She turned back to the bar. The landlord glared at her in the manner of bad landlords everywhere. As her father always said, if you kept an inn you either liked people or went mad. Oddly enough, some of the mad ones were the best at looking after their beer. But by the smell of the place, this wasn’t one of those.

She leaned on the bar. “Pint, please,” she said, and watched glumly as the man gave a scowl of acknowledgement and turned to the big barrels. It’ll be sour, she knew, with the slop bucket under the tap tipped back in every night, and the spigot not put back, and… yes, it was going to be served in a leather tankard that had probably never been washed.

A couple of new recruits were already knocking back their pints, though, with every audible sign of enjoyment. But this was Plün, after all. Anything that made you forget you were there was probably worth drinking.

One of them said, “Lovely pint, this, eh?” and the boy next to him belched and said, “Best I’ve tasted, yeah.”

Polly sniffed at the tankard. The contents smelled like something she wouldn’t feed to pigs. She took a sip, and completely changed her opinion. She would feed it to pigs. Those lads have never tasted beer before, she told herself. It’s like dad said. Out in the country there’s lads who’d join up for an uninhabited pair of breeches. And they’ll drink this muck and pretend to enjoy it like men, hey up, we supped some stuff last night, eh, lads? And then next thing—

Oh, lor’… that reminded her. What’d the privy be like here? The men’s one out in the yard back at home was bad enough. Polly sloshed two big pails of water into it every morning while trying not to breathe. There was weird green moss growing on the slate floor. And The Duchess was a good inn. It had customers who took their boots off before going to bed.