cheese onto a single cracker and swallows it whole. "There's my vikingr! Now it's a party!"

Cam shakes back his hair and plucks up a grape. "Wine, cheese, a beautiful woman. What more could a man want?"

"A sturdy lance would be nice."

I gulp at the oversharing of personal information, before realizing the other men aren't reacting. Maybe they all know about Cheddy's lance problem.

A half-forgotten dream punctures through my subconscious from the depths of my depraved mind. One where Brie and Cheddy were ‘assisting' Cam…in bed. Two hands, one lance, and a very happy man.

"Has the wine already flushed your cheeks, my dear?" Cam asks.

I slap a hand to my face to find it blisteringly hot. "Yes. I'm a lightweight."

Cheddy puts down the bottle. "Just like this knight I knew. Sir…Sir… Ah, I don't remember. He'd get two cups into his wine and turn red as a beet. We used to roll him in a barrel down the hill. You know, after the lord put out his candle."

I laugh at the idea. Surely he means he was a knight in a Renaissance Faire, or that Medieval show with horses and turkey legs. He couldn't possibly have been an actual… "Did you mean a real lance?" I cry out.

"Of course. What else would I mean?" Cheddy innocently asks.

My traitorous eyes go right to his crotch where a presumably healthy lance is bulging against his inner thigh. "I didn't, I mean, you're a knight?"

"I was. Or am I still…? I don't know how it works. Been a few centuries since I lifted a sword to defend the realm, or fight off the other knights the lord's brother hired to take all of his stuff." Cheddy hefts up one of the abandoned hammers and swings it around like a weapon.

"That must have been exciting," I proclaim.

"Why?" His face knots in confusion. "Most knighting involved me either sitting around getting drunk with my boys, or menacing people. Lot of menacing, especially in villages."

Everything about Cheddy wouldn't look out of place on a football field or cheering for one on frat row. I try to picture him in armor or with gallant long blond locks flowing behind while he's in full armor on the back of a horse, but all I can see is the man crushing the bottle of wine.

"Ah-hem," Cam coughs. "Chedward, you appear to have finished off our refreshment."

"Oh, sorry. Should I get another? Brie?"

The quiet one lifts a hand and shakes his head.

Cheddy laughs, then leans over toward me. "He's worried he'll get drunk and tell you he likes you."

"I am not," Brie shouts. As I glance over, he turns pink and his gaze bores a hole into the ground.

Cheddy tips closer to Brie and tries to whisper, "Just tell her, bro. What have you got to lose?" I wouldn't have heard him if I wasn't literally between them. With a harried flutter of his hand, Brie dismisses Cheddy then pops a few grapes into his mouth.

Needing to escape this awkwardness, I ask, "Were all of you knights?"

Cam sputters into a full-on laugh. "God no. Only a fool spends his life trapped inside of a tin can."

"It wasn't so bad until the sun hit you then, whew, total bog ass all the way back to the castle."

"Case in point," Cam says.

I slightly twist toward the silent man. "What about you Brie?"

"No," he mumbles, shaking his head. "I wasn't anything like a knight like Ched, or a thief like Cam."

"A thief?" Cam gasps. "Excuse me, I was a highwayman. That's far more romantic than some common thief."

"You…you were?" I stumble, Roq's warning blaring in my head.

"For five glorious years, I stole from the rich…because the poor don't have anything worth taking." He snickers to himself at his joke, before realizing I'm not laughing. "Does my shady past bother you?"

There's no good reason for me to care what he did hundreds of years ago. Anyone he'd stolen from is long dead, so... "No."

"Good. A shame I couldn't know you then. I'd have draped you in rubies and sapphires until you gleamed as bright as your smile."

A nervous grin stretches my cheeks to the breaking point from his unabashed flirting. I've never had anyone give me this much attention. Most men I've dated couldn't muster more than a ‘you up' text as part of their courtship.

"No dresses from Istanbul or silks of the Orient?" Cheddy asks.

Cam cups his chin. His eyes gleam and he licks his lips. "Clothing would only detract from her effervescent beauty."

Needing to change the topic off of me covered in gems and nothing else, I ask, "What, um, what about Roq? Wait, let me guess, he's a prince to a lost kingdom." A laugh slips out. No one laughs back. "Wait? Is he?"

Brie answers softly, "We don't know."

"Monsieur Roquefort prefers to keep his past as private and inaccessible as his charm." Cam scoops up the second slice of cheese from one of the aged cheddar wheels.

"We used to believe Cheddy was the oldest," Brie says.

"How old are you?" I ask.

Cheddy tips his head back and closes his eyes. "I was born in the spring of thirteen seventyish."

"Seventyish?" I ask because thinking about him being over seven hundred years old is breaking my brain.

"Mum wasn't big on dates. Or most of her children. They nearly sold me to the church after my baptism."

"They would do that?" I boggle at the idea, but Cheddy shrugs it off.

"Most families did with an extra son or two. They wound up taking my older brother instead, so I trained to be a knight. Kept food in my belly."

"A shame. I imagine you would have jumpstarted the fall of papal influence long before Martin Luther found a pen," Cam says. Cheddy laughs so hard his entire chest shakes. Then he claps Cam on the back and the man nearly hits the floor.

"Yup." He sits cross-legged before me, wipes a tear from his eye, then asks, "What were we talking about?"

"Brie's life before he became a soft, gooey cheese," Cam says.

"Oh, I know this one," Cheddy declares. He situates himself but doesn't say another word.

"I, uh, I was a clerk," Brie says.

"For a king?" I ask.

"A shipping magnate. He mostly transported livestock, some grain. It was very boring. I'm sorry I told you." Brie starts to scoot away. I strain over and cup his knee.

"I was a clerk too. Okay, my boss wasn't a shipping magnate, more a center that repairs air conditioners. And by clerking I mean I worked in the call center, but…yeah."

Brie glances over his shoulder and his eyes light up. "Really? Is it what you always wanted in life?"

"God no," I cry out. A lightness fills my chest. It was a job I took because I had to have a job. I did it, I pretended to be happy, and I went home. Not once did I think to complain out of fear that what little I did have would vanish overnight. But saying it aloud, telling the world that I didn't want this life, breathes air into my gaping lungs.

With a bright smile, Brie nods fast as if he too is keeping back every buried frustration about his boss. He scoots closer across the floor, causing my hand to slide up his thigh. "If you could do anything, what would—?"

"How, pray tell, did you acquire this curse, Brie the clerk?" Cam asks. "I'm certain the lovely Violette here is bursting to know."

The energy shifts on a dime. Brie's open smile folds up and he stares at his empty plate instead. "There was a shipment I wasn't supposed to open."

"And…"

"I opened it," Brie mumbles. "It was full of cheese. How was I supposed to know taking a bite would…? Never mind."

"The chef tried to shoo me off the piece I ate." Cheddy booms triumphantly. I half expect him to raise his palm for a high-five. "‘For his lordship,' she says. Just sitting there out in the open. Take a nibble and next thing I know I'm waking up bare-arsed in the larder. Gave that scullery maid one hell of a fright. She was trying to carry me to the table to be sliced up for breaking the lord's fast. Next thing she knows, she's got her palm curled around my bum."

Cheddy takes a large bite of the sausage and ruminates, "There are worse ways to wake up."

"Our devoted knight is fair of head and clear of conscience," Cam says. The insults fly right over Cheddy's fair head as he raises the sausage like a tankard.

"Cheers," he cries out then takes a long bite.

This is a lot. They were cursed by eating a mysterious piece of cheese meant for someone else. Oh, and they're somewhere in the range of two to seven hundred years old. I frown and think of Roq. Or it could be even more.

Another thought nibbles on my mind like a famished knight in the kitchen. "And here I thought you all became cheese because you were named after cheese." I start to laugh at the foolish idea, but the men have gone quiet, eyes not meeting mine. "I guess it's lucky that you share the same name as the cheese you turn into?" I can't stop talking, my skin itching at the pressing silence.

"It isn't luck," Brie whispers. I look at him, hoping for more, when Cam takes my hand.

"My lady, we were not christened with these nom de fromages. We adopted them over time."

Both Brie and Cheddy nod along.

"Oh."

How could I be so stupid? Of course, they aren't named after cheese. Who names people after cheese? Well, some people probably. And didn't Puritans name their kids things like Obedience or Dust?

"What are your real names…?" The second I ask, the air freezes. I nervously scratch at my arm without thinking. "Or do you not…it's okay if you don't want to tell me."

"My beauty…" Cam whispers. "It's not that we don't wish to, it's that—"

"We don't know," Cheddy shouts.

"You don't know your own name?"

Brie mumbles, his eyes on the ground. "We don't remember. We retain pieces of our past lives. Where we lived, the faces of our parents." He glances at Cheddy. "Or our friends." For that, he looks to Cam. "But our identities were changed, rewritten, eclipsed until our names vanished like a dream come morning."

"I'm…I'm sorry," I say, uncertain what I'd do if I forgot my name. Though, it'd be nice to lose some of my memories. Quite a few, actually.

"My bella," Cam whispers, "put it from your mind. We have. Right, men?" Despite his insistence, Cheddy and Brie both nervously scratch their faces and refuse to meet his eye.

I need to change the topic, but to what? "How…um, how did you realize you became cheese?"

"When the maid shouts ‘God's wounds, he was cheddar a moment ago!' I started to piece it all together."

"I fell…" Brie whispers from behind his hair, "off of a shelf labeled osten."

The usually crowing voice remains absent. I sit up to catch the bandit's eye. "What about you, Cam? You didn't mention how you became cursed?"

He laughs it off. "A mere trifle in my florid and heart-racing life. The time I dueled a master swordsman who turned out to be swords-woman would be a far more entertaining tale."

"He stole it," Cheddy says. "Nicked it from a carriage bound for a king. You're lucky it only turned you into a cheese. If the knights had caught you…"

"Your kind were long laid fallow in the field, my friend," Cam says, obviously trying to pivot the subject again. "Yes, very well. I too alleviated the cursed cheese from the pantry of a noble who had more than enough to share. You can well imagine my shame of waking naked and cold in the middle of a field without any lustful memories to explain my predicament."

As they all lower their heads and nervously scratch chins or tap their fingers on the floor, my body reacts to the same well of shame. I don't understand the embarrassment, but I can't escape it dragging across the floor like a death shroud. I reach for the first hand I can take.

Cam stops running the little cheese knife across the floor and drops it. He winds his fingers with mine, but won't look up. "You must think we are spineless boys terrified of a switch hitting our buttocks from a single misdeed."

He clasps his other hand over mine and peers into my eyes. "It is not a life for the soft-skinned. We live only for the night, and come dawn slip into an unending terror of never knowing if we'll wake again or some ignorant villager might take a bite."

I full-body flinch at the idea. It hadn't occurred to me that if they are just cheese, helpless and incognizant to the world around them, then nothing can protect them. Nothing but me.

"That's awful. I'm so, so sorry."

"Compassion from a beautiful woman is the true grace of god. But do not sully those enchanting eyes with tears for us. We yet live, and…thanks to Roq's bullheadedness, we shall continue to."

"‘Course our next lord may not be so kind," Cheddy says. "Or pretty." His cheeks flush and he gulps, before giving a little wave my way.

What am I supposed to do? Not sell this place? Just give them the store, head home, and try to explain to my mother why I won't have a five million dollar check? She'd eat me alive.

"I'm sorry," I whisper, my veins on fire because I can't help them.

"Do not cry, Vi," Cheddy says.

"It's not your doing." Brie backs him up. "We did this to ourselves."

"You mean Roq," Cam snarls over the two of them trying to comfort me. Crossing his arms tight, he spits, "He did this to us."

They both pull in a hard breath when a low voice says, "Dawn will be here soon."

Every head swivels up to find Roq standing by the ladder wiping his hands on his apron. He didn't even bother to replace his shirt, just hung the apron over his chiseled muscles. How long was Roq standing there? Did he hear all of that?

If Roq had, he gives no hint. "We should prepare," is all he says.

Brie and Cheddy start to gather up the remains of the meal. Roq watches with a curious eye and asks, "What did you think of the samples?"

"They were good," Brie says.

Roq gives a single grunt and takes a bite of the camembert. His face pinches and he shakes his head. "Far too bitter. You didn't add enough salt, Cam."

Rising to his feet, Cam dusts off his hands then smiles at Roq. "You are our expert on bitter."

That gets a low growl from the man. The tension's sparking so hot I'm uncertain if they'll break into a fight or…something very naughty from my dreams. Either way, I need to get out before I'm caught in the middle of a cheese war.

"I should leave," I say and reach for my purse with my washed, dried, and folded shirt on top. Brie is a whiz with a sink. "I'll bring your shirt back tomorrow, Roq."

He nods as if that's the least of his concerns. Would they all walk around fully naked if I wasn't here? No, don't think about their cheese logs swaying in a circle as they stir the vats of milk.

Great, you're thinking about it.

"I shall escort you," Cam declares, and he sticks his elbow out to me

"Um…" I brush my fingertips over his biceps, doing my best to not notice that he's flexing.

"Why?" Roq snarls.

Cam stares him up and down. "Your chivalry knows no bounds. Come, my lady. Let us leave the knave to stew in his own whey."

Not taking an uncertain maybe for an answer, Cam guides me to the door. He gallantly holds it open while I slip past, then I remember I need to lock up. I juggle for the keys and am about to put one in when he places his hand over the keyhole.

"I'd rather not be trapped outside for the day. I'm afraid my dueling arm isn't what it once was in these modern times."

Stupid. Stupid. I could have gotten him killed. Or…eaten. What if someone took a bite? Would he come back without a leg or… What if half of his chest was gone?

Nodding my thanks for him catching my near fuck up, I start to put the keys away.

They're going to burn. The whole place. A fire will start if you don't turn the lock. Five times. You know it. Do it. Do it!

Cam clamps onto my hand, stopping it from shaking. "Shall we?" he asks, extending his hand outward.

I nod, gritting my teeth to silence the gremlin, but it's found a new fear to taunt me with.

What if someone breaks in and eats them? It'll be all your fault.