Ben-Hur

by Carol Wallace

There was a pause. “No,” Naomi finally admitted. “Galley slaves . . .” She paused. “I cannot.” Her voice rose, louder than she had spoken yet. “I cannot think of my son that way. All this time, I have not done it and I will not. I won’t!” she cried. It would have been a howl in a healthy woman.

  “If he is alive, he is a galley slave, Mother,” said Tirzah. “Is that right? You become a galley slave for life?”

  “For life,” Naomi agreed, leaning her head back against the gate. “They are never freed.”

  “Then what does it matter? He is pulling an oar in a Roman ship somewhere. He can’t help us. He doesn’t need this house. He is as much dead as we are!”

  “No, Tirzah,” said her mother. Gently she placed her two twisted hands on either side of her daughter’s appalling face. “We are not dead. While we live, we must hope.”

  Tirzah twisted her head away. “Hope!” she whispered. “Hope for what? All I hope for is death, and the sooner it comes, the better! Have you thought, Mother? You know so much more than I do. You know where lepers live. You know what they can do or not do. All I know is what I see in you—and what I feel in myself. Mother, we will not survive! Where will we get food? Who will give us water? You’ve said, to every person we’ve met, that we’re unclean. Must we say that to everyone? Must we announce it where we go?”

  “Yes,” Naomi whispered.

  “Can we go to the Temple, to seek blessing or comfort or wisdom?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  Naomi’s sigh was just a faint breath, stirring a few of her long silver hairs. “Because we are not clean. We carry disease and corruption everywhere. And we dare not carry it there, where the people of God gather in his presence.” She paused. “We are considered the living dead.”

  “The living dead,” Tirzah groaned. “The living dead! Then why not just finish life? Why be living at all? Why not be truly dead?” She banged her head against the gate as if to smash her skull, but she was too weak to make the gesture count.

  ALL OUR DAYS

  God is in charge of every aspect of our lives. Even in the midst of great sorrow, we can take comfort that he knows the outcome and walks through it with us.

  “You saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed.” PSALM 139:16

  “You have decided the length of our lives. You know how many months we will live, and we are not given a minute longer.” JOB 14:5

  “God numbers our days,” Naomi answered. She looked up at the night sky. “It is not for us to interfere.”

  Slowly and clumsily, Tirzah clambered to her feet. “What is it you hope for?” she asked, looking down at her mother. “For things to go back to the way they were?”

  Naomi pushed herself off the dust of the street and stood. “I don’t expect to foresee God’s goodness to me,” she said. “I don’t expect to understand him any more than Job did, or Abraham. Maybe his mercy to us will be death. Or something we could never possibly expect. I will wait for him.”

  Tirzah bent down to lift the basket. “All right. And where will we do this waiting? What is the place called?”

  “We must leave the city by the Water Gate. We will follow the wall of our house to the opposite side, then take the narrow road downhill. I know the way.”

  “Good. And where is it we are going?”

  “I have never been there. I have only heard of it. There is a well, and around it are caves in the hillside. We will live in a cave.” She could not bring herself to tell Tirzah that the caves had once been tombs, and that the place was known as the Valley of the Dead.

  CHAPTER 39

  HOME

  It took them longer than they would have believed possible simply to reach the other side of the palace. Even Naomi, who thought she had known every inch of the building when it was the family home and center of business, was astounded at its sheer size.

  She was also horrified by its state of disrepair. The stucco on the outer wall peeled down to the brick in places. Multiple rows of tiles were missing from the roof, and birds’ nests thrust out their spiky twigs. Below, the walls were streaked with guano. The sight of the tall palm tree in the central court accompanied their slow voyage around the wall, and as the moonlight grew more slanted, Naomi saw that its fronds were dry and shaggy. She even thought she could smell decay, wafting over the walls, but she knew that could not be true. She was quite sure that most of her nose was gone. Surely that would make smelling impossible.

  They stayed in the shadows. When they reached the corner of the palace, she and Tirzah crossed the street into another patch of shadows, because the south wall was so brightly lit—except for the gate, set deeply into the wall. Naomi looked across to see if it bore the same sign as the gate on the north side. Her eye was caught by a huddled shape. A vagrant, she thought, curled up at the gate. That was what the house had come to: shelter for the city’s lost ones. Not that she was anything different.

  But the figure in the doorway stirred and flung out an arm. Naomi thought she heard the man speak. For it was a man; she was sure of that. She drifted closer. Something . . . something drew her on. His shape? How could she have known? Her steps sped up. It couldn’t . . .

  It couldn’t be. But it was. She knew it was. He lay in shadow, but she knew him. She felt Tirzah hover behind her.

  “What is it, Mother?” Tirzah pressed close, looking over her shoulder. She felt her daughter’s breath in her ear. “Mother, it’s Judah!”

  Naomi turned and buried her face in Tirzah’s shoulder. She would have wept, but her eyes had long ago stopped providing her with tears. Instead she clutched Tirzah to her heart. “It is Judah!” she mouthed into her daughter’s veil and robe. “It is Judah! He lives!”

  “What is he doing here? Do you think he came to find us? Why didn’t he go inside?” Tirzah pulled away from her mother, steadying her with a hand on each arm. She knelt, reaching out to Ben-Hur’s shoulder.

  “No!” Naomi croaked. “You must not! Unclean! We must not touch him!”

  Tirzah recoiled and looked up at her mother in horror. “Not . . . Ohh!” It would have been a wail, but she could not sustain the breath. She sat back on her heels, clutching her elbows. “We can’t touch him!” she echoed her mother.

  “Not only that,” Naomi whispered, kneeling next to Tirzah, “we must leave him. He can’t know we are alive.”

  Tirzah stared at her, aghast, then understood. “No. Of course. If he knows . . .”

  “He will find us,” Naomi said softly, gazing down at her son. “He would find us and try to save us . . .”

  “And he would get our disease. He would not be careful.” Somehow, it was a warming thought.

  “He would sacrifice himself,” Naomi went on, agreeing. “To stay with us.”

  Why was it such a comfort? That vision of something that would not even come to pass brought solace. The two women stayed on their knees side by side, watching the man sleep. The moon moved, kindly sliding the shadow away from his face so they could both see him clearly. The son and brother, the hero they needed and did not waken. He lay on his back with an arm above his head, more handsome than they ever could have hoped, and they feasted their eyes. Their hands crept together and held tight. He was there. He was alive. He was beautiful. He would save them—if they would let him.

  They would not let him. That much they could do. That much they could give him. It made them feel strong.

  After a while, he stirred and muttered. Naomi glanced up at the sky and flinched. “Look, we must go; the stars are fading! We must be gone from the city before sunrise or we will be stoned!”

  LEPROSY

  Leprosy, a term applied in the Bible to several different diseases, was greatly feared in the ancient world. Some of these afflictions, unlike the disease we call leprosy or Hansen’s disease today, were highly contagious. The worst of them slowly ruined the body and, in most cases, were fatal. Ac
cording to Leviticus 13, those who suffered from a serious skin disease were required to “tear their clothing and . . . cover their mouth and call out, ‘Unclean! Unclean!’” They were isolated from family and friends and confined to areas outside of town. Since priests were responsible for the health of the people, it was their duty to expel or readmit lepers. If someone’s leprosy appeared to go away, only the priest could decide if that person was truly cured.

  “Stoned?” Tirzah asked.

  “It is what happens. People throw stones at lepers to keep them away.”

  Tirzah rose to her feet and held out a hand to her mother. “So cruel!”

  Naomi did not answer. She bent down and kissed the sole of her son’s sandal, then laid her cheek against it for a long moment. The unclean shoe, always shed at the threshold of a house, understood to have been in dirt and filth—this was as close as the mother could come to her child, since she herself was unclean. Tirzah thought she would see the image in her head forever and felt a moment’s wonder. Then Naomi turned toward her and Tirzah helped her to her feet. Tirzah picked up the basket and they crept across the street, back into the shadows.

  Yet they could not leave—yet. Not while Judah lay so near! They leaned against the wall and stared.

  “He looks well,” Tirzah whispered. “Not . . . I would have thought, as a slave . . .”

  “I know. He is healthy, God be praised.” Naomi sank her face into what was left of her hands. “This makes such a difference! To know that he lives! To have seen him!”

  “But . . . never again,” Tirzah suggested.

  “No.” Her mother’s answer was little more than an exhalation.

  “He will grieve for us.” Naomi only nodded. Tirzah went on, working it out as she spoke. “But if he found us, he would join us. And become like us.” Finally she added, “We must be dead to him so that he can live.”

  The cover of “Tirzah’s Serenade” score by Annie M. Lyon, first published in 1888

  “Yes, my dear,” confirmed her mother.

  Minutes passed. The moon moved. The palm fronds rustled. “Should we go?” Tirzah asked finally. “Is it far?”

  “Yes,” said Naomi. But she didn’t move.

  “I thought he was dead,” Tirzah said. “All that time in the prison. But you thought he was alive?”

  “I thought I would know if he was dead,” Naomi answered. “Somehow.”

  There was another long silence. Then Tirzah asked, “Why didn’t you tell me about Messala? Why did we never talk about that day?”

  “I don’t know,” Naomi replied. “At first you didn’t speak at all. Do you remember that?”

  Tirzah just shook her head.

  “I held you. I couldn’t find any wounds. But whatever I said or asked, you didn’t utter a word. I even put my fingers in your mouth, to see if you still had your tongue, in case the Romans had cut it out when I wasn’t looking, though I thought I had watched you every moment. Then finally when you did speak, I was afraid.”

  “What did I say?”

  “‘Judah.’ You asked for your brother. And I had to tell you I didn’t know where he was. And you didn’t speak again for many days.”

  Silence fell again. Across the street, the huddled figure stirred. Ben-Hur rolled onto his side and put his hands beneath his head.

  “Would it hurt terribly to be stoned?” Tirzah asked.

  “I think so.”

  “Couldn’t we just wait a little longer?”

  “Yes. But we must be gone before he wakes. He must never see us.”

  “He would not know us, Mother.”

  “No. But I am sure he is a good man. He would try to help us. I . . . To see him and hear him speak, and not answer . . . I am not sure I am strong enough.”

  “I understand,” Tirzah said. She smoothed her mother’s hair. “We will go soon, then.”

  “When the shadow of the palm tree reaches us,” Naomi said. The dark slash of the trunk’s shadow lay across the dusty street a few inches away.

  “All right,” whispered Tirzah. But a moment later she felt her mother stiffen beside her. Naomi raised a twisted hand in warning.

  Tirzah strained her ears. There it was: a soft, regular crunching. Footsteps. Coming along the side of the palace. One set of steps, one person.

  Naomi pulled Tirzah back, closer to the wall they stood against. Their block of shadow had moved so that they were almost exposed. Tirzah lifted the basket and carefully set it down next to the wall. The two women barely breathed.

  The footsteps were light and close together. Not a big person, then. And not a furtive one either. Finally the figure turned the corner and they saw a small woman, veiled, carrying a basket of her own. She was halfway along the wall toward the door when she caught sight of the sleeping figure, and she leapt back, hand to her chest.

  She stepped into the street, closer to Naomi and Tirzah, to skirt the sleeper. “Mother!” Tirzah breathed. “Could that be . . . ?” She felt her mother’s hand on her mouth.

  “Not a sound!” Naomi hissed in her ear. “Be still; she must not see us!”

  But as they watched, the figure stopped, then turned her back on them. She tiptoed closer to the gate, and the basket fell from her hand. An orange rolled in the dust unnoticed as she knelt, and the two women heard a smothered cry.

  “It is Amrah!” Tirzah whispered, unable to contain herself.

  Her mother just shook her head. Both women stared across the street.

  The sleeper stirred. His head rolled; then his legs bent. Afterward they agreed that they both knew exactly when he woke. He went still and lay for a moment, then raised his hands to his face.

  “Judah!” came the cry, and he sat up.

  The little woman dropped to the ground and threw her arms around him. “Judah!” she repeated, in her thin voice. “Judah, you are alive!”

  “Amrah?” he asked. Naomi and Tirzah clutched each other. To hear his voice! “Amrah, it is you!” His long arms wrapped around her. “Oh, Amrah! After so long! I have been searching! I never thought I would find anyone!” He held her away from him and gently pulled her veil back. “You are older.”

  “And you are a man, Judah,” she answered, in the same tone of wonder. “The image of your father. But you are alive!”

  “And my mother? Tirzah? I have come to try to find them. Do you know anything?”

  Amrah shook her head. “I do not, Judah. I have been here ever since that day. I thought, if they were spared, they might come back.”

  “But how? Didn’t the Romans take it over?”

  “They don’t know the house the way I do. I hid. They used to come to search. I would watch them searching. I hoped someone would speak of your family, but they never did. And nobody has bothered me for a while.”

  “So no one knows where my mother and Tirzah are?”

  “The Romans might. I am just a servant. Nobody would tell me.”

  Ben-Hur stretched his arms above his head and groaned. “I have just returned to Jerusalem this very day. I was so happy to be back that I walked all over. How silly to fall asleep here! I thought I was just sitting down to rest.”

  “Now you will rest inside,” Amrah said firmly. She scrambled to her feet and plucked the orange out of the dust. “I have kept your bedroom clean, more or less. You can sleep in your own bed tonight. Are you hungry?” She eyed him as he stood. “You don’t look hungry. Someone has been taking care of you, at least.” She put the basket down and hugged him, her arms around his waist and her head barely reaching his chest. “Oh, Judah, you have survived! This is a wonderful day!”

  He patted her shoulder and picked up the basket. “The only thing that would make it better would be news of my mother and Tirzah,” he said. “But we will hope for that tomorrow. Now show me your secret way into the house.”

  The two turned and walked into the shadow. Across the street, Tirzah and Naomi clutched each other. They would have cried, if they could. As it was, their shoulders shook and t
heir mouths turned down and their breath came in jolting gasps. After a few minutes they regained control, and without speaking, they turned down the narrow street away from the Hur palace.

  CHAPTER 40

  STONES

  They did not walk fast enough to reach the city gate before dawn. Long before that, they began to encounter people as Jerusalem awoke. They took turns calling out, “Unclean, unclean!”

  Most people left them alone. Lepers, after all, were common, and anyone out before dawn had work to do or a load to carry or somewhere to be. They were too busy to bother with two leprous crones. Only at a market, a fruit seller setting up a table in the near darkness placed a handful of bruised persimmons in the road before them, then backed away.

  But that was the single kindness they met. Once the sun rose, the streets filled. There was some sense to the leprosy laws, even beyond the Scriptures—walking in Jerusalem involved physical contact. If brushing against a leper meant being infected, lepers must be exiled.

  THE VALLEY OF THE DEAD

  Lew Wallace set the Valley of the Dead south of Jerusalem in part of the Hinnom Valley, also known as Gehenna, the place of burning. In this valley, worshipers of Molech had formerly sacrificed their children. It is a fitting place to house society’s outcasts and the living dead. En-rogel was a notable landmark and water source near the valley.

  Naomi and Tirzah kept trudging along. They rested briefly when they were alone. Naomi tried to choose streets she remembered as quiet, but the eight years they had spent in the Antonia Tower had dulled her memory. Dogs followed them, growling and barking. The sun got hotter. People threw things. Twigs, just as a gesture, to accompany a warning shout: “Get away!” They heard that often. Rotten fruit. Something rotten splashed to the dirt in front of Tirzah, and she was so startled that she almost fell, but she knew she must keep moving.