Excerpt from The Strangler Vine by Miranda J. Carter, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

It was a cool anteroom with broken matting on the floor, and a number of dusty bows and arrows mounted on a wall. Beneath these was a long console table of native inlaid design on which there were a number of curiosities, also dusty, which I could not make out. Through a doorway was a courtyard in the Indian style. The darwan looked expectantly at my feet. It took me a moment to understand that he wished me to remove my boots. His expectation seemed so utterly demeaning, so intensely insulting, it was as if all the indignities and disappointments of India were suddenly met in this one gesture. A surge of irritation leapt in me.

'No!' I said. 'No.' I shook my head violently.

The darwan regarded me speculatively for a moment, as if deciding how far he should press me. I stared furiously back. 'I must see your master!' I said, loudly.

Slowly, he walked through to the courtyard and I followed. He gestured to show with his hands that I should remain, then disappeared through a dark doorway on the far side and I was left quite alone. It was not the reception I had expected. I drummed my boots against the paving and fiddled with my sabre. The place had seen better days. The courtyard was shaded and well proportioned, its floor paved in mosaic that must have been handsome when new, but was cracked now, and there was an air of disintegration. Broken pieces of furniture gathered dust in the corners. Two bolsters had clearly sat through the monsoon and showed signs of rot. The small fountain was silent and clogged with weed.

'Qui hy?' Is there anybody there? I called out at last, which brought me, more or less, to the limit of my serviceable Hindoostanee. There was a mumble of voices from the rooms at the far end of the courtyard. Then nothing.

'I must see Blake sahib,' I called out. 'Now! Jaldi jao!' Quickly!

I waited, hovering between anger and embarrassment. Then, finally, another native appeared. Whereas the darwan had been at least neatly presented, this one was dirty. Wrapped in a large cotton blanket, he shuffled into the courtyard, apparently oblivious of my existence. He was a poor thing, grizzled, puffy-eyed, wearing a mangy beard, and barefoot. Beneath his blanket I could see an unkempt muslin shirt and a pair of dirty white pyjamas. Then, when he was but a few feet from me, he turned to one side and from his mouth issued the most enormous wad of wet scarlet pan, which he spat on to the ground inches from my feet. I stumbled backwards, almost losing my footing, but the red droplets were already making a fine pattern on my muddied boots and breeches. I looked at him, aghast. I expected an immediate apology in the voluble manner of the Bengalee. Instead, he looked at me mulishly.

'You clumsy oaf !' I shouted, losing my calm entirely.

'Fuck off, lobster,' the man said.

I record these words—the insult to my uniform made obscene by the filthy words that accompanied it—only to convey the outrage and disgust I felt upon hearing them. At the same time I was completely astonished that the apparition before me was an Englishman. But there was no doubt he was. As I stared at him I could see that he was not quite as dark-skinned as I had thought, his beard and moustache the product of unkemptness rather than native custom. He was a head shorter than me, his shoulders slouched, and his hair hung greasily to his neck. His face had the unhealthy, yellowish tinge of a European to whom an annual bout of fever is no stranger. His skin was blotchy, his lips cracked, and his deep-set eyes were sinisterly ringed with grey. He was old too, at least forty.

'Is there anything in the words "fuck off" that you do not understand?' he said, in an accent in which I was sure I recognized the smell of the Thames, and he continued to fix me with an unfriendly gaze which I found extremely discomfiting.

Excerpted from The Strangler Vine by Miranda J Carter. Copyright © 2015 by Miranda J Carter. Excerpted by permission of Putnam Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.