Taboo, Episode 4

Taboo, Episode 4

This hour marks the halfway point in the series, which continues to expand on the macabre and bizarre with allusions to dark magic.  James continues his elaborate plans that have violent outcomes.  Last week he pitted the Crown against the East India Company in order to gain his dreams of a trade monopoly in the Nootka territory.  James’s dismissal of the Americans as a legitimate adversary comes back to haunt him this hour.

After the recap and credits, James has a dream in which he is submerged.  He awakens to loud banging on the door.  A small group of soldiers in red coats order the door to be open by “Order of the King!”  Lorna is whisked awake to prison after the fracas with the Duke of Richmond the previous night.  James promises her the East India Company will come to her rescue.  He orders her to “Hold out, and don’t sign anything!”

Lorna is brought inside dark prison walls; she has been stripped down to her underclothes and led into a room. Coop, the King’s secretary approaches her.  What follows is a game cat and mouse.  Coop threatens to give her over to his men and prisoners to rape and abuse her.  Or, Lorna can sign away her rights to the Nootka Sound over to the Crown.  If she refuses, she will not only be raped but also forced to stand trial for the attack on the Duke for which she will hang. Coop cuts the laces on her corset while he makes his threats.  Coop offers her one thousand pounds and freedom if she signs their documents.  Lorna struggles to cover her bare chest and says bravely, “I was told to wait for a better offer.”  Coop sneers, “James Delaney is in league with Satan himself! We do God’s work!”

At this pivotal moment, James and members of the East India Company burst into the cell.  It appears the Company has more power than the Crown as Lorna is freed from prison.  Brace meets Lorna outside with instructions to make sure she arrives home safely.  Despite her recent ordeal, she is reluctant to accept a carriage ride home.  She reluctantly agrees to go with the older servant.

Sir Strange is livid back at the East India Company headquarters.  He’s upset at the King for breaking their agreement of “common cause” against James Delaney. Strange yells,  “James Delaney is turning London into a bear pit!”  As a counter measure to the Crown’s action against Lorna, Strange decides to withdrawal from the “India talks.” (At this time, the East India Company was essentially acting as a sovereign force in the region. The Company had a monopoly on trade and its armies, not the King’s were on the ground.  King George, the III wanted to in control of the region and its riches.)

James meets Godfrey in the brothel for men with adventurous tastes.  He informs James the Company is not interested in granting him a trade monopoly for Nootka. He advises James “The game is up!”  Godfrey answers James’s query regarding gunpowder. “Gunpowder production is controlled by the Crown.”  Therefore, James will be unable to obtain it.  Godfrey confides how the Company speaks of him with hatred now.  He cautions James his plans will have “poor outcomes” for him and those people around him. James dismisses his concern, noting, “The people around me deserve what they get!”  Godfrey is saddened by his heartlessness, “Even me?”

A chemist gives a demonstration to a group of wealthy people.  He is able to add different compounds, which result in the shattering of his glass beaker.  After the show, a woman compliments him and makes sexual suggestions.  The chemist is happy to oblige her, right there on the chemist’s table.  James walks in on their amorous activities and the woman flees.  The chemist, Mr. Cumbly, demands to know the reason for this rude interruption.  James flings a bag of gold on the table. Mr. Cumbly bites down on the coin to verify its authenticity.  The chemist is intrigued.

James walks home in the dark.  The front door has been changed and the boards have been removed from the windows.  Brace explains he has changed the locks too. The men discuss Lorna; Brace deduces her prison escapade was “all part of the plan.”  James instructs Brace to buy Lorna some flowers.  Lorna walks in on the conversation. “You said I was a weakness. I’m not weak!” James replies, “All around me are damned!  If you are resolute to stay you must do exactly what I say!”  James demands access to his father’s possessions.  Lorna states she is too tired to retrieve them for him presently. 

James looks out the circular window in his nightclothes.  He sees a ghostly figure outside down by the water.  Alone in her room, Lorna looks at a bouquet of red roses from James.

Zilpha masturbates feverishly alone in her dimly lit bedroom.  James sits in front of his fireplace, seemingly communing with her.  He blows ash into the flames while she simultaneously climaxes.  They both chant at the same moment.  Zilpha imagines James on top of her wearing a lion mask.

Thorne comes home to find his wife after her “communion” with James.  He tells her “The Crown and Company are at war again!”  He notices her altered state and sneers, “Who’s in there!”  Realizing his wife is still under James’s spell Thorne proceeds to sexually assault her.

Lorna throws the red roses out the window.

James rides his white horse to the mill where his son lives. (It is not known who is the mother of the boy, could it be Zilpha? Is that why she can’t get pregnant again?) The chemist is dropped off at the mill by a carriage.  He appears drunk and dry heaves repeatedly.  He explains he was at a party, entertaining the well-heeled guests with nitrous oxide. (The early anesthetic began as a party drug, its anesthetic properties were not realized until the 1840’s by a dentist.)  James shows him around the farm, Cumby inspects and tastes pigeon and cow dung.  He asks about what wood might be available and is disappointed there are not oak trees.  Cumbly suggests urine will work, especially urine with alcohol present.  All these ingredients will be used to make gunpowder James desperately needs.  They discuss how long the process will take and James is disappointed to learn it will take a year.  Cumbly suggests if they can obtain some saltpeter it will speed up the process immensely. There is a cache of saltpeter stored at the East India Company barracks.  James schemes to rob the Company.

As James approaches his horse to return home, the horse nickers nervously.  James looks around the area nervously. Peasants hang by the door and the mill house appears unusually quiet.  Suddenly, a giant sized man attacks James from behind.  A vicious fight ensues.  One moment it appears the man has killed James after a savage blow to the head.  Miraculously, James manages to rise and stab the man in the legs. Once James has gained the advantage, he employs meat hooks to drag the man by his torso through the yard. “I told your friends Nootka Sound was not for sale!” (Does he believe the Company sent this man?)  James finishes murdering the man by using the hooks to disembowel him. (It’s not shown.)  James’s son watches the horrific scene below from an upstairs window.

Dawn breaks down at the docks.  Inside the house, Brace reads the newspaper.  James arrives, frightening his servant.  Brace asks him sarcastically, “When was the last time you were at church?” Brace informs James that Lorna has a costume fitting that day.  James assures him the Company will see to her safety. The servant compares James’s strategy of pitting the Crown against the Company as a “see-saw with you as the middle.” Brace notes Lorna threw out the roses he gave her.  James is concerned that his servant has been reading his letters.  James has received an invitation from Countess Musgrave to attend a ball.  Lorna enters the room remarking on the Countess’s reputation.  Brace hands James another letter remarking, “The Americans want a place in the ‘see-saw’.”  James asks Lorna to attend the ball with him.

James heads to Helga’s brothel to find Winter manning the bar.  Helga has been busy shucking oysters, “They mask the smell of sex.”  James again uses a bag of gold to persuade the Madame to close for the day, giving him a loan of a few of her prostitutes.  In a back room, James meets with Atticus.  The tattooed man is amused at James’s offer to money in exchange for the whore’s urine. (To make the gunpowder.) James tells Atticus of his plans to rob the East India Company.

James walks down to the Company headquarters to scope out the site of the robbery.  He meets briefly with Cumby to give him payment.

Lorna readies herself for the ball. James dresses up slightly but he still looks like a very dangerous man.  As Lorna gets into a carriage, James receives some flowers from one of Helga’s women.  He hands her a pistol for the night’s events.  He tells Lorna, “Business is afoot tonight which doesn’t concern you.”

James and Lorna are introduced at the Countess’s party.  Zilpha and her husband are also in attendance. Upon seeing her, James is possessed by his demons and needs to flee Lorna and the room.  Outside, he finds his half-sister.  James theorizes that someone knows about their affair and invited them to the same ball on purpose. (The American’s?) “Do you feel me when I break in?”  James asks her.  Zilpha remarks that he is a devil.

Dumbarton arrives, breaking into the conversation.  He assesses Zilpha as “quite a prize.”  Dumbarton notes how James killed the assassin they sent to the mill, “gutting him like a bull.”  Dumbarton has a proposal for James, safe passage with Zilpha to the Americas if he takes the spy Carlsbad with him.  He offers to kill Thorne, “Love is part of the deal.”  James pauses to contemplate a life of freedom with Zilpha. Dumbarton walks off saying, “Don’t worry how we know so much, we just do.”

The robbery begins at the Company with several prostitutes “distracting” a man and Atticus and his men quietly executing the rest. While a man is “entertained”  Helga puts a gun to his head then orders men to gag him.  A carriage rolls through the now open gates of the Company.  Atticus carries a beaker of chemicals through the front door.

At the party, James grows impatient and checks his watch.  The chemist mingles through the rowdy crowd, offering them hits of nitrous oxide.  Lorna realizes that James knows the man.  She asks coyly, “Is he part of your league of the damned?”

At the Company, an explosion opens the door to the warehouse where the saltpeter is kept. (Potassium nitrate.)

Lorna finds Zilpha alone in a room and decides to confront her rival.  Lorna senses that Zilpha has known James for a long time.  She asks, “If I had intentions with him would I need to be wary of you?”  Zilpha scoffs, “No civilized woman would have intentions with him! We share the same father.”  Lorna is relieved to discover that they are related.  (If she only knew!) When she sees James again he is cold, insisting that she bring his father’s possessions to him that night.

The Countess takes an opportunity to flirt with James by dancing with him.  A magician spies the couple and incorporates them into his “magic box” act.  He compares James to a gorilla.  The Countess and James enter the large box as the magician beckons them to “Step into the beyond.”

Inside, James confronts her. “You are Genève Delacroix from New Orleans.” James has deduced she’s Carlsbad and is working for the Americans. The Countess notes how James desires a “tea monopoly” for his Nootka land.  James wants a meeting with the Americans at the embassy in Paris.  The Countess knows about him and Zilpha. “Your own sister, goodness!” The trick is over the pair part ways outside the box.

Thorne is in the ballroom intoxicated from the nitrous oxide.  Upon seeing James Thorne becomes enraged.  James hits Thorne forcefully in the gut and drags him outside.  Zilpha and Lorna follow the men outside nervously. Zilpha implores, “James, please!” Thorne replies, “You call this THING James? Don’t all him anything but n***er!”  Thorne decides to challenge James to a duel at dawn, to the death!

This episode continues to highlight James’s brilliant scheming.  Regular “taboos” like sex and murder become increasingly twisted by adding psychic sex and desecration of the body.  My money is on “the devil” James prevailing in next week’s duel and in his wickedly clever schemes.