Black serif Roman numerals reading IX.IV.VIII.XI, tattooed in lettering style across the upper chest near the collarbone.

Roman numeral lettering on upper chest

Lettering · Chest · Black and grey · Photo

A close photograph of a black ink tattoo reading IX.IV.VIII.XI in Roman numerals, set in a classic serif typeface and angled slightly across the upper chest. The lines are crisp and even with solid black fill and no shading, and the image is in colour only in the skin and background tones. The composition is tight, cropped below the chin with a dark top and a thin necklace visible at the edge of the frame.

Lettering Chest Roman numeral Numeral

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The lock-keeper's ledger had been sealed since Mr Haworth died, and Ada was the only one left at Dunsford Lock who could read his hand. She sat on the bottom step with the oilcloth damp beneath her and turned the pages back to the autumn of the flood. Every entry was a boat name, a draught, a time. Except for four cramped figures pressed into the margin of one page, written so hard the nib had torn the paper: IX, IV, VIII, XI.

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She tried them as a date first, because that was what a sensible person did. Ninth of April, eighth of November, the sort of thing a man marks when his wife goes into the ground. But the year on the spine didn't fit, and there was no name beside them, only a small pencilled arrow pointing down towards the gate-paddle wheel, as if the answer were bolted to the ironwork.

She went out in the rain with a lamp. The paddle wheel had eleven teeth on its cog, and she counted them twice. The ninth from the top was worn bright where a hand had gripped it again and again. Four turns for the first gate. Eight for the second. Then the eleven. Her father had always said old Haworth was a stubborn man who would rather die than leave a message anyone could read.

Ada turned the wheel nine times, then four, then eight, and at eleven the whole gate groaned open onto black water and a shelf of wet stone where a tin box sat wedged in the brickwork. Inside were the missing pages, folded small, and a letter addressed to her mother. She did not read it straight away. She sat on the stone with her boots over the edge and let the water go past beneath her, counting nothing at all.