“And you should go to the praetorium as well, to show little Esther where you slew the Roman,” Iras’s voice cut in.
“No,” Ben-Hur said shortly. “I would not trouble Esther with that incident.”
“But tell us your news!” Balthasar piped up. “You have us all assembled here. Surely you have something to recount.”
“Well, I do.” Ben-Hur looked around the group, then up at the distant ceiling.
Esther understood his hesitation. The vast space of the room was overwhelming. She stood and said, “Why don’t you stand over there, by the hearth? Here, I will bring my father’s chair.” But before she could move Simonides two paces, Ben-Hur had displaced her, lifting her hands off the back of the wheeled chair. In moments they were all ranged in a circle with the firelight glowing on their faces. It caught the glitter of Iras’s snake bracelet and the golden embroidery on Balthasar’s turban. Esther sat slightly behind her father, with her hand in his on the arm of the chair.
Ben-Hur gazed at their faces and took a breath. Then he shook his head and said, “You know what I have taken as a task over the last three years. We all believe in the importance of this man I think of as the Nazarene.” He looked directly at Balthasar. “We all believe that he is the future leader of Judea. Born, as you know, to be king of the Jews. He is on his way here now. He will be here tomorrow. Something will happen; we don’t know what. He refers to the Temple as ‘my Father’s house.’ I have the sense that this is the climax, the moment we have all been waiting for.”
He spoke, Esther thought, with the confidence of a man who often needed to persuade others.
“I have spent most of the last three years on the task that you, Simonides, and Sheik Ilderim conceived of—to provide this future King with the force he will need to throw off Rome’s dominion. But I have not focused entirely on troop formations and battle plans. I have also, I believe, come to know the Nazarene as he has traveled around the countryside, preaching and teaching. And I can tell you one thing with certainty: he is a man, as I am, as you are. He eats; he sleeps; he feels the heat and the cold.”
“Can you summarize what he preaches, son of Hur?” Balthasar asked. “I have been longing, all this time, to know just what it is that he says.”
“Yes, I will. But before I do that, I have to tell you also that while he is a man . . . he is also something more.”
“Something more? What do you mean by that?” Iras’s voice seemed sharp. But Ben-Hur did not answer her right away, for into the room ran Amrah, who had been at the market when he arrived. She seemed ready to throw her arms around him but instead knelt at his feet. Because he had avoided the Hur palace, she had not seen him since finding his mother and sister. The next day she would go to them and tell them how magnificent he was—but for the moment, emotion overwhelmed her.
“Amrah!” he said. “I am so happy to see you! It has been so long!” He put his hands below her shoulders and lifted her to standing. “You look well! But . . . what?”
For she had buried her head in his chest and burst into tears. Although Esther and Simonides were newly arrived at the house, Esther was already very fond of Amrah, and she rose quickly to put an arm around the old nurse. Amrah only wept the more, but she turned away from Ben-Hur and let Esther lead her out of the circle of light.
“Are you all right, Amrah?” Ben-Hur asked. “Esther, can you find out what is upsetting her?”
Esther nodded and drew Amrah down next to her on a low bench. The two whispering voices could be heard for a moment; then Iras said, “Go on, son of Hur. This King—who arrives in Jerusalem tomorrow, you say—is something more than a man? A great warrior, perhaps? A chief? A sage? A magus?”
“None of those,” he answered after a brief thoughtful silence. “For instance—” he scanned their eager faces—“this may make him sound like a magician . . . but I heard that at a wedding, he turned water into wine.”
Iras laughed. “What good would that be for a King who should rule?”
“If he can turn water into wine,” Simonides said, disapproval of Iras clear in his voice, “then perhaps nothing in the world is fixed for him. He could turn a legion of Romans into . . . a flock of ducks!”
They all laughed briefly at the idea of Romans as ducks, but Ben-Hur went on to say, “In fact, Simonides is right. I wasn’t with him when another incident happened but . . . This was far away, up in Gadara. The group encountered two men who were possessed. And the Nazarene exorcised the demons, which went into a herd of pigs. The pigs rushed down into the sea and the men walked away, restored.”
“So he has unusual powers, you would say,” Balthasar suggested. “But how does he use them? Surely that is even more important?”
“I agree with you. But the way he lives is unlike any ruler I’ve known of. For instance, he travels with a group of humble men. They walk along the roads, talking; when they come to a village, the Nazarene will speak to anyone. He is kind to the weak, to children, to women. He preaches of patience and humility and compassion. The rough men around him show great kindness to each other. Even in the largest gatherings, there is no anger, no pilfering. People share their food, take care of each other. This, Balthasar, is wholly his influence. And . . .” He paused and shook his head. “He heals.”
Esther, across the room, spoke up. “He heals? He is a healer?”
“Not in the usual sense,” Ben-Hur answered. “Not with herbs or potions. I saw him once . . . We were leaving Jericho and there were two blind men begging by the side of the road. They called out to him and he went over and touched their eyes. And they saw. Just like that.”
There was silence in the great room, so that the crackling of the fire could be heard.
“And then he healed a man with the palsy. He said to the man, ‘Rise, pick up your bed, and go home,’ and the man, who had been shaking and twitching and barely able to move . . . he stood straight and walked away.”
“But how does that help us?” Iras asked. “Of course the palsied man is happy, but what does this do to defeat Rome?”
Ben-Hur just held up a hand. “He has even, repeatedly, cured people of the worst scourge. I was with him when this happened: a leper came to him in Galilee. We would all have driven him away, but the Nazarene wouldn’t let us. He walked toward the man. Have you ever been close to a leper?” he asked the group. “What a curse! As if your body were devouring itself! And he was dressed in filthy rags, hobbling on a crutch; truly the kind of beggar we all pass by in the road and pull our robes close so that we don’t touch them. Which indeed Scripture requires. But the leper said—and you could barely hear his voice—‘Lord, if you will, you can make me clean.’ And the Nazarene reached out. He touched the man with his hand and said, ‘Be clean.’ And . . . he was.”
In the shadows, Esther felt Amrah’s thin shoulders tense, and the old servant sat up.
“That wasn’t the only time he healed lepers,” Ben-Hur went on. “There was a group of ten who came to him. And he told them to go to the priest in the Temple, for purification, and that they would be healed before they got there. And it happened. He has such power. These are miracles, aren’t they?”
Amrah murmured something to Esther and left the room, but it seemed only Esther noticed.
“Yes,” Balthasar answered with satisfaction. “Those are miracles.”
“I agree,” said Simonides. “But this power—what else can he do with it?”
Ben-Hur walked away from the fireplace to the end of the room. He smiled absently at Esther and returned to his first position. “I hesitate to tell you because this sounds so outlandish.” He glanced at Iras quickly. “He can defeat death.”
They all gasped, and Balthasar muttered quickly in a language none of them recognized, a prayer or a charm of some kind.
“I saw it. He raised a young man from his funeral bier, down near Nain. The man’s mother had been weeping and the Nazarene touched the body and said, ‘Arise!’ And the corpse, the man, stood up.”<
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“Only God is so good!” Balthasar exclaimed, raising his hands above his face. “Only God could do such things!”
Ben-Hur shook his head. “It may be. Balthasar may be right. We don’t know yet. In Galilee a while ago, we tried to crown him. You know the Galileans; they are impatient. We had been working so hard; we were proud of our forces; we wanted to . . .”
“To conquer!” Iras put in.
He nodded at her. “Yes, to conquer. So we marched to the Sea of Galilee, where he was teaching, and surrounded him, calling and shouting and . . . he vanished. He wanted nothing to do with us and our weapons and our shouts. He did not want our crown.”
Esther looked up, hearing the bafflement, even disappointment in Ben-Hur’s voice.
“And he is on his way here?” Simonides asked.
“Yes. He will be here tomorrow. There will be some kind of procession; the group around him is quite large by now.”
“And it will become clear, tomorrow, who he is and what he intends to do,” Iras stated. “He will proclaim himself King. Surely that is why he has come to Jerusalem!”
“He is our Messiah,” Simonides said confidently, “come to restore the Jews to the power they once knew. The prophets have foreseen it all!”
Balthasar waggled his head. “He is the Savior of souls,” he insisted. “He can bring men back to life, but, Daughter, he will not be crowned. His dominion will not be the earthly world.”
Ben-Hur shrugged. “I don’t know. I have seen as much of him as most men, and I am still not sure. But soon the wait will be over.”
After an instant of silence, Esther rose from her stool and slipped quietly from the room to prepare her father’s bedchamber. The image she kept remembering was that of a gentle man, strolling with his friends and curing the ill. She could not imagine that man accepting a crown. Nor, she suspected, could Ben-Hur, despite all his talk of triumph.
CHAPTER 48
CLEAN
One thing Ben-Hur was sure of: the Nazarene’s entry into Jerusalem would draw crowds. The city was already full to bursting with pilgrims visiting for Passover. Tents speckled the hillsides beyond the walls, and the streets, always congested, were barely passable.
Emotions ran high at such times. Fights flared up. Roman soldiers patrolled, ready and eager to knock heads together. The Nazarene would need protection, and Ben-Hur was determined to provide it. He spent the night at the khan in Bezetha, where he had left a cohort of his trained Galilean fighters. The Nazarene would enter Jerusalem from the east, with his followers. The band had grown steadily larger and now numbered in the hundreds. But at the same time, word had reached into Jerusalem that a great leader was coming. No doubt crowds would hasten beyond the city walls to meet him. Whether or not they believed, his coming would provide some excitement. And to a military man like Judah Ben-Hur, large groups of excited civilians were a threat.
That morning the Galileans were dressed in the everyday tunic and robe of the city dweller. They had been instructed to blend into the crowd and never to let their short swords be visible. They were present only to keep order and to protect the Nazarene. Ben-Hur himself rode a short distance out from the city gates, up to the brow of a small hill. Behind him, coming out from Jerusalem, was a huge body of men, thousands strong. They were waving palms, and as the breeze shifted, Ben-Hur could hear hymns almost shouted by the crowd, accompanied by small drums and cymbals. Young men danced on the edges of the road, apparently drunk with joy.
PASSOVER
When God delivered his people from slavery in Egypt, he provided a way for the tenth plague to pass over the Hebrews so that they would be spared. Passover, or Pesach, commemorates this delivery with a sacrificed lamb and a traditional ritual meal. Historically, Jews from all over Judah would travel to Jerusalem for Pesach, Pentecost, and the Feast of Tabernacles. Jews in the diaspora did not return every year, but these festivals were often a time of pilgrimage and great celebration.
And just over the hill, climbing the slope, came the Nazarene himself, surrounded by a similar throng. Ben-Hur caught sight of some of the faces: the two fisherman sons of Zebedee and Peter, who trudged behind the Nazarene, scanning the crowd with a deep frown. The man at the center of the commotion sat quietly on a donkey in his white robes, mind apparently elsewhere.
He doesn’t look very happy, Ben-Hur found himself thinking. It was as if Iras had spoken inside his head. He doesn’t look like a leader. He certainly doesn’t look like a King.
Someone tossed a palm branch onto the road in front of the donkey and immediately others followed suit. The narrow, stony surface was soon covered with greens. Here and there an extravagant soul laid down his cloak as well. The donkey trudged onward on the new surface, as oblivious as its rider.
That’s not how you do it, Ben-Hur’s thoughts went on. He’d seen parades. The Romans knew how to stage a spectacle. That was part of governing: You showed your might. You sat up high, where people could see you. You waved!
Where were the flags and trumpets? Where were the glitter and fanfare, the evidence of power?
A hundred yards farther on, the Nazarene reached the multitude that had come out from Jerusalem and the shout echoed off the hills. Far away, flocks of birds rose from their trees and wheeled around in panic. Even Aldebaran shifted his weight, disliking the noise. Which was odd, given how calm he had been in the tumult of the chariot race. Ben-Hur looked around for the Arab groom who had accompanied him. He slipped off the saddle and led Aldebaran to the man, who stood in a patch of shade with his own mount. “Just hold him until I come back,” he instructed.
The road ran in what had probably been a gully long ago. When it rained, water no doubt washed down the little hills on each side and formed a stream. Now it was a stream of people, moving cheerfully but very slowly in the morning sun.
Jesus riding a donkey into Jerusalem in what is now known as his triumphal entry on Palm Sunday
Ben-Hur eyed the press of humanity in the roadbed and decided to pick his way along the rocky hillside to catch up to Jesus. He had no reason for concern, he told himself. But . . . he just wanted to see. Would the Nazarene speak? Would he . . . command?
Would he say, “This is the moment, my people! Let us throw off the Roman yoke!” Or “Jerusalem will be free!” Would he suddenly sit tall on the donkey, raise his arms, call for victory?
No. Ben-Hur swung around a stunted tree and caught sight of the Nazarene. The vast crowd shuffled onward, but the donkey and a few of the disciples stood by the road’s edge where Jesus had dismounted. Ben-Hur wasn’t close enough to hear over the noise of the crowd, but the scene was familiar to him. This was what the Nazarene did: people in pain came to him, and he lifted their burdens. And now, as he was making his triumphal entry into the central city of his faith, he had turned aside from the cheering throng to listen to another supplicant.
A few steps from the roadside, next to a gleaming white boulder, stood a small dark woman—a servant of some sort—and two lepers. Their age and gender were impossible to make out. One of them must have cried out to attract the Nazarene’s attention. The Nazarene stood still, listening. He spoke, though Ben-Hur was too far away to hear what he said. One of the desperate creatures gestured with uplifted hands. Jesus nodded and spoke again. Then he lifted his hand and blessed the lepers. Just for that moment, he looked happy. Then he turned and remounted the donkey.
Lepers, Ben-Hur thought, and something like despair shot through him. That is the kind of King he is—the kind who turns aside from a triumphal entry to cure a pair of lepers. How will this unseat Rome?
But then the small dark servant fell to her knees, and he recognized her. She held her hands out to the lepers, as if she wanted to embrace them. He had often felt that clasp! But what was Amrah doing with a pair of lepers?
Before he could think, his feet were moving. He leapt over rocks and scrubby plants, never taking his eyes off the trio. The lepers had fallen to their knees, hands to their faces
, while Amrah looked after the Nazarene, barely visible now in the slow-moving mass of men. They didn’t hear Judah’s footsteps.
He halted ten feet away, out of habit. One didn’t get close to lepers. He called out, “Amrah?”
She turned and recognized him. “Master, master!” she cried and scrabbled across the rocks and shrubs that separated them. “Master!” she said once more and reached out to clasp his hands.
He stepped back automatically, frowning. “Amrah, what are you doing?” he asked. “I saw you with those lepers. You are unclean now!”
Then he heard his name, almost whispered. Despite the clamor of the procession, he heard it. It came from one of the lepers. Women, it seemed. Both of them women.
“Is it really you, Judah?” said the other one. Her voice was stronger, more audible.
He turned to Amrah. “But who are they?” he asked. “Why do they call me by my name?”
She looked at him, eyes streaming, unable to speak.
One of them had taken a step closer. She looked better somehow. She stood taller and her skin seemed to be mending itself then and there, as he watched. “Judah,” she said. “I am your mother.”
He looked at Amrah for confirmation, then back at the leper. Moment by moment she was changing. He reached out to the thorny branch of a tree next to him and grasped it. The ground suddenly felt unsteady.
“Mother?” he tried to say, but it was like trying to speak in a dream with a closed throat and a tongue that wouldn’t move. “Tirzah?” he managed to croak. He looked at the other leper. Already her hair had lost the coarse, crinkled texture and regained some of its color. Her eyes looked into his and . . . she smiled. “Tirzah!” he cried.
And then they were all weeping. They stood in a circle, just gazing at each other because Amrah kept her head. “You must not touch each other yet,” she said firmly. “The clothes may carry the disease. Judah, stand back.”
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