Ben-Hur

by Carol Wallace

  At the same moment, an immense crash shook the rooftop. All the birds took flight, squawking, and a shriek came from downstairs.

  Judah pelted across the roof garden and down the stairs. “Tirzah! Mother!” he called, leaping down the steps two at a time. He heard another crash and a shout before he reached the courtyard. Dozens of Roman soldiers had broken down the gate. They were everywhere, shouting, swords unsheathed. The servants cowered in a corner, clutching each other and staring at the body of the old porter, who lay in a pool of blood. His severed hand, fingers curled around his palm, lay several feet away from his wrist until one of the soldiers impatiently picked it up and tossed it into the watering trough.

  But Judah Ben-Hur didn’t notice. His attention was fixed on the dreadful tableau of his mother and sister, gripped in the hands of Romans. His gaze met his mother’s. She was pale as ash, her eyes immense. She seemed unaware of her lustrous hair loose around her shoulders or the trickle of blood marking her cheekbone. She did not speak, but a fierce message passed from her to her son: “Be brave. Don’t forget us. Remember your father; remember your God.”

  Naomi would have said those words aloud, but she knew the man holding her might cut her throat. A quick sideways glance at Tirzah by her side told her they were at some precipice of violence. The man holding her daughter fast had looped Tirzah’s russet hair around his fist. The girl’s bare arms were already showing bruises, and her gown was torn. Naomi looked back at her son.

  “What is all this?” he called out. “Who is in command? Why have you broken in here?”

  A tall soldier with a plumed crest on his helmet strode through the shattered gate, leading a black horse. “I am in command,” he answered. “Who are you, boy? Someone in this house has assassinated the new procurator!”

  “But I saw him remount and ride away!” Judah protested, and Naomi’s heart sank. He had just given himself away.

  “And I saw you throw a tile at him,” came another voice. Messala stepped through the debris of the shattered gate. Naomi looked at him, appalled. The young Roman, friend of her son, was barely to be seen in this swaggering man.

  “Messala,” Judah exclaimed happily. “You can explain. I just leaned over—I wanted to see the shields. My hand knocked a tile loose. It was an accident.”

  Messala looked at the commanding officer. “You see?” he said. “He confesses.”

  “But this is just a boy,” the officer remonstrated.

  Messala stood a fraction taller. “Boy or man, he hates enough to kill. You have his mother and his sister, I see. That is the whole family.”

  “But, Messala!” Judah cried out. “You know I would never do such a thing!”

  “Do I?” his old friend answered. He nodded to the commanding officer and retraced his steps. Naomi looked at Judah’s face and watched, in that instant, her son’s youth end. His eyes followed his former friend in disbelief. He straightened up, struggling against the hands of the soldiers who held him. He looked back at his mother. She tried to put all of her love and encouragement into her gaze, but she did not dare speak.

  Judah turned to the commanding officer. “Spare my mother and sister, at least,” he said. There was a note in his voice Naomi had never heard—he spoke as a man to men. “I know the Roman Empire rests on law. The law will show that I’ve done nothing wrong. It was an accident and the procurator will live.”

  Without responding to Judah, the officer said, “Chains for the boy.” He crossed the courtyard to where Naomi and Tirzah stood, still in the grip of the soldiers. He examined them, then stepped back to look around what he could see of the palace. The servants and dependents huddled in a corner, wide-eyed and clutching each other. From the street beyond came another fanfare of trumpets and a series of shouted commands. “You,” the officer ordered, pointing to the man who held Tirzah. “Let go her hair. We will take the women to the Antonia Tower.” He looked at the servants and called out, “Someone give me a cloak for the girl.” To Naomi he said, “Bind up your hair and cover it. We are going out in the street. You should not be seen like that.”

  Naomi pulled her arms loose from her captor and swiftly twisted her hair into a knot. She had been wearing a gold brooch to fasten her sash, so she unclasped it and thrust it into her hair. A length of coarse gray fabric was flung over her shoulders, and she pulled it over her head, never knowing where it had come from.

  “Now,” the officer called out, “six men to escort the women!”

  In an instant they were surrounded, and Naomi turned around but saw only broad, armored shoulders and red cloaks. Judah—she had missed her last look at her son!

  “Sir!” she cried out, reaching toward the officer. “Can’t I say good-bye to my son?”

  “No,” he answered indifferently. “You would not want to see him in chains.”

  “What will you do with him?” she asked, almost screaming.

  “The galleys,” he said. “March!”

  But Naomi could not march. She had fainted away.

  CHAPTER 6

  WATER

  Two days later, around noon, a decurion with his command of ten horsemen arrived at a small village, coming from the direction of Jerusalem. A few flat-roofed houses straggled along a narrow path where stones and the manure of sheep lay side by side in the pocked dust. Far in the distance, across a valley randomly quilted with fields and orchards, lay the hazy blue gleam of the Mediterranean.

  Nazareth was so insignificant that the appearance of any strangers brought every inhabitant out to stare at the spectacle, even in the heat of the day. Of course the Nazarenes feared and despised the red-cloaked Roman soldiers, towering over them from the backs of their massive horses, armor clanking, shouting in their incomprehensible language, frightening the children. But curiosity is strong too. And the Romans, it appeared, had a prisoner.

  He was surrounded by the horses, choked by the cloud of ochre dust their hooves stirred up from the ground. He stumbled forward, unaware of the staring villagers. His hands were tied behind his back, the rope held carelessly by a mounted legionnaire. His bloodied knees showed how often he had fallen on the road, but he seemed indifferent to the pain, as he seemed indifferent to his sunburned back, the dust, the threatening proximity of the horses’ hooves, the eyes of the Nazarenes.

  The Romans were heading to the well, of course. The horses needed water. The villagers fell into a ragged group behind them, muttering to each other. Who could that prisoner be? What could he have done that warranted such a heavy guard? Where were they taking him? He was so young, said a mother. He was so handsome, said her daughter.

  One of the legionnaires was ordered to draw water, and he obeyed quickly, passing a clay pitcher to his fellow soldiers and filling a trough for the horses. The prisoner, ignored, collapsed to the stony soil and lay in a heap, his face in the dirt. The villagers eyed each other with growing discomfort. Shouldn’t they help him? Did they dare? Then one of them whispered, “Look! Here comes the carpenter. He will know what to do.”

  An old man had rounded the bend in the road. Below his full turban, his long white hair joined the beard flowing down his chest, half-covering his coarse gray gown. He carried a set of crude tools—an ax, a saw—that seemed almost too heavy for a man of his age. As he neared the well, he stopped, setting down his tools for a moment.

  “Oh, Rabbi Joseph,” a woman cried, running to him. “Here is a prisoner! Come ask the soldiers about him! We wonder who he is and what he has done and where they are going with him.”

  A selection of tools used by first-century laborers and craftsmen

  The rabbi’s face was expressionless, but after a moment he stepped away from his tools and approached the officer. “The peace of the Lord be with you,” he said calmly.

  “And the peace of the gods with you,” the decurion answered, nodding.

  “Are you from Jerusalem?”

  “Yes.”

  “Your prisoner is young,” the rabbi commented.

&n
bsp; “Only in years,” the officer told him. “He is a hardened criminal.”

  “What did he do?”

  “He is an assassin,” the officer replied dispassionately, eyeing his prisoner. The youth still lay with his eyes closed, though all around him the villagers whispered to each other, eyes wide.

  “Is he a son of Israel?” continued the rabbi.

  “He is a Jew,” said the Roman. “I don’t understand all your tribes, but he comes from a good family. Perhaps you’ve heard of a prince of Jerusalem named Ithamar of the house of Hur? He lived in Herod’s day and died a few years ago.”

  The rabbi nodded. “I saw him once.”

  “This is his son.”

  The eyes of the villagers grew even wider. How could this young man, little more than a boy, be an assassin? How could this bedraggled captive be the heir of a prince? The whispers grew to murmurs, and the decurion raised his voice.

  “In the streets of Jerusalem, just two days ago, he nearly killed the noble procurator Valerius Gratus by hurling a tile at his head from the roof of his family’s palace. He has been sentenced to the galleys.”

  For the first time the rabbi’s composure was shaken. His eyes flew to the huddled figure and he said to the decurion, “Did he kill this Gratus?”

  “No,” the officer answered. “If he had, he would not be alive now.” He stepped over and, with his sandaled foot, rolled the young man onto his back. One of his eyebrows had been split, and the blood crusted over the eye. His lips were parched, his mouth half-open, his breathing shallow. “A fine oarsman he will make,” the Roman said, shrugging. He looked around at his men, who responded to his glance by moving their horses away from the trough and preparing to mount.

  But suddenly there was one more man in their midst. He, too, was young, much the age of the prisoner, with long hair like the rabbi’s and a remarkable air of dignity. He had quietly come around the corner behind Joseph, depositing his own ax with the other tools, and now he picked up the pitcher standing on the edge of the well. Without even glancing at the Romans, he dipped it full of water and knelt in the dust. He slid his arm beneath the prisoner’s shoulders and held the pitcher to his lips. The officer took a breath as if to stop him, but somehow did not continue.

  The prisoner’s eyes opened. The young carpenter dipped a corner of his sleeve into the pitcher and gently wiped the blood from Ben-Hur’s eye. The two youths exchanged a long glance; then the prisoner drank again. Revived, he sat up, and the carpenter’s hand moved from his shoulder to his dusty hair. It rested there for a long moment—long enough to say, or hear, a blessing, though no word broke the silence. Ben-Hur glanced up again into the eyes of his helper and seemed to receive a message. He scrambled to his feet, restored.

  Sculpture of a helmsman, a gift to Lew Wallace from an anonymous fan

  The young carpenter replaced the pitcher on the lip of the well and picked up all of the tools, then went to stand next to the rabbi, apparently unaware that everyone watched his every movement. The decurion found himself taking the rope that bound Ben-Hur’s wrists and leading him to the heaviest horse. With a gesture, he indicated that the prisoner should ride behind one of the soldiers. In silence the troop rode off, and in silence the Nazarenes scattered.

  That was the first time Judah Ben-Hur met the son of Mary.

  CHAPTER 7

  SHUTTERED

  Days passed. Back in Jerusalem, the populace settled down. After the parade of Valerius Gratus, enough men had been punished to reestablish calm. There was no more shouting, no more throwing things, just sullen silence when Roman troops marched through town. The cut on Gratus’s head healed.

  The Hur palace was sealed. Placards were nailed on both gates saying, This is the property of the emperor. The tenants and servants had been turned out of the house and everything valuable—livestock, stores of food, jewels—taken to the Antonia Tower to be sold or sent to the emperor.

  But early one evening, when a sullen layer of cloud shrouded the sunset, Messala walked down an alley alongside the palace and put his hand on an unobtrusive door. It swung open silently and he went through.

  He followed the passageway before him and came out into the great central court, where he stood for a while, looking around. Dust had begun to gather. The leathery leaves from the palm trees lay where they had fallen. The fountains were dry, and every shrub or flower had turned yellow and dropped its blossoms.

  He crossed the court to the front gate and paused where he’d stood on that day. He wasn’t sure himself why he had come. Just to see it, he supposed. To see what had happened to the palace of the mighty Hur family. What happened to Jews who defied Rome.

  The women had been dragged out mere steps away from him. Little Tirzah had been sobbing beneath her cloak, but Naomi had paused for a moment and looked at him. He felt it again, that shock when her eyes met his. What was it? Hatred? He wanted to believe that. Grief, maybe. Fear, of course. Fear would be normal. But sometimes he wondered if that look hadn’t been one of contempt.

  Remembering that look always made him want to move, so he crossed the courtyard and ran up the stairs. He roved through the rooms he’d known as a boy, rooms where the family ate and gathered and slept. The furniture was still there, though damaged. There were shards of things in some corners: bits of pottery, the leg from a table. He roamed farther, to the servants’ quarters, where nothing had been worth appropriating for the emperor. Here, the soldiers had mostly smashed what was left. A stool, a box. Bedding was piled into corners, where it was already starting to smell. There would be mice. Rats.

  Did he hear scurrying? It was darker in the stairwell heading up to the roof. Scuffling? A footstep?

  Of course not. He emerged onto the rooftop. Any footstep would be his own. The gates were locked and sealed. Nobody besides himself would know of the little postern door. The servants had all been paid off and driven away from Jerusalem.

  The garden on the rooftop looked worse than the courtyard. There had always been several gardeners puttering away up there, plucking browned flowers and weeds, trimming branches. Messala peered into the tiled pond, now filled with a brownish sludge and reeking. The fish, of course. Dead and rotting.

  The trees were full of birds, and their droppings spattered in rings around the trunks. A flock of parrots had taken over one of the palms and flew in circles around it, creaking and cawing. Messala crossed the roof to look down into the street.

  This was why he had come, he realized. He wanted to see where Judah had done it.

  The light was fading and the street was empty except for a pair of Jews shuffling along, arm in arm, heads together, skullcaps bobbing in unison. Nothing like that morning with the gleaming sun and the ranks of soldiers strutting in straight lines of gold and red. Judah must have had a good view.

  Where had he stood? Messala stepped up to the edge of the roof. Here? He leaned out to see the Antonia Tower. Maybe a little closer? He stepped sideways.

  Behind him a flock of swifts rose into the sky and wheeled around, then settled again on the roof of the summerhouse.

  He reached forward as Judah had. Braced himself on his hand. There was a tile missing in the row. He moved slightly, leaned farther. Felt the rough terra-cotta shift beneath his palm, and before he knew it, another tile clattered down the slope and flew off. Seconds later he heard it shatter.

  No one turned around. He pressed down again, and another tile fell. And another.

  Stupid, to let your house fall into disrepair, he thought. People could get hurt. He turned his back to the street and looked across the garden with its trees now silhouetted against the sky.

  Had Judah thrown that tile? Probably not.

  A replica of the type of tile that would have been on the Hur palace

  He crossed the rooftop toward the stairs, kicking over a stool as he went. Inside the summerhouse someone had cut open the pillows from the divans. Brown-and-white feathers had burst out and blown around. Below them, something gleame
d, and Messala leaned down. He picked it up: a gold hairpin. He bit it: solid gold. Well—that was worth something. He owed someone a little bit of money. Such a pity that he understood how money worked, yet it didn’t stick to him. Not like some. Not like the Hur family.

  After a second he hurled the shining pin into the pond. Once again, he’d seen that look of contempt on Naomi’s face.

  He ran down the stairs sure-footed and slipped out the postern door.

  PART 3

  CHAPTER 8

  AFLOAT

  Very early one September morning three years later, the Roman tribune Quintus Arrius walked with two friends down the broad breakwater at Misenum, on the Tyrrhenian Sea not far from Neapolis. The sun had not yet broken the horizon, but before him the sky glowed pink behind the silhouetted masts of the Roman fleet. The air swirled with the heavy scent of burning Egyptian nard from the escort of torchbearers. On Arrius’s left, Lentulus staggered slightly and jostled the nearest torch. Arrius reached out and steadied Lentulus’s elbow.

  On his other side, his more sober friend Caius said, “You’ve barely had time to get used to being on land. You should at least stay in Misenum until you’ve won back what you lost last night.”

  “Obviously the goddess Fortuna only favors Quintus Arrius at sea,” Lentulus muttered.

  “Well, she is kind to me this morning, anyway,” Arrius answered. “Look, the west wind has brought in my ship.” He dropped his companions’ arms and stepped out of the circle of torches, deeply inhaling the sea air. A gust of breeze tugged at the myrtle wreath he wore, and he absently held it to his head as he gazed out into the harbor. Skimming across the blue water, its sail rosy in the dawn light, came a galley, gilded by the first angled rays. The two banks of oars dipped, rose, paused . . . then dipped again into the glittering water. “She moves like a bird,” Arrius said softly.