I feel ashamed of losing control with that young beggar. I head for Beckles Willson, the one book that never fails to salve my heart. Here’s the very bookmark I placed last year, made of foil from a square of orange-flavoured chocolate.

Oh, my dear, lovely page 411 where I behold the image of George Warde. The picture lacks his robust force, but what painting can possibly contain it?

This fragile old book was written before a soul questioned my efforts to win North America for England. If my fingers sneak toward paragraphs that praise me, surely the librarian nearby on her stepladder, changing a bulb over Robert Louis Stevenson, will pay no heed.

Dearest George, you never married until you were past fifty. What soldier can keep house or family on what we earned then? Who would wait decades for us to return home? No woman would endure it—this we understood.

How strange I find it now that the things we kept secret nibble at the edges of historical record. But other things I want emblazoned across the pages have been completely suppressed.

I wait for the librarian to descend her ladder. I try not to appear impatient. She ducks behind her desk to retrieve a sandwich and is about to leave a sign on the desk when I venture, “Might you please be so kind as to remind me how to find the London Gazette for the summer of 1759?”

I’ve looked at the Gazette before and know what I’ll find. But I feel compelled to check again. I need to see if anyone has reinstated what my prime minister excised from my reports for fear of disturbing Britons with my cruelty.

The light the librarian changed continues to malfunction, flickering.

The Gazette of August 1759 has not miraculously altered to contain the censored details of my Quebec campaign.

Things of which I was proud continue to cause national shame.

Meanwhile, a wrecked denizen by the window intensifies his snoring. His feet smell like blue cheese. This brings on my old melancholia, and I glance for salvation out the window.

All save one pedestrian appear to have agreed on sporting navy blue or black. One man emerges from the drab parade.

I recognize his bright yellow sweater, chartreuse trousers, his every garment yellow or golden. He is the blind man I’ve seen in the showers at the Guy-Favreau YMCA pool. This man gleams like a sun drawn by a child with a yellow crayon.

There’s something odd about the way he hurries east on Saint Catherine—something that won’t align with logic. Is he missing something, or has some new power been added to him? Some magnificent strength that I can’t pinpoint. Has his brightness seduced me? Or do I need only to escape history’s dusty shelves?

I rise off my sorry butt and follow the Yellow Man.

Part II: Blue Man

11 The Hag

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 5.

NIGHT.

Mont Royal. Montreal, Quebec