Ben-Hur

by Carol Wallace

  And perhaps that wasn’t Judah’s trouble at all. He was only seventeen. His tutors praised him; he was kind to his sister, attentive at the Temple. Maybe he was just getting feverish. But when Naomi heard her son’s footsteps on the tiled floor of the rooftop, she knew there was more amiss than the physical.

  She did not move but stayed in her shadowy corner, lit only by a small lantern on the low table nearby. She made her voice noncommittal. “Good evening, Judah. Can you sit with me for a while? I think this might be the coolest spot in Jerusalem.”

  He dragged a large cushion across the tiles and sat on the floor next to her divan. “You may be right, Mother,” he answered. “I saw a great deal of our city today.”

  “And why is that?” she asked.

  No answer but a long outgoing breath. She picked up a fan and unfurled it, then laid it beside her on the divan.

  Judah reached up and touched the feathers with the tips of his fingers. “I saw Messala today,” he told her.

  “Your old friend? That Roman boy?”

  “Not a boy anymore,” he said.

  “That’s right. He is, what, three years older than you?”

  “Two.” He said no more but turned and faced away from her. They both looked out onto the rooftop garden, where the rising moon began to silver the clumps of small palms and the fountain burbled quietly. Tree frogs had launched into their rhythmic peeping, and a current of air brought a whiff of night-blooming jasmine into the summerhouse.

  “He went back to Rome, didn’t he?” Naomi finally said, to break the silence between them.

  “For five years,” Judah answered.

  “And what did you think of him?”

  “He is completely Roman now. Scornful. He believes nothing could be good that does not come from Rome.”

  “They are arrogant, those Romans,” Naomi agreed. “And what will he do now that he is in Jerusalem?”

  “He is a soldier.”

  Silence fell once more. Naomi waited for several minutes. She brought the fan up to move a current of air.

  Judah sighed again. “Mother, what will I do?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We Jewish men must have a profession. Should I become a scholar or a merchant or a farmer?”

  “Do you want to do any of those things?”

  “No.” Another pause.

  “And taking over your father’s business? Is that something that beckons to you?”

  “Is that what I should do, Mother? Would that be useful?”

  Naomi folded the fan, lining up its plumes against each other. “Is that what matters to you?”

  “Yes,” Judah affirmed. “I want to be useful.” But she heard something in his voice that contradicted his words.

  “Nothing more?”

  JUDEA’S POLITICAL STATUS

  For a time, Judea had enjoyed a measure of independence, and though Herod the Great was a tyrant, he was at least Jewish. But beginning in AD 6, Rome dissolved the kingship, and Judea became a satellite state under the authority of the Roman legate in the province of Syria. To add insult to injury, the local officer was not permitted to establish himself in Jerusalem. This was a dishonor to the Jewish people, many of whom longed for a new king who would rise up to reassert their independent rule.

  He leaned back against the divan, his head resting on his mother’s knee. “There are so many limits to a Jew’s life!” he exclaimed. “If I were a sculptor, I couldn’t portray an athlete or a hero. If I were a philosopher, I could only think and write about our relationship to our God. Can’t we be curious?”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “I want to know what I don’t know!” he told her. “I want to be surprised! The world is large and Jerusalem is small. But I’m not allowed to look any further.”

  Naomi was sure she heard Messala’s voice in her son’s words. The friendship had always troubled her, but to some extent she had seen its value. Both she and her husband, while he lived, had understood the necessity of mixing with Romans and other Gentiles. Messala as a boy had been arrogant, but never less than respectful toward the faith of the fathers. Now, apparently, he had outgrown that basic courtesy. Worse, she had heard rumors about him. It was said that he’d been sent back to Jerusalem because he had fallen into bad ways in Rome. One source said gambling; another said women. Both could have been true, or neither; Naomi reserved judgment.

  “Messala was always ambitious,” she remarked, keeping her voice neutral. “What are his plans?”

  “He wants to conquer new lands for Rome. He has it all planned. Exploration, conquest, promotion. He wants to rule all of Syria.”

  “Which means ruling Judea.”

  “That’s his ambition,” Judah said bitterly. “He said I could share his fortune and his glory.”

  “And how did you answer that suggestion?”

  CAESAR AUGUSTUS

  Gaius Octavius, who came to be known and remembered as Caesar Augustus, was the founder of the Roman Empire and its first emperor. Under his rule, peace largely reigned within the empire itself, though continuous wars were fought to expand the frontiers to include Egypt and portions of northern Africa, Hispania, and Germania, among other lands. When Augustus died in AD 14, his adopted son, Tiberius, became emperor and appointed Valerius Gratus the Roman procurator of Judea.

  “I didn’t know what to say.” Judah stood and walked out of the summerhouse. His mother could see his silhouette moonlit near the fountain, where a nightingale had begun its song. She wanted to go to him and wrap her arms around him, but those days were long past.

  He took another few steps and leaned over the tiled parapet, looking down into the street. Off to the left, the bulk of the Antonia Tower blocked out the stars. He lingered there for a few minutes, eyes on the fortress.

  “They are busy tonight. Messala said the new procurator, Valerius Gratus, has moved another cohort of soldiers in there. For all I know, Messala is on duty tonight,” he told his mother, returning to the enclosure of the summerhouse.

  “Gratus is to make his ceremonial entry tomorrow,” Naomi told him. “The parade will go right past our gate.”

  “The Romans in all their glory,” he said. “With their drums and plumes and horses and swords and spears.” He roamed around the summerhouse for a moment, fingering objects that were as familiar to him as his own hands—a bronze vase, the golden paterae on a marble-topped table, his mother’s shawl.

  Finally he came back to Naomi and sat, this time at her feet on the divan. “What is our glory?”

  “The Lord’s preference for us,” she answered him instantly. “Think of it, Judah! Try to grasp the idea as if you’d never heard it before. As your friend has been telling you, the world is full of tribes and nations. But our God is the only true God, and we, the Jews, are the people he has saved and cherished. The only people. I can’t help thinking that compared to God’s favor, a sword is paltry.”

  Judah was silent as he tried to absorb this idea. “If he prefers the Jews, why does he let other people persecute us? Why is Jerusalem overrun with Romans?”

  “Are you questioning the wisdom of the almighty God?” Naomi snapped.

  “I suppose so, yes,” he answered slowly. “I know that’s wrong. But . . . aren’t we allowed to wonder about these things? I’m not even thinking about myself. We, the family of Hur, have nothing to complain of. But Jews have suffered thousands of years of insults, domination—even slavery. It seems like a harsh way to show favor.”

  “Yes, I can see how you feel that way,” Naomi conceded. “I suppose we all do from time to time. Maybe you should go to the Temple and ask Simeon to explain it. The point is that we, as a people, have endured for those thousands of years, retaining our Scriptures and our values. We’ve outlasted the Egyptians and the Babylonians, and we will certainly outlast the Romans. Other people worship many gods. Or they turn their rulers into divinities, the way the Romans do. We Jews have a covenant with the one and only God.
Knowing that, there’s nothing more to wish for.” Naomi paused. A blade of moonlight lay on her son’s hands, clasped on his raised knee. He still had the outsized knuckles of a boy whose muscles had not grown to match his bones. He tapped one finger against another, without thinking, and she knew he was trying to take in what she had said.

  He was so young. Sometimes it was hard to remember.

  “If you could do anything,” she said, laying a gentle hand on his shoulder, “if you could have any occupation at all—what would it be?”

  His rawboned boy’s hand came up and covered hers, enveloping it completely. “I would be a soldier.”

  “Like your friend Messala,” Naomi said flatly.

  “No. I was thinking of it before. I didn’t want to tell you.”

  “Why not?”

  He twisted around to smile at her with the sweetness that had always pierced her heart. “Because no mother wants her son to take up arms. I understand that.”

  “But every mother wants her son to follow his ambitions,” she answered, smiling back at him. “I would never want to hold you back from something you cared about. And God’s chosen people need soldiers as well as scholars.”

  He squeezed her hand and let it go. “I would have liked to make my father proud,” he said quietly.

  In turn, she patted his shoulder before removing her hand. “I know. I think often how proud he would have been of you. Be sure of that.” She swung her legs down from the divan and gathered up her fan and veil. “I think it is cool enough now that I will sleep in my bedroom. What about you?”

  “I will stay here for now. Will you have Amrah waken me in the morning before the procession begins?”

  “I doubt you’ll be able to sleep through the commotion,” Naomi said drily, “but I’ll send Amrah just in case.”

  But the next morning it was neither of those women who wakened Judah. Instead he became aware that he was dreaming, and that in his dream, a harp was playing. At first it was the shepherd-king David; then somehow in his dream his father was listening to King David; but finally he knew, without opening his eyes, that he was awake and his sister, Tirzah, was the musician. He lay for a long moment, feeling a faint breeze circle around his toes. He tried to guess the time from the warmth on his knees; the sun slanted into the summerhouse and reached the divan only early in the morning.

  “I can tell you’re awake,” Tirzah said, continuing to play. “You closed your mouth. It was a good thing. There was a fly buzzing around and you would have swallowed it.”

  A relief of Tirzah’s face on the side of Lew Wallace’s study in Crawfordsville, Indiana

  “No. That’s impossible,” he answered.

  “How do you know?”

  “Because even asleep, I look like a handsome living statue and my mouth would never be open. I think that string is flat,” he added. “With my eyes closed, I can hear so much more keenly . . . That one—no, that one.”

  Tirzah laid her palm against the strings and silenced them. “They are all in perfect tune. But you should get up. There is a huge crowd in the street.”

  In an instant Judah had rolled to his feet and padded over to the edge of the roof. He turned back to splash a handful of water from the fountain onto his face and onto his neck, leaving long wet streaks on his crumpled tunic.

  He reached the parapet and looked down. Tirzah was right—the street was already crowded. He could see turbans and veils and fezzes, and every kind of headgear normal on the streets of Jerusalem, pinned against the sides of the buildings by gleaming Roman helmets.

  Then a new sound cut through the low chatter of the crowd. First came the rhythmic tramping of soldiers, followed by a trumpet fanfare, around the corner but not far away. Tirzah had joined her brother, still holding her harp. “So early in the morning for a parade!” she said.

  “Probably to avoid trouble,” Judah told her, craning over the tiled parapet. “They’ve moved more soldiers into the tower. Maybe they expect some kind of uprising.”

  “I’m going to get Mother.” Tirzah turned away, leaving a faint, sweet residue of jasmine in the air beside him. Judah looked around to tease her about her new perfume, but she was already out of earshot, with the clamor from the street below. All he could see was her slight figure in a pale-green dress and a sheer striped veil floating behind her.

  He turned back to the spectacle below. It was impossible not to admire the Roman troops. The guards lining the road stood exactly spaced, motionless despite the constantly increasing crowd. The rooftops all around were also teeming with an audience by now. Jerusalem’s people were curious about their new procurator. The percussive beat of footsteps grew louder and the people’s murmurs died away as the troops came into sight. First, the flag, scarlet and gold, attached to an extra-long spear tipped with an eagle. The flag bearer strode out alone, setting the pace for the procession. As he took his measured steps, the crowd grew silent.

  Behind him came the men. Judah was so used to the Roman presence in Jerusalem that he had forgotten the message of might signaled on the street below. There were so many soldiers, marching shoulder to shoulder and in rows so close that if one man stumbled, the next would be on top of him in a flash. As one leg stepped forward, all legs stepped forward. They moved like one gigantic creature, and on every face the same blank expression of confidence and concentration gave them apparently similar features.

  And how they glittered in that raking morning sun! Its rays struck glinting highlights from helmets and spear tips and breastplates and buckles. Judah looked from the strutting scarlet-and-gold cohort to the crowd of onlookers, mostly shabby, silent, and awestruck.

  A break came in the stream of marching men. Strangely, the crowd remained silent as the footsteps grew more faint, so that the trumpet when it sounded had an impact like thunder. One, two, three trumpeters rounded the corner from the fortress, followed by another flag and a cavalry unit riding matching black horses. Judah looked back to the stairs leading up from the ground floor, hoping to see Tirzah and his mother. Tirzah loved horses.

  Roman soldiers march into Jerusalem in this scene from the 1959 MGM movie.

  Following the cavalry came a small guard of heavily armed soldiers, carrying not only spears and swords but also tall, curved shields. Judah eyed them with some envy. In battle they could move into a small, tight formation, covered entirely by their shields above and on every side, but bristling with the wicked spear tips. He wondered how much the shields weighed. How long could a man march while he carried one?

  He was so absorbed that he didn’t at first notice the sound of the crowd. From silence a murmur had grown, then a buzz, then jeers. The marching order left a gap between the guard and the man on horseback who now turned the corner. The ceremonial space made him easier to see, easier for his subjects to recognize. He sat astride an immense chestnut stallion, easily controlling the beast with one hand on the reins. His body armor was gilded, the saddlecloth purple, and he wore, instead of a helmet, a laurel wreath.

  So this was Valerius Gratus, the new procurator, Judah realized. And at the same moment, a voice from the crowd shouted, “Romans, go home!” and was instantly answered with cheers.

  TAKING THE BLAME

  In the 1959 movie, Judah is not responsible for the tile falling off the roof. His sister, Tirzah, accidentally dislodges the tile. Judah quickly pulls her away from the roof’s edge, and when the procurator’s men look up to see where the tile came from, they spot him. Judah also insists his mother and sister are innocent when the soldiers come to arrest them all.

  The atmosphere changed in a flash. The space around Valerius Gratus closed as the guards surrounded him, lifting their shields to create a marching fence. The pace of the procession increased. More shouts came from the onlookers, followed by catcalls. “Tyrant!” one woman cried and flung her sandal. It missed the procurator but hit his horse squarely on the rump. The mount shied, leaping sideways and scattering the guardsmen before Valerius Gratus could get
it under control. The crowd began howling with glee, and further missiles rained on them: half a dozen shoes, a rotten squash, the contents of a chamber pot. Gratus’s face was set in a scowl as he came level with the Hur palace.

  Judah leaned forward. As the guard passed, he might be able to see how the soldiers held the shields—were there two handles mounted on the inside? His outstretched hand landed on a tile on the parapet and he felt the tile move.

  It hurtled downward. The angle of the parapet was ideal for launching it into space. As Judah stood openmouthed, the tile sliced through the air and exploded against Valerius Gratus’s forehead.

  Every head turned. Every man and woman with a clear view saw the young man on the roof of the palace with his arm still outstretched. Fingers pointed; shouts rang out. Gratus, streaming blood, crumpled and fell to the ground, his horse rearing up behind him with a desperate whinny. The guards formed their square, some standing and some crouching with their shields enclosing the procurator.

  Judah could not move. He stood frozen. His hand finally fell to his side, but everyone had seen it. It must have looked as if he had thrown the tile. And the procurator on the ground! Was he dead?

  The shell of shields fractured and the guard stepped back. Gratus sat up. Blood streaked his face, but he shouted a few orders and quickly remounted his horse. He seized a corner of his scarlet cloak to wipe his face. A soldier plucked his laurel wreath from the dust and shook it clean before handing it to the procurator.

  As the procession moved forward, Judah saw ten soldiers detach themselves from the cohort. In the crowd behind where they had been, a familiar face looked up at him. For an instant, his eyes met Messala’s; then he saw his old friend slip away and cross the road just in front of a unit of cavalry.