Egyptian Tahtib: Bonjour...
"So, where are we exactly?" Rose asked, brushing dust off her derriere as she stood up again – their landing out of the transport flash hadn't exactly been graceful – and then reaching over to do the same for Tock, before he bounded excitedly away from her and began investigating the dusty alley.
Jared checked the time jumper on his wrist, waiting a beat while it snagged their current whereabouts in the spacetime continuum and double-checked them against their target and his memory, then he turned and smiled at his fiancé. "Perfect. We're in the town of Suez, right at the very north end of the Red Sea, and it's late December of Seventeen ninety-eight. Napoleon will be here in a couple of days."
"Suez?" she repeated, puzzled. Geography had never been her strongest subject at school (although it had been better than some). "Isn't that where there's a big canal or something?"
"Not yet. Will be, in about six decades."
"Ok. So, what's first?"
"Well, first, I think we'd better find the market and get ourselves some decent local clothes. We're not exactly dressed for the desert – or decently dressed at all," and Jared looked sideways at her, his eyes twinkling, "ya wee timorous beastie!"
Sending him an amused mock-glare at this reminder of their adventure with Queen Victoria, she replied in the same mangled Scots accent she'd used then: "Och, ya mon!"
He cringed, screwing his face up. "Ach! That still sounds horrible! OUCH!" he cried, rubbing his arm where she'd punched it. Then, giggling together, they joined hands and went in search of the market, with Tock lollygagging along behind.
Sounds of human activity were coming from thataway, but they kept to smaller alleys as they worked their way over, not wanting to attract too much attention. Jared peered up and down each street they came to, though, puzzlement settling further on his features each time. "What is it?" Rose finally asked him.
"The town seems half empty. There should be a lot more people here than this. There's supposed to be seventeen, eighteen thousand people living here about now." He jerked his head back and pressed with her into the shadows as a troop of French soldiers went marching past, rifles on their shoulders, sweating in their blue uniforms under the scorching Egyptian sun. "On the other hand, maybe they left because of them," he whispered.
"I thought Napoleon wasn't here yet?"
"If I recall, I think he sent a couple thousand troops under General... uh... General Bon here before him to secure the town." He nodded towards her back, where the paperback was still tucked in her waistband. "We'll check in the book later." Not acknowledging his uncharacteristic uncertainty of the name, he peeked out to make sure the soldiers were gone before they darted out and across the street.
Two blocks further found them peeking out of another alley into the open marketplace. This time Rose had to agree with him: the market seemed half deserted, with many open stalls around the perimeter and only a few shoppers. Jared pulled back again as a couple of soldiers wandered past, off duty, talking and laughing with each other. Rose watched them go, listening to their incomprehensible chatter, as well as that of the locals nearby. Then, turning around, she was shocked to find Jared sagging back against the wall, eyes screwed tightly shut, a look she couldn't decipher on his face – pain? Fear?
"Jared? Love?" she whispered, laying a hand lightly on his chest.
He reached for her hand and squeezed it. "It's ok. I'm ok," he panted. His eyes finally opened and lit on her face. "Rose... I understood what they're saying. All of them." A beat, while this sunk in. "I still speak French – and Arabic."
Her sunrise smile claimed her lips, and she reached out to pull him into a tight hug. "Oh, Jared!"
One of the biggest shocks he's suffered on losing the TARDIS had been losing languages, too. The Doctor had learned tens of thousands of languages in his youth, but almost every one of them had been galactic ones, spoken far across the galaxy and/or thousands – hundreds of thousands – of years into the future. Without realizing it, he'd been depending on the TARDIS translations circuits for almost all the Earth languages of or near Rose's time, the time he'd most spent on this, his favorite planet. And once the translator circuit was no longer active in his head, Jared had been limited to English – or so he'd thought. After discovering in Reich World that he no longer understood German or Norwegian, he'd never quite had the courage to discover if he'd retained any others.
Now MUCH more confident than he'd been a moment before, he took her hand, fingers intertwined as was their habit, and they sauntered together into the marketplace. Rose's eyes caught the sight of beautiful silks stirring in the slight breeze. "Oooh, can I get an exotic Egyptian outfit, like Evie did in The Mummy?"
"Mummies? You mean like, walking undead people? Ooh, I hope not! Ick!" Jared shivered theatrically, and Rose gaped at him a moment, then laughed helplessly, figuring he hadn't caught the reference, especially when he asked her immediately to slip him just one of the golden coins, which he then commenced haggling with a jewelry merchant over exchanging it for an appropriate amount of local currency.
But he had gotten it. "Something exotic, eh? With seven veils, perhaps? For dancing?" Local money pocketed, he leaned over her, leering, eyebrows waggling suggestively.
"Maaaaaybe," she drawled, and turned to saunter away towards the silks, hips swaying. His eyebrows shot to his hairline, and he grinned, stretching out a long leg to hurry after her.
She didn't end up as belly-dancer-chic as Evie had, but was happy, nevertheless, with strange trousers of dark-blue silk, wide at the top but tight below the knees; a long-sleeved white silk blouse to keep sun off her arms but so lightweight that it added nothing to the heat; a jade green, fitted cotton caftan with long side slits, embroidered around the edges with lighter green and gold thread; and a heavy fitted coat of midnight blue for the cold, December desert evenings. She kept her sandals, but also found a pair of leather boots that didn't fit too badly, and topped it all off with a light blue scarf with gold threads for her hair, and a slightly darker warm blue shawl to wrap around her shoulders when it wasn't cold enough for the coat.
Jared was much harder to outfit, the long, skinny toothpick being a completely different shape than any of the locals. Finally, though, one of the men had an idea, and led them out of the market to a private home. He convinced the widow who lived there to part with some of her late husband's clothes; an oddity among the Egyptians, he'd been nearly as tall as Jared and only a little heavier. Dressed in the traditional very long white cotton shirt hanging almost to his feet, grey cotton trousers underneath, maroon caftan tied with a cloth belt, a dark green coat, and black boots, he almost passed for a local, especially after Rose talked him into adding a white turban for his head, to keep off the sun.
Lastly, the widow handed him a leather belt, motioning towards the sword he still carried in one hand. He'd wrapped it loosely in cloth, but the shape was still unmistakable. Thanking her gravely, he ran the belt through the scabbard's loops and settled it around his hips under the caftan, where the ruby wouldn't attract attention.
They took turns admiring each other on the way back to the market to pick up some food and other supplies. Once there, though, another matter claimed their attention: some of the locals were having a very strange reaction to Tock. While a few stray mongrels were running about unremarked, their pooch was garnering white-eyed, sideways stares, and not a few gestures which Rose thought might be to ward off evil – and Jared confirmed they were. He turned to ask their guide about it in Arabic, but the answer made him stop and stare, wide-eyed.
"What is it?" Rose asked, alarmed.
He turned his stare on her, nonplussed more than alarmed, and she relaxed slightly. "They called him 'aled'eb sey'eh'," he said quietly, as if that meant something.
"Which means?" she prompted.
A beat. Then, enunciating carefully, "Bad wolf."