Black lettering tattoo of a chain link above the words would you kindly, on a lower leg above the ankle, with a red skirt and tan leather couch behind.

Chain link and lettering on a lower leg

Lettering · Calf · Black and grey · Photo

A woman's lower leg, with her foot raised behind her, shows a tattoo of three chain links in solid dark ink above a line of block-style lettering that appears to read 'would you kindly', partly cropped at the edge. The ink is a dark grey-black with clean, even outlines and no shading. The background is a tan tufted leather couch and a red skirt at the top of the frame, with the tattoo sitting near the centre.

Lettering Calf Chain Quote Lettering Leg

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit closer, you lot, the fire's only good for the front bench. Brother Anselm kept the gate at Saint Odo's for forty winters, and the first thing he'd tell you was that a gate is only a door with a conscience. The chain on it was older than the wall, three iron links hammered by a Wenlock smith who swore he'd never shoe another horse if one of them snapped.

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One February a stranger came up the hill in a sodden coat, wanting bed and bread and no questions. Anselm lifted the chain and looked at him a long time. 'Would you kindly,' said the stranger, and then he waited, hat in hand, for the rest of the sentence. Anselm never gave him the rest. He only said, 'Wipe your boots first,' and the man laughed so hard he dropped the hat in the mud.

The stranger stayed nine days. He mended the bell rope, split kindling, and at night told the novices about every toll he'd paid on the roads from Chester to the sea. On the tenth morning he left, and he paid his due in silver pennies flattened under a hammer, one for each link. Anselm strung them on a cord and hung it by his bed.

Years later the novices found that cord in his cell, and beside it a scrap of paper bearing three words. They argued for a week over what they meant, until the old prior, who had heard the whole tale from Anselm himself, read the paper and said only, 'It was always a request, children. The chain was never locked.'