Black serif Roman numerals XIX tattooed on an ankle, above a green and white sneaker.

XIX Roman numerals on an ankle

Lettering · Ankle · Black and grey · Photo

A close photograph of the outside of a bare ankle showing the Roman numerals XIX in a black, serif-style lettering. The letters are solid and evenly weighted, with clean edges and no shading, and the tattoo is the only ink in the frame. The image is taken at a slight angle with a dark background and a green and white sneaker at the bottom of the frame.

Lettering Ankle Roman numeral Numeral

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell, The rain has got into the east keep again, and I have spent the morning on my back under the arch with a lamp in my teeth, counting. Every stone the old masons dressed was marked on its bed with a Roman numeral so the wall could be rebuilt in order, and the men who came after never bothered to copy the marks down. I am doing it now for the Earl's surveyor, who pays by the stone and has never once climbed the stair.

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Most of them are plain: the I's and II's and the long run of V's along the postern. Nineteen is in the third course above the well, a block the colour of wet bread, and its mark is cut deeper than the rest, the two X's pressed so hard the chisel must have slipped. Fourteen of the others have crumbled to sand in their joints. Nineteen sits true. I put my palm on it this afternoon and it was warm, though the sun had gone behind the hill an hour before.

Old Abel from the village says a mason called Tobiah cut it, and that the Earl never paid him for the last course, so he left the stone unfinished and walked off into the marsh. But Abel also says the marsh has no road out, and I have walked it twice. I think Tobiah simply ran out of daylight, the way we all do, and set the stone down with its number on it so whoever came next would know where it belonged.

I have marked the survey sheet as I found it: XIX, the stone that stayed where it was put. Come up at Michaelmas if you can. Bring the good ink and a clean pair of gloves. Your loving sister, Maud.