Perhaps because Una hadn’t been here since her attack, the room felt small and stifling.She reached for the clippers.As she did so, her eyes fell on the box that contained the reliquary.
“You’ve forgotten to lock the box,” she said, pointing to the loose latch.
“Oh, dash it!”he exclaimed.“How stupid of me!”
He crouched down to lock it.Una turned to leave.Afterwards, she could not quite say why she didn’t, other than that she knew something was wrong.And Una could not walk away from something that was wrong.
“Oh, I’ll do it after all,” she said, turning back.“I think I must see it myself, or I won’t feel secure.”
Pip made no movement to restore the key to her.He began to chatter as he fumbled with the lock.“Don’t be ridiculous.I’ve done it for you, Una, so you don’t have to.It’s just your nerves, Una, you know it is.You worry over nothing.You always have.”
Oolong’s tongue went in and out, as if tasting the air.Dragons did that sometimes.George said they had a special organ which helped them scent things with their tongue—even, perhaps, emotions.
“Pip,” Una said very quietly, taking a step closer to Pip.“May I have those keys back, please?”
Pip went still, crouched over the box, his usually-tidy hair falling over his eyes so that she couldn’t read his expression.
“Pip?”Una said.“May I have them?”
The muscles in Pip’s face went rigid.
“No,” he said, his voice as hard as his face.“You mayn’t.”
He rose to his feet.He seemed big and strange.Una felt as if the Pip she knew was slipping away before her eyes, so that somebody else could appear in his place.Somebody she didn’t want to be in a small room with.
Oolong climbed up onto the table to watch them.
“Pip, please,” Una said, her chest tightening.“I don’t understand.But—whatever is wrong—you can tell me.”
“No, I jolly well can’t,” he said, looking down.“I can’t tell you who I really am.You don’t know me at all.”
Una stared at him.“What are you talking about?Of course I do!We’ve known each other all our lives!You—“ she took a breath, for she knew that this time she must say it—”you’re abrotherto me, Pip.More than Percy ever was.”
Somehow this set him off, for he bent close to her and began to shout, his breath making her blink.“I’m not your brother, Una, and I’m not your nephew!I’m not even agentleman’sson!I’m nothing!”
To Una’s amazement, Pip was now crying—great tears he had to dash away from his face as if they angered him.
“I’mdone!“ he said.“I’m done waiting for scraps from your family.I’m taking what I want—and what I want is thebest.”
His hand went to his overcoat pocket, where something bulky and square was hidden.Yes, that was what had made him move so oddly—hiding the relic in his pocket.Una felt unconcerned about the loss of the thing itself.What did it matter, really?Saint George was in heaven, and Pip very much wasn’t—at this moment he seemed headed in quite the opposite direction.
It was Pip that mattered.Pip, who was crying in front of her because everything he had pinned his hopes on had turned out to be untrue.Violet had been right.Some horrible man had hurt Lily all those years ago, and now it had all come back to hurt Pip, too.
Una was filled with the purest rage at the thought of it.This must be the sort of anger her uncle had been talking about—the anger that drove you to fix things.She couldn’t fix this for Pip, but perhaps just being angry for him and with him was something.
Una reached out to touch him.At the same moment, Oolong made a rush across the table towards him.
“No, Oolong!”she cried out, stepping between them, for she couldn’t bear the possibility of Pip striking Oolong, even in self defence.
Pip made a dash for the door.Oolong slid down Una’s skirt to land safely on the floor.Una made her own rush for the door, but she was too late.
Pip banged it shut between them.She could feel, in the fierce tension in the handle, that he still held the other side to stop her from opening it.Then she heard the scrape of him jabbing the key into the lock.
“No!”Una gasped, not just because it was a horror to her to be locked in the tower, but because it would make everything worse for Pip, too.“Please don’t, Pip!”
“It’s only a few hours till supper.That will give me time to get away,” Pip’s voice came through the door.“You’ll be safe as houses.”
“Pip, no!I won’t tell anyone until tomorrow morning, if that’s what you want,” Una said.“I promise.And you know I never break a promise, Pip.You know I never do!”
