Esther glanced around, startled by her father’s frankness, but in the noise surrounding them, Iras was out of earshot. “Well, that would never do,” she answered, still somewhat sour.
“Esther,” he said. “Look at me.” She turned reluctantly, aware that she was blushing. He put a hand to her cheek. “Oh, my girl, I am sorry. I never thought . . .”
She thumbed away a tear and muttered, “It’s nothing.”
“No,” he said, facing the stadium again, but this time with her hand in his. “It’s not nothing. He is a good man. Perhaps a great one. But he has no time now for thoughts of women.”
“Iras seems to think . . .”
“Iras is playing with him. Like a cat with a lizard. Sheik Ilderim tells me Balthasar is appalled, but there is nothing he can do. Anyway, after today, Iras won’t see him anymore.”
“And neither will I,” she said, but it was a question.
“That I cannot say.” He looked out at the noisy, sunlit, brilliant spectacle before him and went on. “We cannot know, Esther. What we have in mind is too great to understand. I believe in it, yet it terrifies me. Balthasar’s faith is founded on a kingdom of souls; he doesn’t dream of war. But Ilderim and I believe blood will run before the King comes. The Romans will not give way for anything less.”
“And Judah has agreed? To form an army for the King?”
“He will give us his final answer afterward.” He waved his hand toward the track before them. “He wanted first to win the race. I think for him this may be the first battle.”
“I am not sure I am ready to watch a battle,” Esther murmured.
“I think you will find it difficult to look away,” said her father. “Do you see the striped pole directly below us? That is the finish line. The race will end here.”
CHAPTER 32
SPEED
The horses were jittery. Naturally. The noise alone—as Ben-Hur checked the harness, he wished he had thought of it. They had never run before an audience of this size. He should have done something to prepare them, maybe arranged for some of the sheik’s people to come out to the practice track and shout and wave things. He stepped back from Rigel, the steadiest of the four, and looked the bay in the eyes. Rigel tossed his head, his black mane lashing the air, then shook it as he settled back into place. Next to him Antares whinnied, and an answering whinny came from another horse down the line of enclosures. Ben-Hur thought maybe from the Corinthian’s team, three chestnuts and one dappled gray. Taller than the bays. Heavier. Would that matter?
It was a long race—seven laps. Maybe he should have run the bays against other horses. Pure speed would not win this race; stamina counted too. But so did strategy. Anything could happen in seven laps. He had seen it so often in Rome: the best horses, the most careful training, the sturdiest chariot, the wiliest tactics could all be undone by a stroke of bad luck. And sometimes the opposite occurred: from time to time four horses and a man rose to a level they had never reached before and won when they should not have. The Romans would say that was in the laps of the gods. It was hard to imagine the Jewish Yahweh, with his stone tablets and his harsh pronouncements, concerning himself with the outcome of a horse race.
FILMING THE CHARIOT RACES
Producers for both the 1925 and the 1959 movies believed bigger would be better when it came to the chariot race sequences. Thousands of extras filled the stands, cheering on the racers. For the 1925 film, forty-two cameramen and forty-two cameras—the largest number ever hired for a single sequence in Hollywood—were brought in to shoot every possible angle. The chariot drivers were offered a $5,000 cash prize to the winner. Given that, it’s not too surprising that filmmakers got a big crash that wasn’t staged.
The warning call sounded down the broad passageway, and from outside, trumpets blared. The time had come.
The teams were in pens according to their starting positions, with the outside team closest to the entrance. Each driver led his team out into the aisle and, while grooms held the horses, mounted his chariot. Ben-Hur could hear the cheering as the driver from Sidon entered the stadium, the first competitor to appear. Silence and gloom in the long tunnel beneath the seats; glare and clamor outside. He felt a jolt of excitement.
Next the Corinthian with his three chestnuts and the gray. Then the Athenian, who had driven often in Antioch and whose green-clad supporters raised a mighty shout when his team broke into the sunlight. The driver from Byzantium was next, bursting out of the tunnel nearly out of control. Ben-Hur mounted his chariot.
He moved smoothly. He noticed everything and nothing. The graceful inward curve of Atair’s ears, the encouraging smiles of Ilderim’s grooms, the everlasting moment when his magnificent horses—harnessed, eager, ready—waited for his signal to move forward. Waited though they wanted nothing more than to run. Waited though they could see the sunlight, could feel the noise from their heads to their feet. They waited because he was the master. They waited for his signal.
He relaxed his arm a fraction. They felt it and moved smoothly forward, walking, walking, walking, breaking into a trot and sweeping out into the immense, beautiful bowl of humankind, all waiting for them.
There was an explosion of sound. Astounding that human voices could create such a tumult! Ben-Hur understood something of what the horses probably felt—the sound vibrating through his whole body. He lifted his face to the sun for an instant, then drew to a smooth halt before the porta pompae, where, like all the other drivers, he saluted the consul. Then he moved on.
There were tall cypress trees behind the stadium, casting pointed, graceful shadows over the top rows of seats and patterning the glare of the late-afternoon sun. The track was in perfect condition, soft and even. On his left an entire broad section of the people shouted and waved, every one of them in white.
Behind he heard another roar—Messala, the last driver to enter the stadium. Across the track he could see masses of red and gold flickering in the shaded seats. As Ben-Hur’s team reached the curve of the track, he let them out into a canter. The whole stadium was visible to him now. How many dozens of thousands? All intent, all watching and hoping. Some green clothes were visible. Some everyday Antioch drab. More of the Roman scarlet and gold. Messala’s supporters outnumbered his. But there were enough. Enough to see Messala’s defeat.
Hoofbeats behind him, coming too fast. On his left, the inside. A shout: “Give way, Jew!” Ben-Hur’s team pulled against him, but he did not let them speed up. Messala’s black and white pairs pulled level, then passed him, galloping all out. Ben-Hur eyed Messala’s chariot, glinting with its brass fittings, almost flying behind the horses. It was held down, Ben-Hur thought, only by the bronze lion masks protruding from the wheels. All that weight, for decoration alone—Messala in a nutshell.
The starters, halfway along the straightaway, were in place. The crowd settled, then hushed. The teams took their places, each in his marked lane, nearly wheel to wheel. On Ben-Hur’s right the Byzantine caught his eye and nodded. They could have reached out to clasp hands. On his left was Messala.
The floor of his chariot was higher than Ben-Hur’s, the wheels slightly taller, so Messala looked down to meet Ben-Hur’s eyes. “I thought you were dead, Judah,” he said, raising a hand to wave at the crowd. “But it doesn’t matter. You’re as good as dead now.”
Ben-Hur did not react. It was not a time to think about Messala the man, his old friend who had betrayed him. Not a time to wonder about what Messala felt or thought. It was time, finally, to defeat him. Everything had been done to prepare for this moment. The horses, the training, the betting that would focus everyone’s attention on their duel—everyone in the stadium knew that for the Roman and the Jew, this was mortal combat. Only one would survive. Why waste so much as a breath on Messala now?
The cover of “The Chariot Race” score by E. T. Paull, first published in 1894
A brass fanfare sounded and the horses took off. The starters began counting. It was the first test o
f skill for the drivers: the starters held a chalked rope at the height of a horse’s chest and dropped it on an agreed count. To hit the rope too early was disaster—sometimes fatal. But to reach it too late was to yield advantage. Messala’s team galloped ahead barely under control, and Ben-Hur understood in a flash that the Roman had fixed the start. The starters would drop the rope for him, even if he was there before the count was completed. Ben-Hur relaxed the reins and the bays sped up, but chaos had already developed ahead of him.
Each driver had to cross the rope in his own lane but was free thereafter to change lanes. Messala, on the inside, knowing he was safe, had let his horses reach their full speed before the starting post and flashed past it. But the Byzantine had taken a chance, cutting sharply toward the rail as he reached the starting line, crossing Ben-Hur’s lane mere seconds behind Messala. He had tried too hard. His horses were out of control. He hauled on the reins, throwing his weight against the thousands of pounds of galloping horseflesh, unable to slow them, unable to steer them, aware of the pack behind him.
Ben-Hur didn’t see the impact. He had time only to glimpse something wrong in front of him, a pattern going astray, and without thinking steered the bays to the right. On his left, howling. A man in pain? A horse? Gone. Done.
Esther hid her face in her hands. On the track, men jumped the rails to clear the wreckage. Tangled harness, shattered chariot, mangled flesh.
“How can they?” Esther whispered, horrified. “Tell me when it is finished.”
“Watch them when they come around again, and you will understand,” Simonides said. “There’s glory in it. Shall I tell you what I see? Messala is in front, holding the inside. Judah is on the outside. They are running away from us now. I can’t see . . . Yes, it looks as if he is last.”
“Last!” Esther dropped her hands. She shaded her eyes and looked down the track. “No, he is not last. He is . . . Well, no, I believe the Athenian . . .”
“They will run seven times around, Esther. Judah has time,” her father told her.
In the consul’s box, Sanballat watched placidly. “I thought you had money on the Jew,” the consul said.
“I do,” Sanballat agreed. “Not enough, though.”
“You think he will win?”
“Oh yes,” Sanballat answered. “And if he doesn’t, I will make money from Messala’s men.”
“What if someone else wins? I see five teams in this race.”
“I see two, Your Honor. And three extras.”
That was not Ben-Hur’s view of the matter. He saw four teams to beat, and they were all in front of him. Just where he wanted them. How like Messala to take the lead: showy, excitable, shortsighted. From the front, Messala couldn’t see that one of the Athenian’s wheels seemed to be wobbling slightly. Or that the Corinthian’s horses looked as if they could run forever at this pace. Messala, out in front, could only know about his own team. He could be surprised.
But perhaps it was time to provide Messala with more information, Ben-Hur thought. More than he would get from his spies or the gossip of Antioch. Time to let Messala have a good look at the Sons of the Wind. Now, early in the race. Give him a chance to worry.
They didn’t like running behind anyway.
He loosened the reins minutely and shifted his weight to the outside. As one, the bays picked up the pace. They veered slightly to the right. They started to gain on the Sidonian.
“Look, Esther, he moves ahead,” said Simonides. “Can you see?”
“Yes!” she said. “On the outside!”
“On the outside,” Iras’s voice came down to her, along with a length of sheer golden gauze. “May I sit here?”
The circus, or hippodrome
“Of course,” Esther said and pulled her robe closer.
“It’s a foolish move,” Iras said. “The horses will have more distance to cover. Of course when he was training out at the sheik’s encampment, he spent many hours of each day running the horses. He was always exhausted. But I wonder if this is the right strategy.”
“You are well versed in chariot racing?” Simonides asked politely.
“In Alexandria we go often to the races. The stadium is much more beautiful than this one. And the audience . . . well, naturally it is more sophisticated. Connoisseurs of fine horses.”
The center of the track was divided by the spina (above), a long, narrow platform area that included monuments to Roman gods. The spina was protected from the chariots by cone-shaped turning posts called the metae (right).
“Like you,” Esther said.
“Oh, I don’t make that claim,” Iras answered. “Look, Ben-Hur has actually passed someone.”
It had taken very little. The Sidonian, Ben-Hur thought, had never belonged in this race. He saw the line in the surface ahead where the track fell into shadow and sped through it, almost flinching in the faintly cooler air. The Athenian team was running strongly. He cast an eye on them, watching how easily they carried their heads. A team with stamina, he thought. But maybe not much speed.
Where the race had started, the spy was on the dirt, weeping. The chariots were thundering down the track and the wreckage of the Byzantine’s chariot had been cleared away, along with the glazed-red tangle of the driver’s body. Three of the horses, plunging and rearing, had been mastered and taken back to the stable, but the spy crouched next to the remaining horse, whose right leg lay in a crazy zigzag on the ground.
“Do it! They’re coming!” screamed a race official next to him. “We don’t have time!”
So much to regret, thought the spy. Why had he become a groom? Why was it better than spying? Why had he bragged about his experiences? Whom had he told about his stint in the slaughterhouse? Where had this knife come from, and was it sharp enough for the job? He reached out with his left hand, located the spot, closed his eyes, and found himself . . . wishing? Praying? Thinking of the brave horse and sending it on its way as his hands were bathed in the hot, iron-scented stream of its blood.
“Quick, quick!” shouted everyone. The body was dragged away, dirt thrown on the wet patch, then more dirt, and scuffed into the earth so that the horses pounding down the track toward him would not smell the death of one of their own.
In the center of the track stood two sets of three columns, tall and massive, each set topped with an ornate horizontal entablature. On the end of the stadium closer to Esther and Simonides, the entablature was topped with seven enormous carved balls. On the opposite end, seven carved dolphins. Now, as the chariots rounded the curve and hit the straightaway, a man clambered up to the top of the entablature. “Look, Esther,” Simonides said. “They will take down a ball each time the chariots pass. And the same on the other end, with the dolphins. This is how we know how much of the race remains. See, here it goes!”
But Esther had no interest in a ball crashing to the ground. She was completely absorbed in Ben-Hur. She understood now how good their seats were—she could see clearly the expression on his face: watchful, intent, eyes flickering from his team to Messala’s to the wheel of Messala’s chariot as he drew ever nearer to it. The noise was tremendous! The horses’ hooves, even muffled in the dirt of the track, thundered along, and the chariots set up a rattle and clang as loud as a caravan compressed into a tiny space. But then came a small sound, a strange and unwelcome noise—it was the hiss and crack of a whip. Messala’s whip, brought down on the backs of Sheik Ilderim’s bays. Then again, and this time Esther gasped. Messala’s lash had caught Ben-Hur’s face.
A relief of Judah Ben-Hur on Lew Wallace’s study in Crawfordsville, Indiana
Ben-Hur hardly felt it. A sting, a faint burn, what could that matter with every muscle in his body already screaming to keep him upright, to hold the horses . . . and to hold the horses after Messala’s whipping? They were momentarily mad. They had never felt the touch of a whip before, and the instinct of each of them was simply to escape. Their unison wavered as each ran as fast as he could. Rigel, the slowest, could b
arely keep up while Antares, the strongest, was pulling the chariot toward the center of the track. Ben-Hur gripped the reins with all of his strength and leaned against their force. For an instant he remembered the galleys, struggling with the oar. Fighting nothing less than the entire ocean. Back, chest, legs, arms all pulling—he had done it over and over again for years. He could do it again. But then something blurred in his eye. Worse. Darkening, smudging, burning with sweat, it must have been blood from the wound Messala had dealt him.
He dared not shift the reins from his left hand while the horses still galloped in terror. He dared not even lift his left arm to wipe his brow; who knew what signal the horses would take from the movement of the reins? So he dropped the whip from his right hand, hoping it would be removed from the track before the next lap so it wouldn’t get tangled in his horses’ feet. He pushed his right wrist up over his eyebrow, wiped the blood on the tunic at his chest, repeated the gesture. He was bleeding fast.
And they were coming into the curve with too much speed.
He noticed Messala check his team and had to grudgingly admire the skill. The four horses slowed a touch, shortening their uniform stride, then moments later stretched it out again, speeding up, appearing to sink slightly toward the earth as their bodies flattened. Ben-Hur knew how it felt, that smooth increase of speed.
But the bays were under control now. The curve got their attention, and he was grateful for their hours of training together. It was as if they threw off the distraction of the whiplash to focus on the task at hand. He wiped his forehead again. Was it stickier? Was the wind on his face drying the blood?
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