Black and white photo of two hands held out palms down, with knuckle lettering, a skull and banner, a spider web and a broken heart tattooed on the hands and forearms.

Knuckle lettering and skull banner on both hands

Traditional · Hand · Black and grey · Photo

A black and white photograph of a person's hands held out towards the camera, with a dark top and a wristwatch visible at the wrist. Letters are tattooed across the knuckles of both hands, and the back of the left hand shows a skull above a banner, alongside a spider web on the side of the hand and a broken heart on the right hand. The tattoos are in black ink with bold outlines and fine shading, and the forearms are partly covered by further tattoo work.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dearest Ottoline,

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The Royal Ledger of Hesk has no column for a man who has spent eleven winters counting the same unanswered letters, so I have kept my own. This is the nineteenth. The spider has moved again into the corner of the inkwell, and the Chamberlain says it is bad luck to sweep it out, so I have stopped trying. Word from the harbour is that your father's ships came in under black sails, and that you were seen on the eastern wall with a knife and a loaf of bread, refusing both the Duke and the Dean.

I have had the words put onto my hands, as you once suggested, though I did it the cheap way, with a needle in the back room of the tavern on Gallows Stair. The skull above the banner is the kingdom's own, copied from the mint's coins. The heart on the other hand is cracked straight down the middle, which the tattooist said was the wrong way round for a heart broken by someone who stayed. HELLO runs across the left knuckles, because it is the only word I ever managed to say to you without going red.

The bell at the gate has rung twice tonight. If it is you, tell the boy to come up the stairs and not go round by the kitchens, where the cook will want a sovereign for every word. If it is the Duke's man, tell him I have already been hanged in my own handwriting, and that he may keep the spider. It has been better company than anyone at court.

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