5
Adelaida was as good as her word. She took Derzhava in their own pavilion, which was not a soldier’s tent. It was a fairy-tale fancy of star-studded, navy-colored drapery hung over ornate stakes with fine carvings of leaves and flowers. Even the lanterns were made of iron wrought into wild shapes. In such a place, the smell of bedsores stuck out like a gash on a child’s skin.
At first, the mere sight of Derzhava’s bedsores was enough to make both Kachinka and Marinka blanch. The smell actually made Marinka leave the tent once or twice, her hand covering her face, which had gone white as one of their bleached linen sheets. But the two ruddy-faced princesses—one thin as a reed, the other pleasantly tending toward plump—took to their work quickly. Soon they had taken charge of Derzhava’s
