Ben-Hur

by Carol Wallace

  “How much will you pay me?”

  “Messala pays you six thousand. . . . What would you do with ten thousand sestertii?”

  “With ten, I would open a wineshop,” Thord answered promptly. “Right by the Great Circus in Rome. It would be the best wineshop in the city. But where would the four thousand come from?”

  “From me.”

  “How will I get it?”

  “Tonight a messenger will bring it. But if word ever emerges that this man is not me, I will know that you betrayed me. And I will hunt you down. I will come to your wineshop in Rome and break every barrel in it and set it on fire.”

  “Oh, that will never happen. But maybe one day you will visit it and offer to throw me as you did this man, and I will pour you a cup of the best wine in the city,” Thord answered. “This has been a good day for me!”

  Ben-Hur looked down at the man on the floor. “Not for him, though,” Thord added.

  It was not pleasant to undress the body. The skin was cooling and the undertunic was far from clean. Ben-Hur was surprised by his distaste. Yet a bigger shock came when he and Thord had maneuvered the corpse into Ben-Hur’s own clothes and arranged it on the floor. In Ben-Hur’s own belted robe, with a skullcap lying next to it, the body looked weirdly familiar.

  “It could be you,” Thord said with satisfaction. He crouched down to move the skullcap closer to the body.

  “It could have been me,” Ben-Hur said quietly.

  CHAPTER 35

  DOUBT

  The image stayed with Ben-Hur all day. Or maybe it was the idea. Himself, dead. Or—a version of himself? Could a man become different men in a lifetime?

  Of course. Ben-Hur himself had already done that, he realized. He had been a prince’s son and a galley slave and a Roman aristocrat.

  Had he thought that simply by putting on a Jewish robe and resuming his name, he would once again become a new person?

  It seemed so. He had been imagining, perhaps, a kind of outline he could step into. He had imagined himself as a respectable, prosperous Jew. The kind of man his father had been. Going to Jerusalem to ask questions of highly placed people and discovering . . . what? In his heart of hearts, had he believed that his mother and Tirzah would still be there, waiting for him?

  Maybe that idea had lingered somewhere. Despite everything that had happened to him. Hidden behind what he thought were his plans and his reasons.

  But now it was time to abandon the vision of a happy reunited family.

  Anyway, he wasn’t that man anymore. All those years in Rome learning violence—he couldn’t just erase them. The violence was there, part of him. As that dead man in the palace of Idernee proved. And Messala, crippled for life. Unbidden, the image of a body floating in the burning sea came into his mind: the first man he had killed. The count, it seemed, was mounting.

  This was something he would have to get used to. Striking first. Coldly. Carnage for a purpose. When he had killed before, it had been in self-defense. Even injuring Messala had been an act of vengeance. Killing that unknown man—his double—had been an act of ruthless aggression.

  But the corpse would now bear his name, allowing him to vanish.

  It was strangely disturbing. Oh, he understood how useful this was. Simonides would search for him publicly and insist that the new consul, Maxentius, investigate his disappearance. Word would reach Messala quickly that his nemesis Ben-Hur was dead. Eventually the procurator in Jerusalem would hear. No one would look for him. He would be free.

  Free, but no one.

  And if you are no one, how do you become someone?

  He parted from Thord in the seething bustle of the omphalos, the very center of Antioch. No one would notice, amid the throngs, two men in ordinary clothes who were together, then were not. Even so, Ben-Hur was not ready to return to Simonides’s house. What if someone sent by Messala was watching it? Or watching him?

  Once again, as on his first day in Antioch, he found himself following the crowd. Return to the Grove of Daphne? Why not?

  Of course, everything looked different than it had on his first visit. Ben-Hur realized that, in the short time he’d spent in Antioch, he’d become used to its lushness and its variety. He wasn’t surprised by the exotic array of visitors or the abandoned gaiety of the temple servants. He sat under a tree, wandered by a stream, decided not to visit the stadium.

  But he was not entirely surprised to find himself on the path to the Fountain of Castalia, where he had first seen Messala—and Iras, too. He had been going to get a fortune on that first day, with Malluch, but hadn’t had the chance. Why not see what the oracle said, after all?

  The fountain was just as crowded as the day he had visited it before, and he had to press through the crowd to get to the priest. He had a queasy moment when he realized he must use the dead man’s money to pay for the fortune and would have given up but for a woman pressing against him and telling him to hurry. So he thrust his hand into the dead man’s purse and pulled out a few coins.

  The priest dipped the papyrus leaf and handed it to him, glancing at the leaf as he did so. He frowned and submerged it again. “Sometimes this happens,” he explained in a low murmur. But no writing appeared. So he selected a new leaf and dipped it in the water swirling around his calves.

  THE FOUNTAIN OF CASTALIA

  There is a Castalian Spring near Delphi, where the oracle’s suppliants would wash before presenting their requests. Lew Wallace placed his fictitious version in Antioch’s Daphne Grove as another place for people to seek their fortune.

  It too came up without writing.

  The priest signaled to Ben-Hur to step aside and submerged the leaf of the eager woman. Ben-Hur saw the letters appear, though she whisked it away before he could read them.

  “One more time,” suggested the priest.

  He dipped a third leaf and handed it to Ben-Hur with a piercing glance. “From time to time this happens,” he said.

  “I have no fortune? No future?”

  The priest shrugged. “I only read them. I don’t know what they mean. I always think, when no writing appears, that the gods themselves do not know what will become of someone.”

  Ben-Hur let the leaf drop as he walked away. No help there, then.

  Eventually night fell and he felt it would be safe to return to Simonides’s house. He had hoped to enter quietly, wash and change his clothes before seeing Esther or her father, but Esther met him on the ground floor as he came in.

  She looked at the coarse robe and sandals with surprise. Then she looked at his face, her eyes narrowed. Finally she said, as if aware she’d been rude, “Peace be with you. We are glad you have returned.”

  “And also with you,” he answered. It was hard to know what to add. “I killed a man today? I no longer exist? Who am I? What am I to be?” He tried a smile instead.

  Esther reached out and touched the robe, then shook her head. “Come with me to the kitchen,” she said. “I will clean your face again.”

  He followed her toward the big room at the back of the house, where she lit several oil lamps and set them high on a cupboard to create a cloud of brightness.

  “Sit down,” she instructed him, filling a bowl with water.

  He sat on a low stool and let her dab at his face. It had stopped hurting much earlier. He knew it was on the way to healing. But the room was shadowy and quiet. And he liked the sense of Esther’s concern.

  “These are not your clothes,” she stated.

  “No.”

  “May I burn them?”

  “Once I’ve taken them off, yes,” he answered.

  “Wait here.” She left the room and he heard her giving instructions to a servant.

  “Dinah will bring you a clean robe.” Esther leaned against a table and looked at him. “What happened today?”

  He didn’t answer but stared down at his hands.

  She moved away from the table and emptied the bowl of water into a cistern, wringing out the cloth aft
erward.

  An oil lamp

  “Nothing good, it would seem,” she said when she came back to him. “I have never met a champion of the Roman games, but I don’t think you spent the day celebrating your victory.”

  “No.” He looked up at her. Steady green eyes held his.

  “My father was concerned,” she said neutrally.

  “I had . . . something to do. That didn’t turn out the way I thought.”

  “For good or for ill?” she asked. Her tone was softer.

  “I don’t know.” He shrugged. “More violence. I killed a man.” She didn’t react. “He was going to kill me. Messala had sent him.”

  “Messala! He had the strength?”

  “And the hatred, it seems.”

  “But you can’t . . .” She frowned as the implications became clear. “He could find you . . . Is that why you stayed away all day?”

  Ben-Hur nodded. “Partly. It is known that I am staying here. His power, it seems, is still extensive.” As he stood and stretched, his shadow leapt up the wall of the room. He walked over to the door and looked outside, then came back in.

  He kept moving around the kitchen as he spoke, picking up a beaker as if he had never seen one and replacing it gently on the shelf. “But now Ben-Hur is dead.” He glanced at Esther as he said it. “The man sent to kill me could have been my twin, so I took his clothes and dressed him in mine. I will ask your father to search for me publicly. Maybe the body will be found. There will be a commotion, in any event. The consul will have to take notice because of the chariot race. Word will reach Rome, and Messala will believe I am dead.”

  “Well, that is surely a good thing,” Esther suggested.

  “More than that—necessary.” He returned to the stool and sat, looking up at her again. “I am now free to go to Jerusalem to look for my family. It would have been dangerous to do that while the son of Hur lived. Truthfully, I do not expect to find them. But I need to know that I made the effort. And I find I want to see Jerusalem again.”

  “And after that? Will you fall in with Sheik Ilderim’s and my father’s plan?”

  He lifted his hands from his lap. “I think I must. Circumstances drive me to it. As Judah Ben-Hur, I no longer exist. But I must do something, and that is something I can do. I think.”

  “From what you said before, you have the training,” Esther reminded him.

  “Yes.”

  “Do you believe that the King is really coming?”

  “I am not sure I do,” he confessed. “But I don’t think it matters, for me. I made myself into a warrior to wreak vengeance on Rome. The Jewish people do not have an army, and I may have the means to help build one. How can I turn aside from that?”

  “It sounds very lonely,” Esther said. “If you had the comfort of belief, it might be easier to bear.” She stood and shook out her robe. “Dinah will be back in a moment with your clothes. I will tell my father you have returned, but I will leave the rest for you to tell him.” She paused. “I know it’s not my place to say this. I am young and a woman and your slave. But you seem sad. So it might be helpful to hear what my father told me once, after the second time the Romans beat him. I asked him why he continued to manage your family’s businesses, and he told me that sometimes the best course of action is simply the one that presents itself. That may be true for you, too.”

  CHAPTER 36

  RETURN

  Ben-Hur let Simonides make his travel arrangements. There was a ship going to Joppa, full of spices from the East. Ben-Hur was assigned a tiny cabin that smelled richly of cloves. From Joppa he rode a handsome mule, declining the offer of a camel. The mule’s long ears were constantly disconcerting after the short arc-shaped ears of the Arabians, but she was an affable creature. He was sorry to part with her at the Joppa Gate outside Jerusalem. She had been company for him on the journey.

  He found himself hesitating outside the tall, imposing gate. The tawny stone of the city wall rose above him, meeting the sky in regular notches while the gate itself was surrounded by a familiar tumult. A pair of scrawny dogs fought over a bone, a fishmonger sharpened his knife, two veiled women with market baskets argued over a pair of pomegranates. The sun beat down, hot and dry, but the shadows were lengthening. What was he waiting for? He caught sight of a lanky boy kicking up dust with his feet while he gnawed on a strip of dried meat. Dark hair, a tunic that had begun the day white, hands too big for the arms they ended—Ben-Hur shook his head. He had looked like that, he knew. He watched the boy, who watched everything: eyes roving over crowds, catching on details, overhearing snatches of speech.

  He followed the boy through the gate and into his past. The streets, just wide enough to be comfortable but—unlike those straight Roman-built boulevards in Antioch or Rome—never meant for display. Everything hung in the narrow channels of air between the golden walls. The noise! Voices raised in argument, compliment, insult, greeting, dispute, complaint, every single word of which Ben-Hur understood without even thinking of them as words. The smells! Dust, animals, a resinous tang from the hills, a charcoal brazier, the bite of citrus as a vendor sliced an orange . . . Ben-Hur found himself smiling. Home.

  The Joppa, or Jaffa, Gate in Jerusalem

  He jostled a carpenter and apologized, understood and forgiven with a quick smile. He helped settle a jug on a woman’s shoulder. She blessed him. A pair of rabbis pushed past him, deep in argument, their steps synchronized as they headed toward the Temple without even glancing at their route. A pigeon seller coaxed a pure white bird back into its wicker cage, pocketed some coins, and handed it to a customer. Home!

  Suddenly he had to see it all, so as the sun on the hills grew ever redder, he walked from end to end of his city, down alleys he had never seen and through the palace gardens where he’d met Messala years earlier. He entered the courts of the Temple but left quickly, drawn away by his restlessness. Finally, at the end of the afternoon, he found himself seated on a boulder halfway up the Mount of Olives. His feet were sore and the hem of his robe was dusty. His mind buzzed with the things he’d seen and heard—one word overall: Shalom. Peace. The conventional greeting in Judea. “Peace be with you.” The polite answer was “And also with you.”

  Peace. What did that mean for Jews? For him? Was peace even possible? Messala had talked about the Pax Romana, the peace that the Roman Empire brought to the lands it occupied. Was that truly peace? And if so, peace for whom?

  Could it really be broken? Sitting here in the glowing afternoon, looking down at the city of his birth, Judah wondered. Simonides and Sheik Ilderim were so persuasive, but were they right? Had the time come to shake off the Roman yoke?

  He leaned back and placed his hands on the dusty hillside behind the rock he sat on. Above, the sky had lost its brilliance and was fading to a silvery pink. He closed his eyes and felt the stony ground beneath his palms. Each pebble took on separate significance. He let his head fall back and lost his sense of where his body was. Feet, hands, buttocks—close to the earth. Rooted. He rolled off the boulder and lay facedown on the hillside, cheek pressing against the sandy soil that still held some of the day’s warmth. He felt as if he were embracing the earth. Judea—home.

  And yet it could not be his home because Judah Ben-Hur was an outlaw. By now, his story was probably told everywhere. The son of Arrius and the Jewish boy flung to the galleys and the winner of the chariot race were known to be one and the same. It was clear that he had powerful friends and a grudge against Rome. The dead body on the floor of the palace in Antioch would confuse matters, but Ben-Hur knew he would never be safe under his own name.

  Unless the Romans could be driven out.

  And who better than he to do that?

  He sat up, then stood and brushed off his robe before beginning to clamber down the hill. The trail was narrow and night was coming. In front of him the skyline of Jerusalem lost its details to the setting sun, and the Antonia Tower stood up proudly, a sharply cut black rectangle. The enforcer of t
he Pax Romana. Prison, it was said, to hundreds of Jews. Malluch had asked questions, from Antioch, about his mother and Tirzah. But he had not gone to the tower himself. That was Ben-Hur’s task for the next day. In the meantime, he would do the more difficult thing. He would visit the Hur palace, his family’s home within his people’s home. He could put it off no longer.

  A view of Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives

  CHAPTER 37

  UNCLEAN

  Some deeds are best done in the darkness. Others, by the light of day.

  When Pontius Pilate succeeded Valerius Gratus as procurator of Jerusalem, he did without the military parade. Instead, his garrison replaced the outgoing soldiers during the night, discreetly. No parade, no outcry, no unrest. It seemed wise.

  Then Pilate thought further about Gratus’s administration and how his own could be considered different. “The prisons,” whispered a counselor. “You may find you can free some of those who have been detained. Always a popular move.”

  A daylight move. Gates creaked open; thin, cowed creatures crept outside, sometimes met by sobbing family members who’d long believed them dead. The blame fell on previous administrations. Pilate was the new broom, sweeping everything clean.

  Including the Tower of Antonia in Jerusalem itself. A map of the cells was found. The list of prisoners was checked against it. The cells were visited. It took days. Many individuals were released. The cells went deeper and deeper below the walls than even the prison warden knew. The notch of worry between his eyebrows grew more marked as the days went past and there were still more stairs to descend. When he tried to imagine his report to the tribune—who would report directly to Pilate—he felt sick. There were no records at all for what he was finding.