How it opens
You were born Pisistratus Caxton, named for a Greek nobody in the county could pronounce, and the county revenged itself by calling you Sissy.
Your father, Austin Caxton, had retired at thirty from the world into a book, and the book was the great work of his life, the Science of History, in nine projected volumes.
One does not write history, Pisistratus. One lays siege to it. The first volume is the trenches, and I have dug eleven years.
Choose
Sit under the table and look up at your father through the leaves.
Ask him, at six, what history is for.
Take the quill from the inkstand and add a line to the manuscript.