“She’ll be all right. How long has she been like this?”

“Four days. What more can they do to us . . . ?”

“She’ll be all right. Tomorrow I’ll send something to take the fever down. In the meantime, you must try to keep her clean. I’ll show you. Bring me a bucket of warm water, soap, and towels.”

The woman started to cry, and one of the men in the doorway said, “There is no hot water, sir. No towels.”

“Cold water, then. And soap.”

“Soap, sir?” said the woman in despair.

“Yes. Soap. Is that so difficult to understand?”

“Don’t bully her, Cousin,” came the prince’s gentle voice.

Thanakar pulled the sheets away from the girl’s body. She turned her face back towards him and opened wide her eyes, staring at him without speaking as he moved his fingers down her body and unwrapped a grimy bandage around her knee.

“Why do you want soap, sir?” asked the woman.

The doctor bit his lips. “I want to wash her.” Under the bandage was a deep infected sore. Her whole knee was covered in a leaking crust of scabs.

The woman got to her feet and said some words in a strange language. One of the faces in the doorway disappeared.

The girl’s feet were encased in plastic shoes. As Thanakar removed them, she cried out. Underneath, her feet were covered with dirt and blisters. The shoes were several sizes too small. He took them off and laid them by the chamberpot. “She shouldn’t wear these,” he said quietly.

“No shoes, sir?” the woman asked, her voice tearful. “But shoes are good. Aren’t they?”

“Not these shoes. Look what they are doing to her feet. It’s a wonder she can walk.”

“She can’t walk, sir.”

The girl lay on her back. She was dressed in a ragged nylon smock, with buttons running down her chest.

Thanakar unfastened several, and as he did so, he felt the air in the room change. The girl’s eyes widened and filled with fright. And behind him, the men who had been standing in the doorway came in and stood or squatted all around, staring at his hands. There was no hostility in their faces, only total absorption in his smallest movements, as if instead of simply peeling the smock back from her narrow ribcage, he were making an incision and peeling back the skin. A man came in with a bucket of water and half a bar of soap. Taking them from him, Thanakar started to wash her, with clever movements of his elegant white hands.

For Prince Abu, the tension in the room was hard to bear. With an unclear idea of stepping out into the street and waiting there, he wandered through the doorway. But as he passed the entrance to the other room, he stopped. Someone had pulled a curtain over the glass, but the door was partly open, and he looked inside.