Black and grey realism tattoo of a clock face with a visible movement and a rose on the upper arm and shoulder, with a cross tattoo at the edge of the frame.

Clock face and rose on an upper arm

Realism · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A large black and grey tattoo covers the upper arm and shoulder, centred on a clock face with Roman and Arabic numerals and a visible mechanical movement. A shaded rose sits below the clock, with smoky scrollwork behind it. A cross and a banner with script are partly visible on the chest at the left edge of the frame.

Realism Upper arm Shoulder Clock Pocket watch Rose Smoke Cross Banner Script

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Brother Tobias had the movement open on the sacristy table when the bell rope went slack in his hand. Three wheels were out of true and a pawl had worn to a sliver, so he counted teeth by candlelight, sixty on the crown wheel and twelve on the lantern pinion, the way Brother Walter had taught him before the winter fever took the old man in Lent. Oil stood in a cup beside the brass. Outside, the cloister bell began Sext without him.

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He filed a new pawl from a strip of clock spring, his fingers stiff with cold. The prior wanted the face repainted before the feast of Saint Ebba, the numerals black and the hands bright, so that the wool carters on the lane could read the hours from their carts. Tobias had no paint, and the rose painter from Wisbech had promised to come and had not.

In the margin of Walter's ledger, beside a drawing of a dial, was a line in a shaky hand: set by the shadow of the rose window at noon, never by the bell. Tobias took the lantern out into the frost to check. The shadow fell across the seventh hour, a full quarter of a mile ahead of anything the bell had ever claimed.

He turned the hour hand back by eleven minutes, let the minute hand rest where the shadow told it to, and wound the spring until it hummed. At Vespers the bell rang a little late, and the brothers in the choir paused for a breath before they sang. Nobody asked him why.