“I have a sin of fear,” I say to him, my voice very low so that he can only just hear me in the empty chamber.

“What do you fear, my daughter?”

“Years ago, a long, long time ago, I cursed a man,” I whisper.

He nods. He will have heard worse things than this, I have to remember that he will have heard far worse things than this. I also have to remember that everything I say will almost certainly be reported to My Lady the King’s Mother. There is hardly a priest in England who does not come under her influence, and this is John Morton, whose life has intertwined with hers and who thinks her half a saint already.

“Who was it you cursed, my child?”

“I don’t know who it was,” I say. “My mother and I swore a curse against the man who killed the princes. We were so heartbroken when we heard they were missing. My mother especially . . .” I break off, not wanting to remember that night when she sank to her knees and put her head to the stone floor.

“What curse was it?”

“We swore that whoever had taken our boys would lose his own,” I say, the words barely audible, I am so ashamed now of what we did then. I am so fearful now of the consequences of the curse. “We swore that the murderer would be left with only a girl as his heir, and his line would die out. We said he would lose a son in one generation and a son in the next—he would lose a young son and then a young grandson in their boyhood.”

The priest sighs at the magnitude of the curse, even as the politician in him calculates what this means. We kneel together in silence. He puts a hand on his ivory crucifix.

“You regret this now?”

I nod. “Father, I deeply regret it.”

“You wish to lift this curse?”

“I do.”

He is silent, praying for a moment. “Who is it?” he asks. “Who killed the princes, your brothers? Who d’you think? Where will your curse fall?”

I sigh and lean my forehead against the iron Tudor rose of the grille, feeling the forged petals bite into my skin. “Truly,” I say. “Before God, I don’t know for sure. I have suspected more than one; but still I don’t know. If it was Richard, the King of England, then he died without an heir, and he saw his son die before him.”

He nods. “Does that not prove his guilt? Do you think it was him? You knew him well. Did you ask him?”

I shake my head. “I don’t know,” I say fretfully. “He said it was not him, and I believed him then. That’s what I always tell everyone. I don’t know.”

He pauses as a thought strikes him. “If the princes, or even one of them, had survived, then whoever kills him now will receive the curse.”