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He opens the door only slightly, precious of the warm air within, but then further upon recognising the visitor. “Oh! I had not thought to see you until the Spring, at least.”
The lad grins at him, all quiet charm. “The river’s not frozen yet, John. And you know I’d skate up if it were.”
“Slide, you mean, and turn up wet and cold and tumbled arse over elbow,” he, John, says, pulling the door open wide enough for Harry to enter - but only just, so that they have to squeeze by one another chest to chest. Harry’s damp with sleet, his doublet and cloak smelling of wet wool as all the corridors of Richmond palace do, this time of year, but his face is ruddy around his beard. They are close enough that he could count the snowflakes on his lashes.
“Anything for you,” Harry says cheerfully, his hand closing over his, John’s, to push the door shut behind them.
“Well,” he says, for want of anything sensible to say to stop him doing something less wise with his mouth, “and what are you doing here? What with - well - I hadn’t expected an emissary of the Master of the Rolls, this time of year.”
“Escorting our Hartnell,” Harry explains as he leads Harry away from the outside door to the back courtyard and into the warren of corridors and cells occupied by the King’s clerks. The warmth builds the further in they go, until Harry is tugging off his gloves and tucking them into his belt, and pulling at the neck of his doublet. “He’s seeing Reid, learning the ways. Master Crozier reckons he’ll be good for reading the lines of court.”
He, John, nods; he’s met the lad, and believes it. “But at Christmas?” he marvels as they enter John’s own room and shut the door behind them.
Harry ducks his head and won’t meet his eye. “With Master Crozier - unwell,” he says uncertainly, “there’s more needs doing. And besides,” Harry says, looking him in the face again, slightly defiant, “you’re here, aren’t you.”
He reaches out and squeezes Harry’s hand, sorry for bringing it up. Household turbulence is never pretty; too much depends on its stability, and thus on Crozier’s getting well again. “I am, indeed,” he allows. “But come! Tell me how it is I am treated to your presence, when Hartnell can make it a short stretch upriver as well on his own as with you.”
Harry laughs and swings their joined hands. “If you do not want me…” he says, making as though to leave until he, John, reels him gently back in. He always wants him, his rare treasure from downriver. The times they can manufacture to meet, at one place or the other or sometimes half way in some neutral nowhere, these are so few and far between. He has to make the remembrance last: how his eyes shine in the candlelight; how his hand feels, rough and weather-bitten, against his palm; how he smiles, here where there is no-one else to see them.
“It is Christmas,” Harry offers.
“A little early for a visit from a wise man,” he muses. “Perhaps you are a shepherd?”
“Not an angel?” Harry grins. “Hail, thou that art highly favoured.”
It takes a moment to place the quotation: ave, gratia plena so ingrained within him that the words jar when presented differently. But Crozier’s was ever a house of Bible-readers, and he doubts not that their austere, self-contained priesting man, Irving, would have read to them often enough that Harry can recall no other version. “Well, I suppose,” he says, smiling gently.
“Besides,” Harry says, “I meant: it is Christmas, between the old year and the new, and in the spirit of misrule I am no longer a lowly servant but Master of the Rolls himself, here to set all at court to rights and set myself above you all.” Harry puffs up his chest and looks all self-important like a partridge strutting the moor.
“Are you, indeed?” he says, raising an eyebrow and settling into his chair; he keeps a hold of Harry’s hand and tugs him along to stand between his knees so that he can look up at his lovely Harry.
Harry deflates and shrugs. “Not really; we gave Lordship of Misrule to Evans in hopes it might cheer him, and of course the Blankys are doing all in truth. And my Lord Hertford, that is.”
“Well, you may take my place for the season, if you will; I should like a little time away from my desk,” he offers.
“You shouldn’t,” Harry corrects, “it’s colder than the devil’s teeth out there, and the snow-bright would blind you, my poor old mole.”
He harrumphs. “Better than blinking my eyes away indoors. I shall go blind anyway down here - His Grace was rather freer with the candles than Master Hickey is.”
“He probably eats them, he looks waxen enough,” Harry says. “But I shall care for you in your blind dotage, and in the meantime take your place anyway.”
Having said so, Harry deposits himself in his lap and turns to the desk. He, John, lets his arms settle around his young man’s waist, allows his cheek to settle against the soft green velvet covering the sharp blade of his shoulder, and presses his ear to his back to hear him hum contentedly. He is ever so easy to hold, this young man who fits into the bracket of his body like he was made to rest there.
Harry picks up a sheet of vellum, somewhat at random, and holds it before him. “Ah, yes,” he says. “Here - you listen to this, and mark it well, young man.”
He smiles, and presses his face into Harry’s back. Many a time they have sat together, talking over John’s papers, so that Harry can have all the news that might otherwise only be read to oneself. Harry has no need to read, only a lively mind that might benefit from it, and so he, John, reads to him.
Harry clears his throat, and he prepares for whatever jest Harry is minded to have at the court’s expense - some law banning unmarried men from looking at women, and thus dooming the young men of court to celibacy, or forbidding any man to be more handsome than the King in his presence and so sending the vainest men scuttling home for the Springtime. But instead:
“The heart and service to you proffer'd With right good will full honestly,” Harry says, clearly and brightly, “Refuse it not, since it is offer'd, But take it to you gentlely.”
“Oh,” he says gently, and Harry swallows.
“And though it be a small present, Yet good, consider graciously The thought, the mind, and the intent Of him that loves you faithfully,” Harry recites, eyes staring blankly at the page before him, covered in words none so pretty, nor so heartfelt. He, John, cannot look away. “Pain or travel, to run or ride, I undertake it pleasantly;” he says, and his arms contract about Harry’s middle as though he had been like to leave. “Bid ye me go, and straight I glide At your commandement humbly.”
“Harry,” he says helplessly. “Harry.”
Harry drops the sheet to the desk and squirms in John’s lap to face him as much as he can. He settles his arms over John’s shoulders and presses in close. “And since so much I do desire To be your own assuredly,” he murmurs darkly, lips so close as to be brushing John’s own. “For all my service and my hire Reward your servant liberally.”
“Oh, gladly,” he is saying, and then all words are swallowed up in the sweet press of lips, close and hungry and well-beloved. They’ve been apart some weeks, what with the chill building between the households of Master Crozier and Cardinal Franklin. Their opportunities were never so many even then. But never does he wish to be with another, to leave his Harry for someone within reach - for he adores him too fervently to countenance it, like a chivalric knight wasting away for his lady love.
“Did you like your present,” Harry breathes, fingers creeping in under John’s doublet.
“Most certainly,” he says. His hands settle over Harry’s hipbones, padded in winter plumage. He hopes Harry will visit all through the summer, sweating his pale linens clear, as he had been when this thing between them was first rooting. “Who taught you such pretty words?”
“Hartnell had it from some young man at court,” Harry says carelessly, and he wants to know which - he likes to hear about new poets before anyone else, if possible - and he wants to burn up inside and press Harry to the table and mark him his own to chase the image of Hartnell and his Harry reciting love poetry to one another for days on end, far off in Westminster where he cannot be reached - but he doesn’t get the chance. “I thought you might like it,” Harry adds. “It made me think on you.”
He wraps his arms around Harry, holds tight against the inexpressible. “Well. ‘Tis very sweet. I hope the young poet does well, that I might think on you every time it is read.”
Harry smiles, small and smug and pleased with himself. “And what have you for me, then?”
“I did not know you were coming,” he says, objection and confession both, and Harry pouts insincerely. “And what have I, a lowly servant, to give a mighty clerk such as you?” he teases.
Harry laughs, bright and shining, and he looks up at him, haloed against candles and entirely angelic. Gratia plena, indeed.
He reaches up and tugs Harry gently closer. “How long can I have you,” he murmurs, “before Hartnell needs you home?”
Harry beams. “Oh, I could stretch our hours a little,” he says. “Since you’re promising such a lovely gift.”