Reading Rind Molds

Could the crust of a split cheese tell the truth before the heat of the banquet hall ruined the spores? Mounkoro Danzoui hurried down the stone stairs into his limestone vault, carrying a brass oil lamp in one hand and the heavy wooden case of his measuring tools in the other, eager to scrape the undisturbed mold while its mountain velvet remained intact. Behind him on the cedar sled, hauled through the damp entry tunnel by four sweating watchmen under Bailiff Bounani's seal, lay the two cleaved halves of the five-hundred-pound Solstice wheel with the silver chalice still lodged between them.

The heavy oak door scraped against the flagstones, and the sudden coolness of the cellar wrapped around them like wet linen. Gazelle balked at the threshold, her grey ears flattened back against her neck. She planted all four hooves in the lime dust and refused to yield an inch until Mounkoro set down his case, reached into his tunic, and produced a shriveled dried apple ring. The donkey snapped it up with a wet clatter of teeth, blew warm mist against his forearm, and trotted briskly toward her straw stall in the corner.

"Watch the hinges," Mounkoro told the watchmen. "Set the runners on the cedar bench, not the floor. If the bottom crust weeps whey into the stone dust, the salt line will blur before nightfall."

The men hoisted the sled with muffled grunts, sliding the cedar timbers onto the stout trestles near the central pillar. Once the load settled, they touched their caps to Mounkoro, eyed the dim corners of the cellar with uneasy reverence, and retreated up the stairs to take their guard posts by the street gate, pulling the heavy door shut behind them.

Young Baheri stood by the cold curing tables, his hands tucked beneath his linen apron to hide their trembling. The boy’s face looked bloodless in the tallow light, hollowed out by the shouting in the banquet hall.

"Seventy hours," Baheri whispered, staring at the split wheel on the trestle. "By the third sundown, Old Djemani brings his herdsmen across the ford. If the bailiff cannot clear me by then, they will hang me from the boundary tree."

"Worrying about the rope dulls the edge of your knife, boy," Mounkoro said. He set his oil lamp upon the small inspection desk and unlocked the brass hasp of his tool chest. "Bailiffs look at accusations and men look at grudges. We look at rinds. Bring two clean horn spatulas and the wide brass magnifying glass from the drawer."

Baheri fetched the tools, his wooden clogs clicking sharply on the flags. "Master, everyone in Tissabara saw me deliver the cart at daybreak. I turned the spindle on my family’s press every morning since the spring thaw. How can scraping dust from the skin prove I never touched this devil's curd?"

"Rind is never dust," Mounkoro replied, lifting a heavy horn spatula and approaching the cleaved half where the chalice rested. "A cheese is a living house. The milk takes the pasture, the salt takes the water, and the cellar air weaves the coat."

He leaned close to the convex flank of the great wheel, bringing the lamp flame within three inches of the grey crust. The outer skin was not uniform. Across its wide shoulder, the rind bore a powdery mantle of slate-blue bloom, dusted with fine grey granules that caught the lamp glow with a faint, matte sheen.

Mounkoro held his breath, leaning in until the sour, pungent perfume of aged curd filled his nostrils—sharp goat butter, wet stone, and the unmistakable dry mushroom smell of wild highland mold.

"Look here," Mounkoro said, gesturing with the spatula. "What color blooms on the cheeses in your valley cellar down by the river?"

Baheri squinted through the magnifying glass, holding the brass rim steady with both hands. "Green-yellow. Like wet moss on river birch. Sometimes white if the cellar floods after rain."

"Exactly," Mounkoro said. "The valley Penicillium is fat, yellow-green, and wet. It thrives on warm river fog and milk rich in clover. But this mantle is slate-grey, powdery, and sparse."

With a deft, steady turn of his wrist, Mounkoro scraped a tiny curling shaving of the blue-grey mold from beneath the rim band, catching the delicate flecks upon a polished square of black horn. He carried the horn slide to his workbench, where his brass loupe rested on an iron swivel arm above a tallow mirror.

Mounkoro adjusted the thumbscrew, bringing the magnification down until the powder resolved into tiny branching tufts, like miniature winter thorns tipped with microscopic round heads.

For thirty years, Mounkoro had mapped the molds of Oued-Bara upon calfskin scrolls, cataloging every fungal family that drifted from the northern peaks down to the southern marshes. He reached up to the high shelf, pulled down a rolled calfskin tied with hemp twine, and spread it across the tabletop. The chart was covered in neat ink columns recording altitude lines, humidity percentages, and spore forms observed across forty separate dairy vaults.

"Look at the branching," Mounkoro said, tapping the loupe rim.

Baheri leaned over the eyepiece. He blinked once, then drew back. "The heads are clustered like pine cones. They do not fan out like river bloom."

"They cannot fan out," Mounkoro explained, lifting his brass calipers from the case. "Down in the valley, where your family presses cheese at four hundred paces above the plains, the humidity is rich and the air is heavy. Spores open wide and grow thick carpets within ten days. But up past fourteen hundred paces, near the dwarf juniper crags where the night frosts linger into June, the air is thin and bitterly dry. The fungus starves for moisture. To survive, it clusters tight, draws its skin close, and produces that slate-colored wax to seal its pores."

He turned back to the wheel on the trestle and set the fine points of his brass calipers against the thickness of the rind along the upper shoulder. With gentle pressure, he pinched the hardened crust between the caliper jaws, slid the brass collar, and read the scratched scale against the ruler.

"One line and three quarters," Mounkoro muttered.

"Is that thick or thin?" Baheri asked, leaning forward so quickly he nearly upset the lamp.

"For ninety days in a lowland cellar, it would be four lines deep," Mounkoro said, tapping the ruler against the wood. "A damp cellar builds rind fast, because the mites and surface yeasts feed without hardship. A crust this dense and thin, carrying this specific thorn-headed mold, requires three months in a vault where the temperature never rises above six degrees and the altitude sits above sixteen hundred paces."

Baheri caught his breath, his eyes widening. "Sixteen hundred paces? Master, my family’s farm sits on the bottom loam of the valley! Our press is barely five hundred paces up the foothills. We have never pressed a wheel above the goat meadows!"

"I know where your farm sits," Mounkoro said. "And the mold knows it as well. The curd of this champion wheel never spent a single night in your barn. It bloomed where snow stays on the scree until midsummer."

Baheri dropped down onto the cedar bench beside the sled, buried his face in his rough woolen sleeves, and let out a broken, shuddering sob of relief. The terror that had choked him since the wire hit silver on the banquet dais seemed to drain through his boots into the stone floor.

Gazelle lifted her head from the mangers at the sound, took two slow steps across the cellar, and gave Baheri a hard, indifferent nudge with her velvet snout, checking his empty hands for another apple before snorting in disappointment and turning back to her hay.

Mounkoro wiped the horn slide clean with a piece of flannel, his face calm and serious as he watched the boy recover.

"Do not spend all your breath weeping yet, Baheri," Mounkoro said quietly, returning the calipers to their velvet-lined box.

Baheri looked up, rubbing his wind-chapped cheeks with the back of his hand. "Master Mounkoro, the mold proves I could not have cured it! Bailiff Bounani will see the charts. The bailiff is an honest officer—he will tell Elder Djemani the truth!"

"The bailiff will see the charts, and he will agree the cheese did not cure in your cellar," Mounkoro said. He rested his heavy hand on the top of the cleaved wheel, feeling the stubborn chill rising from the dense interior paste. "That frees your neck from the noose, which is a very good beginning. But it leaves a darker question for both cantons."

Baheri stood up slowly, looking from Mounkoro to the mountain of curd. "What question?"

"A five-hundred-pound wheel cannot walk on its own hooves," Mounkoro said. "Someone carried this monster down from the high crags, switched it for your festival cheese on the lower road, and brought it into Tissabara without making a sound. Until we find who owns that press in the clouds, the peace between the valleys is still hanging by a thread."