Close photo of a solid red dripping band tattoo around the upper arm of a woman in a grey t-shirt.

Solid red dripping band on upper arm

Upper arm · Colour · Photo

A solid red band wraps around the upper arm, with its lower edge cut into rounded drips that taper downward. The fill is flat and even, with no visible shading or fine linework, and the red is the only colour in the frame. The woman's long dark hair and grey t-shirt sit against a plain indoor background, with the tattoo placed centrally in the right of the image.

Upper arm

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The dyer's stall at Coldharbour market had no roof, so when the rain came in off the estuary the vats filled faster than anyone could bail them. Nell Harrow worked under a sheet of tarred canvas that snapped in the wind, and she talked to the madder root the way other women talked to their hens.

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One wet morning the reeve's daughter came with a length of undyed wool over her arm. She wanted the red of the wardens' coats, the red that did not fade, and she wanted it on a band no wider than her hand, so that whoever wore it would have to say the truth or show the stain. Nell took the wool, folded it three times, and lowered it into the vat until only the hem hung out over the rim.

When she lifted it, the red had gone darker at the edge, and it began to run in slow beads that gathered and let go. The reeve's daughter laughed and said the cloth was weeping. Nell said only that it was honest, and that honest cloth always dripped where it had been dipped too long in its own truth.

The band never dried. Each market day the drips were a finger's breadth lower, and by the first frost the reeve's daughter had stopped wearing it at the wardens' table. Nell kept the last of the madder in a clay jar under the bench, and on wet mornings she would lift the lid, breathe in the bitter smell, and listen to the rain tapping the canvas like someone waiting to be let in.