Lion and lioness finger tattoos

The lion was called Ansel. He had a mane as dark as a winter rook and an eye that never quite shut. The lioness was Mirrin, narrow in the face, and she walked the battlements before dawn counting the boats on the marsh. When the old lord died and the gate rotted off its hinges, the pair of them stayed, because nobody had told them they could leave. They kept the well clear and chased the foxes out of the scullery. On feast days the village folk laid bread on the flat stone by the postern, and in the morning it was always gone.

Then came the winter the river froze to its bed. A drover's boy came up the causeway with a cracked lantern and no sense, and he wedged himself in the portcullis slot with his boots in the air. Ansel went down to him through the rubble, slow as wet slate. Mirrin went round by the ash tree to see who else might come, and found a broken wagon wheel, a lame cow, and a man asking the way to Lowther. She sent him home by the back path and said nothing about it.

The boy lived, and the village said the lions had spoken to him. The old women say they never spoke at all. They only stood close, one on each side of the gap, and kept the frost off the stones until morning. If you go up tonight and the mist sits low, you'll see two heads against the moon, one with its ear turned to the marsh and one to the road, and that is how the keep is still held.