Lorna and Herminius stood together by his long, low house, looking out down the hill to the brown of the city beyond. It looked nothing at all like Lorna had ever imagined Rome; more like an old industrial town that had been squeezed into too small a space. She was very aware that almost everything she knew about the city hadn't happened yet, and that anything she might say about what she did know could send Herminius mad. But she'd found the not saying much had made him suspect she was hiding something, and he seemed more tense now the two of them were alone.
"If you both dislike our time so much," he said. "The guts of fishes, and the guts of men. Then why come here at all? If the future is so full of marvels."
"It's not so great when you live in it. And I've always wanted to go to Rome. I mean, nothing I wanted to see is here, but, you know. It was a goal."
"Your daughter seemed appalled that I might keep slaves," said Herminius. "I wondered if you once might have been one."
Lorna laughed. "Maybe it feels like it sometimes!" she said. "But no, nobody is where we're from. A person owning another person… that's wrong, isn't it? Really wrong. And if someone said I could do it just because of the city I was from," she shook her head, "it's mad. You all think it here, of course. And you've been good to me and Chrissy, you have. But thinking of how when we're gone, you'll turn our room over to that" — she shuddered. "I'm not even sorry. It's wrong."
If Herminius was offended by that, he didn't show it. He was frowning out at his city as though it was offending him too, for a reason that had nothing to do with slavery. He looked deeply and profoundly troubled, like Lorna's existence had forced him to consider something he'd been trying to forget.
"A world without slaves," he said. "I almost said it was unthinkable, but because of you I have thought of it. It's the first step to it actually happening. And perhaps it makes me think… of some other impossible things."
"You're very open minded, for your time."
"Our minds are sliced open with swords. Five hundred years, since kings were gone from Rome! But since his rule, it seems like their time might come again. You'll know of him, of course, in the future," he said, before intoning a name that Lorna had never heard.
"I'm sorry," she said in a way that was obviously truthful, "I've no idea who that is."
Herminius's face lightened. "Then maybe there is hope for the future! A man who can make us slaughter each other in the streets, like gladiators do for sport. For him to be forgotten, as if nothing had happened at all!"
His face darkened again.
"Unless there was worse to come, of course. And a man would come who'd turn on the city for good. Crush all of Rome, and rule it for all of his life."
Lorna hesitated. A part of knew she shouldn't, but at the same time she wasn't so sure at all. She imagined what she'd shout, at someone who knew all the secrets of her future, and what she'd say if the Doctor did to her what she was doing to Herminius right now.
"Have you heard," she said as delicately as she could, "of a man called Julius Caesar?"
Herminius burst out laughing.
"Caesar! We don't have anything to fear from him. He's just vain, and money-grubbing. More concerned with people knowing who he is, than the business of being in power." He shook his head. "No, that's not the kind of man I'm worried about. Even last year, all the trouble with the pirates. One man appointed to rule the city, and I know I wasn't the only one who thought he might never stop. Once it's been shown to be possible. It might only be a matter of time."
He looked at Lorna with exhausted eyes, and suddenly he could have been anyone who she knew.
"Tell me," he said. "Truthfully. Am I right to fear it as I do? Will a king come once again to Rome?"
Lorna looked at the fear in his eyes and the paleness in his skin, and for a second she understood what it might feel like to live as the Doctor.
"No," she said, as enthusiastically as she could, "not that I know of. Two thousand years from now the city's still here, and it never gets ruled over by even a single king."
Herminius's face brightened very slightly.
"Then perhaps I can relax a little."
"That'd be nice," said Lorna. "Relaxing's good, when you're having some time of your own."
She looked over to the house where her daughter was playing with the salt things, and hoped she at least had a little less to think about with them.