Taboo

Forgive me, Father...

for I have indeed sinned.

Behold!

A witness!

Took the cursed Bonaparte and threw a rope around his neck.

Threw a rope around his neck...

Behold!

A good man!

Behold! A man of his calling!

Behold, a witness to God's deep love for us all.

Mrs. Geary, I do not wish to be indelicate,

but did you pay the grave-diggers the extra shilling?

What extra shilling?

To bury your father deeper in the ground.

Resurrectionists pay extra

to be buried two feet deeper than the rest.

That way, the grave-robbers can't dig down to their meat

before the sun comes up.

My wife has no business with the grave-diggers.

Her father will rest at the regular depth.

Dear God.

There walks a dead man.

Who is that?

Is hell opened up?

Dear Lord Almighty, is that your brother?

Before we begin, may we bow our heads in prayer?

Our Father, which art in heaven,

hallowed be thy name.

Thy kingdom come...

thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread...

For as much as it hath pleased Almighty God of his great mercy

to take unto himself the soul of our dear brother, here departed,

we therefore commit his body to the ground.

Earth to Earth...

ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

In sure and certain hope of the Resurrection.

We will change our vile body...

according to the mighty working

whereby he is able to subdue all things to himself.

Sir?

Mr. Delaney, is it?

Sir?

- James Delaney, is it? - Who are you?

- They said you were dead. - I am.

Such a shallow grave they dug for my father.

Are you short of a couple of shillings?

He was buried to the depth of my love.

Last years, he disgraced me.

Disgrace?

Hm.

Were those Negro words he said over the grave?

Madness comes out through the umbilical cord.

The pox in Africa goes directly to the brain via these... these worms.

They... they crawl through your veins.

- Where is he? - He went to piss.

Any business with him will be conducted in my presence.

See, I have the advantage, I have read the will.

Meaning what?

Meaning I need to piss and need no-one to hold my cock.

Begging the lady's pardon.

How came you to know that your father was dead?

I heard he was sick and I boarded a ship.

Yes, he was sick from madness.

Hear that?

Bile and bitterness.

Not a single tear from anyone at the graveside.

I didn't hear any piss at the leather.

Perhaps you had no need, or perhaps you came out here with...

With a purpose?

James...

- Who are you? - I'm Thoyt, your father's lawyer.

Smallpox butchered me down to the bone

and, yes, I have other business than pissing.

You know, in all of London,

only your father believed you were still alive.

It was a symptom of his madness.

But he would talk to you, stand on the north bank of the river

and call out to you on the other side.

Yes, I know, I heard him calling.

I'll speak plainly.

Your father drew up a will of which I am executor.

In it, you are his only heir.

But, James, if you came home expecting fortune, there is none.

The only legacy is a poisoned chalice.

Talk to me of poison.

Well, it's a small... strip of coastline,

directly on the other side of the world,

which your father held by treaty with the Nootka tribe.

A wasteland.

If America were a pig facing England,

it is right at the pig's arse.

Just rocks and Indians.

The land in your father's will is not only useless,

it is dangerous to any who owns it.

They're my rocks now.

James...

I can arrange the immediate transfer of this particular asset.

I'll send you a formal proposition in writing.

Good day, sir.

These girls arriving are all whores.

They attend the funeral of a widower

'cause they know there'll be lots of old men.

And that animal from Africa

is here to pick at an old man's bones, too.

Perhaps we should let Thoyt deal with the matter.

Let's call our carriage.

One thing Africa did not cure...

is that I still love you.

And if you are ever short of two shillings,

please do not hesitate to ask,

as Africa also served me incredibly well.

Well, then you will have no need for legacies now, will you?

We were just leaving.

Hm.

So, gentlemen, let's begin.

A clerk will record every word that's said,

except when a fellow raises his hand.

Words from a raised hand will not...

enter the record.

Now, the issue today is old man Delaney.

May he rot in hell.

The death of that mad old bastard was welcome

and, as we thought at the time,

beneficial for the honourable East India.

But things have changed.

Mr. Thoyt, welcome.

Give us the bad news.

As the late Mr. Delaney's lawyer, I attended the funeral,

and a ghost appeared...

a son we all thought dead in Africa.

James Keziah Delaney.

Mr. Wilton, I asked you to do some digging.

Which I have done, sir, and most entertaining it has been.

In temperament, he takes after his mad mother.

She was committed as a resident of Bedlam.

Just stick to what we know about the boy.

So, at the age of 11,

his exhausted father and new bride put his son in

as a cadet at the East India Company military seminary in Woolwich,

the year of our Lord 1798.

Delaney's son was a... company boy?

And, Sir Stuart, odd to relate,

the records show he was once in your own regiment.

Well...

I commanded so many of the little bastards, I forget.

There is a copy of his attendance record and the year-end report.

Yeah, year end record too.

My God!

Corporal James Keziah Delaney.

"Exceptional. Exceptional. Exceptional.

Musket, ship craft, leadership. Exceptional."

But, sir, then along came the year of our Lord 1800.

Exceptional in different ways.

I would guess that confidence allowed his true savage nature

and mother's madness to emerge.

The necks he broke always belonged to officers.

And then there is the setting ablaze

of a Navy boat in an experiment with oil

and mashed potatoes while drunk.

And a fight with a bear in Chancery Lane,

a rebellion against the cooks for bad custard, started by him,

and he raved about fortunes and hidden treasures.

He tried to recruit other boys to go down the river to India,

to trade with Red Indians, to take gold from the Aztecs.

And more necks, more whores and more custard. And finally...

I am almost exhausted in the telling of it.

Finally, in the year of our Lord 1802,

he took himself off to Africa.

Well, now he is returned.

And Delaney's will leaves him everything.

Including Nootka.

Do we have a copy of the Nootka Sound treaty yet?

Where perhaps our lawyers could pick it apart?

It's yet to surface, Sir Stuart. And...

I believe only the original exists.

So, our lengthy negotiations with the daughter were in vain.

If the will has not been read and Nootka is so strategic to us,

why don't we just... burn it?

Even if I did,

the son would have natural priority over the daughter,

according to God's law.

And his return was purposely in a public way.

Hardly the action of a savage.

Thank you, Mr. Thoyt, you may leave us.

Mr. Pettifer, I hope the report from the Africa desk is as thorough

as the one from Mr. Wilton in the records office.

According to charter records,

he went to Cabinda aboard a ship called Cornwallis,

then boarded a ship called the Influence, bound for Antigua.

It was a slave ship.

It sank off the Gold Coast,

and it was assumed Delaney was dead.

Then the rumors began.

There have been rumors about James Keziah Delaney these past ten years

but in the file I have put only the facts, sir,

not the rumors.

What are the rumors?

Awful, and unnatural, and, I'm sure, untrue.

What fucking rumors?