Two hands resting together with black blackwork motifs and solid ring bands tattooed on the fingers, plus a dot beside several motifs.

Blackwork motifs and bands on fingers

Blackwork · Hand · Black and grey · Photo

Two hands rest together on a dark surface, showing black ornamental motifs tattooed on the fingers, with solid bands across several knuckles and small dots beside some motifs. The linework is bold and the motifs are filled in solid black, with no shading or colour. The dark background and low lighting focus attention on the hands, which are also wearing a watch, bangles and a silver ring.

Blackwork Hand Finger tattoo Ornament Band Dot Floral motif Hand

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit closer, you lot, and mind the draught, for the wind still comes through Garrow Keep the way it did when there were roofs on it. Hear me now. Every stitch a woman makes in a dead house gets counted, and the counting is what keeps the house standing.

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Mab Tennant was a lacemaker's widow who came up the moor road with a sack of black thread and a bone needle. The lord's household had lost nine men to the bog the winter the bridge went, and Mab took it upon herself to mark them. She worked blackwork into every linen cuff and hem she could get her hands on, little leafed crosses in rows, bands of knotted border round each cloth like the rings a mourner wears. Beside every flower she set a single dot of seed, one dot for every soul the moor had taken.

The steward's boy, Aldous, grew tired of the dots. He asked her why she kept on once the bodies were buried and the wars were done. Mab only laughed and told him the dots were never for the dead. They were for whoever had to count the living after. Aldous thought her mad, and said so, and she let him.

The night the east wall finally came down, Aldous went up to the broken solar with a lantern to find her last sampler. He counted the rows by candlelight, flower after flower, dot after dot, until he reached the final cloth. It had one flower with no seed beside it. He sat a long while with the needle in his palm. Then he pricked his own thumb, found the thread, and filled the gap, so the count was never quite finished, and that is why Garrow is still standing, for the moment at least.