Ink

by Alice Broadway

  He brings the knife down and a thick lock of the man’s hair falls to the ground.

  Like a sheep to the shearer.

  I’m so relieved I cry out a laughing sob. He’ll be OK. He’s not going to be killed.

  The woman next to me looks at me sharply. “It’s no laughing matter – you watch this. Watch this and remember.”

  The man is weeping. The guards have hold of him still, but he seems punctured – his fight has gone, as though he’s given himself over to his fate. Longsight raises the knife high and as he does a man dressed completely in black comes to the stage. Two assistants follow with a stool and a table laden with kit, and then I know what’s going to happen. As Longsight wipes his knife and returns it to the case, the man sits and takes a razor from the table. Carefully, he shaves the back of the prisoner’s head. Then he removes his black gloves, discards them and puts on a fresh pair. I see him lift the familiar machine, ready the skin, and then begin to work on the scalp just above the hairline at the back of his head, dipping the needle into a small inkwell on his work station. The prisoner groans but keeps still – the guards still holding him help.

  There’s a commotion in the crowd, and I see a young man shoving his way through, fighting to reach the platform. I see the guards tense but before he can get close some of those around him reach for him and drag him away. I see his face as they leave – blank with horror, glasses knocked askew – and for a moment I imagine our eyes meet.

  The inking continues. It doesn’t take as long as some of the tattoos I’ve seen, but still the buzz of the machine wheedles into my mind like a dull tinnitus. I begin to feel weak as I stand and half-watch, half-dream while the man in black completes the mark. Then, with a sudden absence of sound, the machine stops, and the inker stands up. He returns the machine to the table and, with a final respectful nod to the Mayor, walks away.

  Mayor Longsight, who has been standing at the back of the stage while the mark was made, steps forward to the microphone.

  “Today, my friends, you have seen justice done. This man will remain in our society – we are generous. His hair will grow and his ink will be hidden. But he has received the mark of the forgotten.”

  Something pierces the numbness in my brain. The forgotten?

  “When this criminal dies this mark will be read, this mark will convict him, and his book will be destroyed in the flames of the fire in the hall of judgement.”

  How could you live once you’ve been marked as forgotten? How could you go on, knowing none of it matters, that your life will end at death and oblivion? All I hope is that I will ascend to the ranks of the remembered – that’s what we live for. But right here, this man’s hope has been blotted out by black ink.

  Forgotten.

  A dull peal is ringing in my brain – something I’ll remember if only I let myself.

  “Friends, let this encourage you to live lives worthy of the calling we have received. Live lives to be remembered. Don’t let this man’s failure be in vain.”

  A whisper goes through the crowd, ending up as a held-back roar. People are cheering, people are shouting, people are saying over and over, “A crow, a crow. The mark is a crow.”

  Forgotten. And I remember now. I remember everything.

  The man’s howl merges with my own and I run home, the bag of onions banging against my thigh and the soil from the potatoes still under my nails.

  A crow. A crow. The mark is a crow.

  Chapter Three

  As I run through the square, past the hall of judgement and the museum, I try to picture my father’s book. I try to envisage each page I turned, each moment of his life. I can’t help but read people as I dodge past them:

  Fourteen, loves music, hates her sister.

  Loves his lover, has tricked his wife.

  Her dog is more of a friend than any human she’s known.

  Fifty-six but feels eighty – so many sicknesses have taken her joy.

  Past the bakery, keep running. I need to get home, away from the noise, away from the visual cacophony, away from those voices cawing at me.

  I can’t get the buzzing of the machine out of my head. A crow. I had forgotten about that day till now. That day…

  I was little – eight years old maybe. It was late in the afternoon, we were expecting Dad home any minute and I was playing upstairs when there was a knock at the door, a brief flare of voices, and a few moments later I heard it slam. I wandered downstairs to ask Mum who was there and discovered I was home alone for the first time. I opened the door and looked down the street – in the distance I saw my mother’s red shawl. She was walking quickly, and a man next to her was trotting to keep up. All I knew was that I shouldn’t be alone so I followed my mother, letting the door swing shut behind me. I had nearly caught up when they turned the corner – they were heading to the flayers, where Dad worked. I followed at a distance, all the time meaning to call out, “Mummy! I’m here! You forgot to take me with you!” but my lips wouldn’t move, and my voice didn’t work.

  Outside the battered metal warehouse of the flayers there was a small crowd of people leaning in, looking at something. The group opened to let my mum in, and an anxious-looking man said, “It was just an accident. It looks worse than it is. A casket fell and cracked him on the head. They were unloading them for us to work on…” But Mum moved past him, ignoring his words. As the figures made way I saw my dad sat on the ground with someone holding a folded pad of fabric to his head. The makeshift bandage was red and his hair looked wet. He blinked his eyes open and when he saw Mum he reached out his hand.

  “I’m fine, love. It was only a knock. Don’t worry the doctor – I just need to rest up,” Dad winced a little as he spoke.

  “Oh, Joel,” she said. “What have you done?” Mum sounded annoyed rather than scared and I knew Dad must be all right.

  “Just an accident. No one’s fault. He’ll live,” the man said again.

  I felt then that they might be cross if they saw me, and I scampered home. The door had locked behind me when I left to follow Mum, so I found a window that was half open and climbed into the house through it.

  It was dusk when Mum and Dad got back. Julia, my best friend Verity’s mum, was with them.

  “I’ll just sleep down here tonight,” Dad said, yawning. So Mum made a bed of cushions and blankets on the floor near the fire because Dad was too tall for the sofa. I sat on the stairs and listened to their whispered conversation.

  “I didn’t know who else to call,” Mum murmured. “He’s had some painkillers, but I think he could do with some stiches really.”

  “You shouldn’t have involved me. If Simon ever found out… I don’t understand why you didn’t just take him straight to the doctor.” There’s anger in Julia’s voice, or maybe it’s fear.

  “You know I couldn’t. Please, Julia.”

  Julia sighed. “Do you know how risky this is? And I’m no nurse.”

  “Nobody saw anything, Julia; he covered it. Anyway, you stitch women up all the time. Please. There’s no one else.”

  There was a pause and then:

  “Boil some water. Do you have a razor? Joel, this will sting.”

  No one thought to look for me; they were too preoccupied. I hid in my room until everything was quiet. It must have been the middle of the night when I crept to look at him, to make sure he was OK. His back was rising and falling, his breath coming out in a quiet snore. His head was bandaged but the dressing had slipped; perhaps Dad had grabbed at it in his sleep, because I saw what lay beneath. His hair around the injury had been shaved by Julia and I saw a dark line across the back of his head. I saw the neat stitches holding the skin together and smelled the healing spices mixed with the scent of blood and sweat.

  The razor had revealed a hidden secret. Truth laid bare.

  Because there it was. Rent in two but joined by the stitches. An old mark, but one I’d never seen before.

  A picture of a crow.

  Chapter Four />
  I let myself into the house, drop the vegetables on our wooden table and listen to my own wild, anxious breathing. That criminal, Connor. My dad. Both marked with a crow. Both forgotten.

  I can’t be here. I can’t be here when Mum gets back. I pick up my leather bag, put my shawl over my head and set out for the only place I can think to go.

  Verity and I have been best friends for as long as I can remember. I know the story so well: our mothers met when we were born; we were born on the same day in the same hospital ward. Verity was born healthy and was marked and sent home at the proper time, but I was sick in hospital and left unmarked for many weeks. Dad had to return to work and Verity’s mum, Julia, kept coming back to visit, to talk and to comfort my mum. She brought fresh fruit and books for Mum to read – little things so she felt less bored and alone. She’s a midwife; I suppose it came naturally for her to care for us.

  She would bring Verity in too. Something in those days of us being fed and changed and loved side by side created a bond between Verity and me. Julia’s fearlessness and Mum’s fortitude forged a friendship that was as strong as it was new. Mum always says that Julia was her saviour and Verity was mine.

  I need a saviour right now.

  Verity’s house is in a nicer part of town than ours. It’s only about five minutes’ walk, but it looks like a different world. It’s all so much more spread out: there are spaces between the houses, which are set back behind hedged-in front gardens so I can’t see in easily. Trees line the street, and each neat, red-bricked house looks like it belongs in exactly that spot, instead of a hotchpotch of crazy-looking buildings crammed together. Inside, Verity’s house is at once calm and cosy. I love it here; sometimes it’s easier to be here than my real home. I can hide.

  I knock on the front door and, when I get no answer, let myself in. No one is in the vast, slightly unkempt kitchen, although the fire is lit. I check the sitting room, and when I don’t see anyone I head up to Verity’s room, call out a hello, and go in. She’s at her desk, staring out of the window that looks on to their garden. Her room is bright pink – a throwback to a time when we were younger and both obsessed with the colour.

  “Leora!” Her face lights up when she notices me. “Nice timing. I’ve been procrastinating for hours; I need a break.” She smiles and stretches with her pencil still in her hand. Her thick dark hair is roughly tied back and messy from where she’s been playing with the strands around her ears while she’s been working. She’s wearing a striking blue wrap which makes her eyes and deep brown skin look even more lovely than usual. She is the closest thing I’ve got to a sister. Verity’s the one friend who knows me through and through, and she loves me, even on the days she probably hates me a little bit too. She’s my only real friend.

  I sit on her large bed and lean against the padded headboard. I open my mouth to try and tell her about the morning, but instead of words spilling out, tears come. I put my hand over my eyes – I’m so tired of crying in front of people, so fed up of the sting as the tears dry on my skin, so weary of the way it makes my lips red and my eyes look swollen. But I can’t stop the tears.

  Verity has dropped the pencil and comes to sit next to me. She rubs my back. “Oh, Lor. I’m sorry. It will get easier, it will.”

  That’s the problem when your dad dies. Well, there are lots of problems when your dad dies, but one of them is that from that day on, whenever you’re sad, everyone assumes it’s to do with that. And maybe it is, partly. I don’t know – my thoughts are going too fast for me to catch one and examine it.

  My breath steadies and I try to explain.

  “It’s not Dad. I was in the square and … Mayor Longsight was there.”

  Verity squeals at this, but stops when she sees I’m not joining in.

  “And there was this man, he … they … they marked him with a crow…” It all comes back to me again: the jeers rising up out of the crowd, that look in the criminal’s eyes, like all the life and light had gone out of them. I can’t look at Verity or I’ll cry again. I draw circles with my finger on the patchwork bedspread.

  “You sound like you’re telling me about a dream, Lor. Slow down – tell me what’s going on.”

  And so I tell her everything from the beginning. But all the while I’m thinking about my dad, and how he had the same mark, the mark of the crow – the mark which wasn’t there when we looked at his book.

  Where had it gone?

  “But it was right, wasn’t it, Verity?” I finished. I can hear the pleading in my voice. “It had to be done. He stole someone’s skin. Their afterlife. Mayor Longsight said marking criminals was an old tradition—”

  Verity goes to her desk and picks up one of her textbooks. She flicks to a page with a chapter called Marks and Punishment. “Look, Lor – you know this stuff. Actually, I revised it last week.” She starts to read.

  “‘Marks may be used to record an individual’s transgressions. Punishment marks must be carried out by an official inker. These marks record crimes and misdemeanours which will aid the final judgement during the weighing of the soul—’”

  “But this wasn’t like that,” I interrupt. It wasn’t just a new line on his left arm, it was one I’ve never seen before – a crow. And it meant he was ‘forgotten’…”

  “I know, I’m getting to that bit.” Verity gives me a fake-annoyed glare and goes back to reading.

  “‘In the most serious cases, the criminal may be marked as a forgotten. Marking a criminal as forgotten was always rare due to the irreversible nature of the action, and has fallen out of common practice in recent years, but there is legal and historical precedent for it.’ There you go,” she says. “I suppose Mayor Longsight decided this case warranted it.”

  I can’t help smiling at Verity’s attempt to solve everything; it’s in a book, case closed. “But he said that from now on markings would be more frequent.”

  She shrugs and closes the book with a thump. I’ve dried my tears but I can hear a crack in my voice – it won’t take much for me to weep again. I wish I could be like Verity and feel totally confident that everything is neat and right and makes sense, but there’s something in me that feels like this isn’t quite justice. A yawn shudders through me.

  “Look at you, Lor. Are you still not sleeping well?” I shake my head. “You’re exhausted. Rest – we can talk about it all later. I’ll wake you in an hour.”

  She pushes me gently down onto the soft bed. I try to protest, but Verity’s bed, with its heavy patchwork quilt that her mum made from pieces of her baby clothes, is too hard to resist. Everything seems better after a sleep, doesn’t it?

  I dream I am tiny and hidden inside someone’s head. Their eyes, their mouth are my windows and door. Someone is trying to get in. I hear a flutter and see a black beak pecking through teeth and lips.

  “Leora?” It’s Verity’s dad, Simon, standing in the doorway with a tray. “I’ve brought you something to eat. I bet you missed lunch.” He puts the tray on the side table.

  Simon’s always been kind to me, but ever since Dad died, he’s been even kinder. He’s tall, with deep brown skin, and his dark hair is starting to match his greying beard. His body is covered in inked-on faces, and when I’m able to see them well enough to read him I can tell what mood he’s in – the faces change for me, depending on how he feels. Today I can’t see them though; he’s wearing his work clothes – the pale blue that all the skin doctors in the hospital wear. He’s a surgeon and, according to Verity, is researching something very brainy about how skin heals. “Take a bit of time to wake up.” He heads towards the bedroom door then stops. “Does Sophie know you’re here? You know she’ll worry.”

  Mum. My heart sinks. She’ll have been expecting me home hours ago. I wish I could stay asleep and avoid facing her, but the combination of my strange dream and the smell of toast force me into alertness.

  After I’ve properly woken up and eaten some toast, I wander down to the kitchen where Verity is chatting t
o her dad. Her brother Seb isn’t back from work yet. He’s about five years older than Verity and me but he’s always been part of our games as we grew up. He would be the dad when we played “grown ups”, and he was the model when we went through our stage of wanting to be clothes designers. I’ve never quite known what it is that makes Seb the way he is. Verity calls it a “delay” and his parents say he’s “special”. His speech isn’t always clear and he’s struggled to achieve the things Verity and I have managed with ease. I remember once saying I felt sorry for him and Verity smacked me in the arm and said, “Look at him. Is he sorry? Is he any less alive than you and me?” I had shaken my head in shame and shock (Verity had never hit me before). “Well, don’t feel sorry for him then,” she’d said, her eyes blazing. “He’s not sorry and I’m not sorry he is how he is, so don’t you dare feel sorry for him.” And that was me told.

  He’s working now – he completed his training as a baker and has been at the local bakery for the last three years. They love him there; he charms all the customers and he works hard. His custard pastries are the best things I have ever eaten.

  I love their kitchen. The red tiles on the walls above the dark wooden units make everything seem cheery and warm. It’s never exactly messy here, but there are so many things packed on to shelves and hanging from hooks and framed on walls that it has a curated-clutter feel which makes me immediately relax. Verity comes and puts an arm round me and we stand like that for a moment.

  “Oh, Dad, Leora saw something I want to ask you about. Did you know anything about a public marking happening in the square today?”

  Simon looks up from the pile of papers he had been tidying, his hands suddenly still. “I had heard.”