Curatrix For Budding Chaucerphiles
Part I: The Queen of the Stacks
The library of St. Jude’s Preparatory Academy was a cavernous sanctuary of aged mahogany, whispering shadows, and the distinct, intoxicating aroma of vanilla-scented decaying vellum. But on Tuesday afternoons, the dust motes dancing in the slanted shafts of autumn sunlight were utterly upstaged. Ms. Rowena was holding court.
She presided over the school’s book room like a reincarnation of Helen of Troy—if Helen had a penchant for horn-rimmed glasses, perused literature practicums in six-inch stilettos, and wore clingy, emerald-green evening gowns that defied the very concept of a dress code. She was the undisputed Queen of Pentacles, an enigma wrapped in silk and surrounded by the Dewey Decimal System.
Crouched behind the biography section, Julian and Leo—eighteen-year-old seniors, self-proclaimed literary sleuths, and full-time troublemakers—watched in awed fascination.
Ms. Rowena was currently tending to a first edition of The Canterbury Tales. She didn’t use a rag or a feather duster. Instead, she leaned over the heavy oak table, letting her magnificent, unruly bonfire of spun-copper hair sweep across the opened pages. Her flaming tresses licked the ancient words, brushing away the centuries of grit with a sensual, rhythmic sway.
Julian, unable to contain his mischievous curiosity, stepped out from behind the biographies, leaning casually against a wooden pillar.
“Ms. Rowena,” Julian began, his voice dripping with playful skepticism, “doesn’t your hair collect a rather ungodly amount of dust from brushing those old books? I mean, surely they make Swiffers for a reason.”
Ms. Rowena didn’t startle. She slowly stood up, smoothing the front of her clingy gown, her amber eyes sparkling behind her thick lenses.
“It is my way of worshipping the authors, Julian,” she said, her voice a velvety purr that echoed off the high ceiling. “I think they would be honored to be dusted by something alive, rather than a piece of synthetic plastic.”
Leo emerged from the stacks, grinning wolfishly. “If you say so, Ms. Rowena. But I sincerely doubt that making your hair into a human dust broom ever crossed Geoffrey Chaucer’s mind as a form of adulation.”
“Oh, ye of little faith,” she replied, picking up a stack of due date cards. “They would be tickled pink at the prospect of a librarian giving their life’s work her own, highly personal touch.”
To emphasize her point, she lifted a due date card, pressed her lips together, and stamped a perfect, crimson, strawberry-scented kiss right next to the NOV 14 stamp. She slid the card into the pocket of the book and slid it across the circulation desk toward Leo.
Leo caught the book, staring at the lipstick print with a theatrical sigh. “You know, Ms. Rowena, your lipstick prints on the due date cards do appeal to my profound sense of logic. And, I must admit, it definitely adds an intimate touch to my otherwise sterile library experience. But what on earth gave you the idea? Is this standard procedure in library science?”
“It is Valentine’s Day every day in the realm of literature,” she answered smoothly, leaning her elbows on the desk. “Isn’t that enough of a reason?”
“Well, I guess,” Leo chuckled, tapping the strawberry print. “It does add a certain… dimension. You really are onto something here. It’s certainly a compelling incentive to keep checking out books and, heaven forbid, actually reading them.”
Ms. Rowena’s lips curved into a knowing smile. “You have an inquiring mind, Leo. And your unabashed interest in my feminine ways appeals to my sense of humor. So, keep asking those questions. I will always have answers to feed your blossoming, if slightly dramatic, masculinity.”
Part II: The Chaucer Conundrum
The boys took her words as a direct challenge. If Ms. Rowena was the immovable object of literary purity, they would be the unstoppable force of eighteen-year-old hormonal curiosity.
Over the next few weeks, she puzzled over the inordinate amount of reference inquiries from the senior boys. She chalked it off to the natural curiosity of budding scholars, yet there were so many hyper-specific questions regarding Shakespearean double entendres that it occasionally made her gasp. They scoured the pages of Ovid’s Amores, seeking the strange, ancient desires that stirred their teenage hearts, all leading up to the ultimate ambush.
It was a rainy Thursday when Julian approached the desk, dragging a massive, heavily annotated volume of Chaucer. He looked like a cat who had just cornered a very plump canary.
“Ms. Rowena,” Julian said, his eyes practically dancing with mischief. “I require your expert, scholarly assistance.”
“Always at your service, Julian. What has stumped you today?”
“Well, I’m reading the prologue to the Wife of Bath’s Tale,” he said, feigning deep academic confusion. “And I simply cannot wrap my head around a certain metaphor. What exactly does Chaucer mean when the Wife of Bath says, ‘And yet in bacon hadde I nevere delit’?”
Leo materialized beside Julian, nodding solemnly. “Yes, Ms. Rowena. It’s a very perplexing
breakfast reference.”
Ms. Rowena didn’t miss a beat. She adjusted her horn-rimmed glasses, her face a mask of absolute, serene professionalism.
“Oh, my dear boys,” she said, her tone dripping with faux-maternal sweetness. “He simply means the bacon at the local grocery store. It was entirely past its expiration date, and as a woman of refined tastes, she naturally found no delight in spoiled meat.”
Julian stared at her, his jaw dropping a fraction of an inch before he burst into a fit of suppressed laughter. “Did they… did they have grocery stores with FDA-approved expiration dates back in the 14th century?”
“They were very ahead of their time in Bath,” she replied without blinking.
“Fascinating,” Leo chimed in, leaning closer. “A real historical revelation. But it gets more confusing. Why does she then go on to boast, ‘And trewely, as myne housbondes tolde me, I hadde the best quonyam myghte be’?”
The boys held their breath, waiting for the blush, waiting for her to finally crack under the
weight of the Middle English scandal.
Ms. Rowena sighed softly, resting her chin on her hands. “She is, of course, referring to agriculture.”
“Agriculture?” Julian choked out.
“Indeed. She is referring to the prize-winning yam she grew in her garden. It won a blue ribbon at the county fair. Her husbands were incredibly proud of her gardening skills. Quonyam is a very rare, old English dialect word for a root vegetable of exceptional girth.”
Julian and Leo erupted into laughter, leaning against the circulation desk for support. Ms. Rowena merely smiled, a fiery gaze shooting across the desk, entirely unbothered by her own magnificent lies.
“Ms. Rowena,” Leo wheezed, “you are blushing. Am I embarrassing you with my deep dive into medieval root vegetables?”
“Not at all,” she purred. “Your passion for learning is a profoundly good thing. I must confess, the hidden meanings that fascinate you are a bit risqué. But I am the woman for the job. Keep asking. Just be prepared for the harvest.”
Julian leaned across the mahogany, fluttering a hand over his heart with exaggerated apprehension. “And what sort of harvest are we talking about? Be honest, Ms. Rowena. If I keep asking such delightfully ribald questions about our dear friend Chaucer, are you going to punish me by paddling my derriere?”
Ms. Rowena let out a low, velvety chuckle that seemed to vibrate straight through the stacks. “No, Julian. That is for your mother to do. I can handle you with much more effective methods here in my domain.”
“But wouldn’t a bit of fire to my bottom be much more effective?” Julian countered, arching an eyebrow and practically glowing with impish delight.
“Not at all,” she replied, picking up her date stamp and examining it with lethal calm. “In fact, I think it would merely have the effect of stoking the flames of your curiosity.”
Julian let out a theatrical sigh, clutching his chest. “But Ms. Rowena, Sister Alexa’s golden rule is spare the strap, spoil the schoolboy. Are you really going to let us spoil?”
Rowena arched a perfectly sculpted eyebrow. “Alas, I am but a gentle kitchen witch. The only thing I have any desire to slap is a fresh ball of pizza dough—no matter how desperately you boys beg for my wrath.”
Leo leaned in, his grin audacious. “Come on, confess. Did you ever end up on the wrong end of a strap when you were an unruly teenager?”
Rowena leveled him with a glittering gaze that could melt lead. “Oh, darling. You boys don’t even have the proper knives and forks for me to entertain serving up that particular slice of history.”
Julian leaned even closer, dropping his voice into a theatrical whisper. “Then how do you propose to handle me?”
A wicked, triumphant smile curled the edges of Ms. Rowena’s ruby lips. “Oh, I have tricks up my skirt that you couldn’t possibly imagine. But you will find out soon enough exactly how I will handle you.”
Part III: Sundaes and Sweet Rewards
Despite her ironclad composure, Ms. Rowena privately pondered the wisdom of putting unabridged Chaucer on the senior reading list. Her suspicions were confirmed when the lads submitted their extra-credit essays.
She sat at her desk after hours, her stilettos kicked off, reading papers filled with elaborate, barely-veiled “Chaucerian lessons” on how to please women in bed. They were cheeky, audacious, and hilariously misguided. Yet, their fixation on her bonfire lipstick and their relentless teasing told her of a genuine, albeit chaotic, need to understand the sensual, romantic side of the world before they were thrust into it.
The next day, she handed the graded essays back. Julian eagerly flipped to the back page of his report, finding an A- and a particularly large, strawberry-scented lipstick print.
“I hope my book report wasn’t swoon material for you, Ms. Rowena,” Julian said, leaning over the desk with a swagger that only an eighteen-year-old boy in a blazer could muster. “But I must admit, it was written entirely with you in mind.”
Ms. Rowena placed a hand over her heart in mock scandal. “Please, Julian, don’t say that. I would never incite a pupil to arouse his librarian. That violates several union bylaws. My only intention is to introduce you to literature that might not be on the standard, dusty library bookshelves.”
“Oh, it’s not dusty,” Leo said, joining the fray. “Thanks to your hair.”
She pointed a perfectly manicured finger at him. “Cheeky. But, if you must get all hot and bothered by your books, surely there can be no harm in encountering new ideas.”
“The fresh ideas,” Julian said smoothly, “are as delicious as ice cream.”
“Is that so?” Ms. Rowena tilted her head, her eyes flashing dangerously behind her lenses. “Maybe I should start handing out sundaes as a reward for good peer reviews. With a cherry on top, perhaps? Does that suit your highly refined literary tastes?”
Leo grinned, his eyes trailing down to the hem of her clingy gown before snapping back up to her face, caught in his own in flagrante delicto gaze. “Well, to be perfectly honest, as long as you keep up your sugar kisses on the due date cards, I will be a very happy boy.”
She turned away to shelve a cart of books, fully aware that her derriere was now his domain. She knew the peepers felt they had earned the prize of her sweet silhouette, warming them as deserved by their prying, mischievous spying. Let them look, she thought. Her lipstick embers were incinerating the hemp that bound them to childhood innocence, and if a little glamour made them read the classics, it was a price she was willing to pay.
Part IV: The Modernist Deflection
A week later, the boys swaggered into the library, ready for their next round of literary sparring. But when they checked the bulletin board for the new extra-credit reading list, their faces fell.
Julian marched up to the desk, a piece of paper waving in his hand like a flag of surrender.
“Hey, Ms. Rowena,” he said, his voice laced with tragic betrayal. “I notice you’ve completely changed the book reports for the new semester.”
“Have I?” she asked innocently, clicking a ballpoint pen.
“Yes! Notably, you’ve added a couple of women whom I’ve never even heard of. Virginia Woolf? Gertrude Stein? I browsed them in the stacks just now, and let me tell you, they aren’t nearly as interesting as the spicy parts of The Canterbury Tales. Where is the drama? Where is the… the quonyam?”
Leo nodded vigorously. “It’s practically a travesty. A Room of One’s Own doesn’t have a single blue-ribbon root vegetable in it. Why the sudden change in curriculum?”
Ms. Rowena stood up, towering over them in her stilettos, a triumphant smirk playing on her lips. She leaned over the desk, her voice dropping into a conspiratorial whisper.
“I thought you all needed an understanding of gender that isn’t solely focused on the ribald and the scandalous,” she explained. “Trust me, boys, there is far more to the dynamic between men and women than what you find in medieval taverns. Your future spouses will thank me for introducing you to non-traditional gender roles. You need to learn how to think, not just how to blush.”
Julian clutched his chest. “Are you punishing us? Will you blacklist my favorite books? Are you casting out the spicy spirits of the library?”
“Of course not,” she laughed, a bright, melodic sound that echoed through the mahogany shelves. “They are your bedside companions now. How could I ever take them away from you?”
“So you aren’t going full censor on us?” Leo asked, narrowing his eyes playfully. “You cast out the censor spirits?”
“Leo, darling,” Ms. Rowena said, sweeping her fiery hair over her shoulder in a singular, dramatic gesture, “I’d burn my bra before I ever burned a book.”
The boys stared, momentarily stunned into absolute silence.
She offered them both a radiant, lipstick-stained smile. “Besides, you don’t need the physical books to keep you warm at night. The inked characters you’ve read on these pages will follow you into your dreams, right where first love blossoms. Now, get out of my sight and go read some Gertrude Stein before I assign you a thousand-word essay on the feminist undertones of a rose being a rose being a rose.”
Defeated, but entirely charmed, the boys backed away, bowing playfully to the Queen of Pentacles before retreating into the stacks. Ms. Rowena watched them go, shook her head with a fond sigh, and went back to dusting the poetry section with her burning, brilliant hair.
