All the letters — they would have made a snowstorm — began with Your Excellency . . . Sarah always wrote them by hand, with a fountain pen, taking particular care with the flourishes: the sensuous Ps, the loopy I’s, the trailing lace flounces on the Y’s. Your Excellency: It has come to my attention that contrary to Article XXIII, Clause 6, subsection iv of your own Constitution . . .

Her lips were bitten to a bruised purple as she wrote. Also — and this was beginning to be a problem — she had to sit on her bed with the goose-down quilt pulled up to her armpits.