Black and grey tattoo of a looping banner reading I solemnly swear that I am up to no good, surrounded by footprints, in a traditional style.

Footprints and quote banner

Traditional · Black and grey · Photo

A looping ribbon banner carries the lettering I SOLEMNLY SWEAR THAT I AM UP TO NO GOOD in a clean serif-style capital font. Scattered black footprints trail around the banner on both sides, and the ribbon folds are shaded with grey wash and solid black areas. The design is in black ink and grey tones only, with the banner filling most of the frame.

Traditional Banner Ribbon Footprint Quote Lettering Scroll

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Nell had the torch, which was a mistake, because its beam picked out every bootprint they left in the wet grass. Tobias said nobody would be up at half eleven in late August, not with the cider apples still hanging, but the orchard at Pardon's Farm had rules, and the first one was that nobody went into the rows after dark. They had already broken it twice that summer. They crouched behind the hedge and waited for the owl to stop talking.

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The pact was written on the back of a seed packet in Tobias's loopy capitals, the way he wrote everything he meant to be taken seriously. He read it out under his breath, the bit about being up to no good, and Nell snorted so loudly a wood pigeon bolted from the top of the wall. They stamped across the dew on purpose after that, making a proper trail, two sets of prints winding between the trunks like a map nobody had drawn yet. Nell kept thinking that if anyone followed them, they would at least have a clear route to follow.

The old Bramley at the bottom of the slope was where Grandad had carved his initials before the war, and where Grandmother had told them, over tea that afternoon, that she used to sneak out to pick windfalls with a boy from the next farm. Nell had assumed it was a story to stop them going out. But there was the ladder, already propped against the trunk, and a bucket beside it, and a second line of prints in the grass, coming up from the gate and heading straight for the tree.

Grandmother Agnes sat on the bottom rung in her wellingtons, flask in her lap, looking entirely unsurprised. "I wrote that swear first," she said. "Your grandad only copied it out." She held out a hand for the seed packet, read the line herself, and handed it back. Then she stood, stepped into the dew beside their trail, and pressed her own boot down so that three sets of prints ran off together into the dark rows.