Small solid black fleur-de-lis tattoo on the nape of a person's neck, seen from behind with hair tied up in a bun.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Fleur-de-lis on the nape of the neck

Neck · Black and grey · Photo

A small, solid black fleur-de-lis sits centrally on the nape of the neck, photographed from behind. The motif is filled with black ink and has a clean, simple outline with no visible shading. The subject's hair is gathered up in a bun and the background shows a striped top and a dark leather sleeve, with the neck and tattoo as the clear focus.

Neck Fleur-de-lis

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Right, sit down, the lot of you, because Mrs Ashdown never let anybody leave a story half told and I'm not starting now. You want to know why the old French master kept a brass lily in his desk drawer? The school was founded on a grant from a Huguenot widow who wanted her name carved over the gate, and the governors took her money and wouldn't carve it. So every boy who passed the Latin exam got a little lily stamped on his blazer pocket instead, and that was the only crest we had.

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Then Fenwick came along in 1961, a lad who could draw anything with a biro. He copied the lily off the gatehouse stone onto the back of his hand, and then onto the nape of Maisie Croyle's neck during the Christmas play, where nobody could see it but the stage manager, who told on him. The headmaster marched them both to the hall, held the blue ink up against the light and said, Mr Fenwick, a lily is a thing you earn, not a thing you sneak.

Fenwick never did earn one. He went down the pits at fifteen and drew plans for the coal board until he retired. Maisie married a bus driver from Ormskirk, had four daughters, and I'm told she kept that little black mark all her life, though she never cared for the story much.

So when you see her name on the list tonight, don't laugh. Go and find her, and ask her to show you the lily. Some things a school hands out are only ink, mind, but she'll tell you they were worth the trouble.