Black and grey photo of two clasped hands, with script lettering reading King and Queen, each under a crown, tattooed on the hands.

King and Queen crown lettering on hands

Lettering · Hand · Black and grey · Photo

Two hands are clasped together in a black and white photograph. One hand carries the word King in flowing script beneath a small crown, and the other carries Queen in matching script with a crown above it. The lettering uses bold, looped strokes with soft shading, and the high contrast monochrome treatment keeps the focus on the tattoos and the texture of the skin.

Lettering Hand King Queen Crown Script Hand

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Nobody aboard the Corrie Lynn believed Tom Harrack would sit still for a needle, so when he did, off the Horn with the sea trying to throw us both overboard, the whole watch crowded the fo'c'sle hatch to see it done. Mick Doyle had a sailmaker's kit and a tin of pine tar he swore would do the job better than any ink. I held the lamp. Tom held my hand, and I held his, because the ship pitched so hard that neither of us could steady ourselves without the grip.

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Mick had copied the crowns from a pawnshop print in Hull, two little pointed things he drew freehand on a scrap of sailcloth first. KING went across the back of Tom's left hand, looped and leaning like a line running out under strain. I got QUEEN over my own knuckles, the crown sitting above the Q like a hat I would never be allowed to wear ashore. Mick pricked it in with a sail needle, and every few strokes Tom swore at the cook for no reason at all.

By the time we raised the Falklands the lettering had gone raw and the joke had gone quiet. The captain, who had not smiled once in six months, looked at our hands over the chart table and asked which of us would give the orders when we came home. Tom said the sea would decide. I said I would settle for the galley. We were both lying, and each of us knew it.

We never did settle who ruled whom. Every spring I still look at the crown above the Q and see the lamp swinging on its hook, Tom's knuckles white around mine, the ink weeping red at the edges while we both pretended it did not hurt.