He turned it in, expecting a zero.

“There’s no mark scheme for this,” Hendricks said, almost to himself. “But Peter Moss would have given you an A.”

Leo smiled. He took out his pen, and for the first time, he wrote back.

His own history lessons were a grey drizzle of photocopied worksheets and multiple-choice quizzes about the agricultural revolution. Dates fell like dead leaves. But Peter Moss’s book was different. The pages were thin as onion skin, smelling of vanilla and forgotten libraries. And Peter Moss, whoever he was, talked .

Leo flipped to a random page, Chapter Four: Did the Roman Conquest Change Anything? Moss didn’t just list forts and roads. He asked questions in the margins. Imagine you are a Celtic farmer. One morning, a Roman legionnaire eats your breakfast. What do you do? Leo’s own teacher, Mr. Hendricks, would have called that “unproductive speculation.” Moss called it history.