“Brother Tomasso,” Bayard greeted him warmly. “Thank you for accommodating us.”
As the group gathered, Minerva noticed several passengers looking around nervously, whispering to each other.
“Do you think this is where the final heist will go down?” someone murmured.
“I don’t know. The Culture Vulture has been quiet since Switzerland,” another passenger replied.
“Right. So surely they’ll strike at the final stop?” the first passenger argued.
“I heard they’re only targeting the most precious and rare Yule cheeses,” a third person added, raising her eyebrows. She lowered her voice to a near whisper, “and you know how sacred Parmesan is here.”
Brother Tomasso looked puzzled. “Strike? Is something wrong?”
Bayard and Exandra exchanged a worried glance.
“Perhaps,” Bayard said, “we should address a small matter before we begin the tour.”
He moved to the front of the group, Exandra beside him.
“We have an announcement to make,” Bayard said. “Over the past two weeks, we’ve been hearing rumors about incidents occurring at various fromageries. Rumors of sabotage, threats to production. I want you all to know that you don’t need to worry. The case has been definitively resolved.”
A collective gasp rose from the group. Brother Tomasso held a hand to his chest.
“What does that even mean?” one of the passengers asked.
“The perpetrator has been apprehended,” Exandra added, her voice firm and official. “There is no longer any threat to any of the facilities we’ve visited or to Yule cheese production as a whole.”
“Wait. Are you saying you caught the Culture Vulture?” Wren asked, her camera already up.
“The situation has been... handled,” Bayard said carefully. “You can all enjoy the rest of the tour without any concerns about sabotage or danger.”
But instead of relief, a wave of vague disappointment rippled through the group.
“Oh, okay then…” someone said. “That’s—good, I suppose?”
“I was rather hoping for one more final incident,” another passenger admitted. “Not that I want anyone to get hurt, of course, but the mystery was exciting.”
“Most exciting part of the cruise, honestly,” a third person agreed. “I mean, I do love cheese, but there’s only so many mold cultures that I can keep straight in my head.”
“I’m lactose intolerant and I was still having a blast on this cruise!” announced another passenger.
Minerva watched Bayard and Exandra’s faces carefully. They were both clearly gobsmacked by the passengers’ reactions, and unsure what to say.
“Well,” Brother Tomasso said, diplomatically ignoring the group’s disappointment, “perhaps we can still provide you all with some excitement about the magnificence of our sacred Parmesano? Come, let me show you something truly special.”
Brother Tomasso ledthem through the monastery’s original corridors, past thick stone walls that had stood for nine hundred years, and into the monk’s aging caves.
They smelled the Parmesan wheels before they saw them. The scent was rich, complex, slightly sweet. Then they rounded the corner and gasped. The stacked shelves stretched three stories up to the vaulted ceiling where fans circulated and the air. It was the most cheese any of them had seen in one place on the entire tour. There had to be at least a thousand wheels of Parmigiano-Reggiano, aging on the wooden shelves. Each one was marked with the official consortium stamp.
“Those wheels are larger than the tires on my motorbike,” Wren whispered to Jasper. “I wonder what they weigh?”
“These wheels,” Brother Tomasso explained, “weigh approximately eighty-five pounds each. They must age for a minimum of twelve months, but our Yule wheels age for thirty-six months. Three full years of patient waiting, of extra accumulated blessings.”
If anyone noticed that the monk refrained from using the word “magic,” they did not mention it.
Next Brother Tomasso led them to a special chamber where a single wheel sat on a raised platform, marked with gold leaf and runes.
“This is one of our Yule wheels for the current Yule season,” he said reverently. “Made from the milk of our monastery cows, aged for exactly three years to the day, and ready to be broken open tonight for the first time. The first grating of a newly cracked wheel of our special Yule Parmigiano-Reggiano is called ‘the angel’s snow’. When it is served over the feast on the Yule table, it brings blessings of abundance to all for the coming year.”
