Ben-Hur

by Carol Wallace

  “Oh, Amrah, must I?” he said. “If you knew how I longed to touch my mother and my sister!” He gazed hungrily at them, a mere arm’s length away.

  They seemed to glow. They looked at him with such joy that the air around them shimmered. Moment by moment, their bodies changed and now he could see them as he had known them, the women of his family, whom he had loved and now could love again.

  Because of the Nazarene.

  He had seen these cures before. He had been astounded. But now! Now that healing touch reached into his own life! He wanted more than anything to fall to his knees. He would have kissed the hem of Jesus’ robe. He would have raised his hands to heaven, as Balthasar did. Glory? Had he thought conquest was glory? Surely this was the true splendor!

  “Judah, who is he? Do you think he is the Messiah?” his mother asked. She took a step toward him, then another, and maternal instinct drove out her questions. “I think we will be safe at this distance, don’t you?” she asked. “Though I do so long to touch you! You are so large, Judah!”

  He smiled at her, a broad, humorous smile that felt unfamiliar. “I believe I am fully grown now,” he said.

  “And so handsome,” added Amrah, not to be left out.

  “If I look at all like Tirzah,” he said happily, “I must be handsome indeed!”

  “Yes,” Naomi said, turning to put her arms around her daughter, “Tirzah is a beauty.”

  They were themselves again. Long, glossy hair, smooth skin, clear eyes. Naomi kept running one hand over the other, checking that the fingers were all there, including the nails. Tirzah bent down to examine her feet, slim and beautiful in her coarse sandals.

  “But you haven’t answered,” Naomi said. “Who is this man? Amrah was not sure. She just said you had told tales of his wonderful cures.”

  “I will tell you on the way, shall I?” he answered. “I have a horse just yonder and a guide with another one. The three of you can ride them, and the guide and I will walk.”

  “Where will we go?” Tirzah asked.

  “We will find you a tent,” Ben-Hur said. “A comfortable one. And new clothes. You will need to be presented at the Temple and—I don’t know—perhaps take the ritual bath. Because now you are clean!”

  “Clean, Mother! We never have to say the other word again!”

  “What word is that?” Ben-Hur asked.

  “Unclean,” Tirzah told him. “Because we were lepers. You know how they are required to warn everyone.” She ran her hands along her arms. “Clean!”

  “But, Judah, the man on the donkey!” Naomi said. “Tell me about him.”

  So as they picked their way across the hillside toward the horses, Ben-Hur told them what he knew about the baptizer at the Jordan River, the followers, the miracles. It was easier, he thought, to leave out his army of Galileans. He did not want to speak to his mother about vengeance and violence, not on this day.

  “So he is the Messiah,” Naomi said with certitude.

  “Some think so,” Ben-Hur answered. “He chose to come to Jerusalem now, after three years in the country. Something is going to happen, but only he knows what it is.”

  “And how did you come to be one of his followers?” Naomi asked. “If you are one?”

  “Oh, the horses!” Tirzah exclaimed as they turned a corner and saw the Arab guide with Aldebaran and a delicate gray mare. Aldebaran lifted his head and nickered when Ben-Hur’s scent reached him on the dry air. “Will they let us ride them? They are so beautiful; are they yours?”

  “I had forgotten that you love horses,” Ben-Hur said.

  “So had I,” Tirzah answered, beaming at him. “Though in truth, everything looks so lovely today!”

  “It does,” Naomi added. “This is a blessed day for us all!”

  CHAPTER 49

  PASSOVER

  It took only minutes to make the arrangements. Ben-Hur sent the groom off to Jerusalem with instructions for Malluch. He would meet them at a specified location in the Kidron Valley, with tents and food and servants and clean garments for Naomi and Tirzah.

  “He will be there by the time we arrive,” Ben-Hur assured the women. “Now, Mother, can you mount if I lead Aldebaran close to this rock?” His mother and sister clambered aboard the bay, who submitted gracefully to his unusual burden. Ben-Hur and Amrah—who’d refused to ride—walked on both sides of the horse, surrounded by the thinning crowd of Jesus’ followers. They talked all the way, and when they reached the location Ben-Hur had specified, Malluch stood smiling before three tents, pitched on a small grassy patch beneath a pair of olive trees.

  They spent four days together. The women grew stronger. They shared their stories. The valley grew more and more crowded as pilgrims from all over Judea arrived for Passover, and on that evening, the first day of the festival, Ben-Hur left his family to return to the city.

  Jerusalem’s gates were wide open. The strategist in Ben-Hur noted how vulnerable the city seemed: the citizens and the visitors heedlessly thronged the streets, moving from courtyard to courtyard singing and eating, for all of the ritually slaughtered lambs roasting on thousands of fires must be consumed completely that night. The door to every house was open and voices called out, “Come in and join us!” But Ben-Hur walked on, lifting a hand and smiling regretfully.

  He had spent too long with his family, he thought with a twinge of apprehension. It had been so easy, with Naomi and Tirzah, to let the hours drift past while they rediscovered each other. So easy and so urgent, at the time. He had felt as if, at long last, he were drinking deep from a cool stream.

  They had asked all the questions at first. It had seemed strange: no one, in the previous years, had wanted to know so many details of his past. It was such a relief to share it: the tile, the capture, the forced march to the galley. He hadn’t told them everything about the galley. Some things they should never know. He dwelt instead on the years in Rome and Arrius’s kindness.

  Their story was shorter. “The boredom was the worst of it,” Naomi declared, but Tirzah contradicted her.

  “Not for me,” she said. “It was the anger. I wanted to kill.”

  “You did?” Naomi was shocked. “Kill whom?”

  “You, out of mercy. Myself, out of despair.”

  “But—our days are held by God,” Naomi said, still in shock. “We must endure what he sends.”

  “I know,” Tirzah said gently, clasping her mother’s hand. “And all along I knew what you believed. You were an example to me. I will never forget your courage.”

  “Knowing you were alive made everything easier,” Naomi told Ben-Hur. She and Tirzah exchanged a glance. “I still see you, lying in the moonlight beside our palace gate that night. Once we knew you were well, we could accept our fate.”

  “You were always more accepting than I was,” Tirzah countered.

  “You were the one who talked to Judah when he came to the cave,” Naomi pointed out. “And turned him away. You were brave too.”

  Ben-Hur had been humbled by the exchange. The kind of courage he knew prompted action, and he thought that might be easier than resignation. The image of Jesus, silent on his donkey, came into his mind. As he shouldered his way through the high-spirited Passover crowds in the city, he wondered about the test ahead. Courage would certainly be required. But courage of what nature?

  The crisis in the Nazarene’s story was approaching. A constant relay of messengers had reached Ben-Hur in the valley, keeping him aware of Jesus’ movements since entering Jerusalem. A cohort of Galilean fighters, well disguised, had followed Jesus everywhere, with orders to protect him. But all he had done was go to the Temple, as he had promised. Yet this was the great night of the Jewish year. Surely any leader would take advantage of this moment to declare himself?

  When he arrived at the Hur palace, he was told that Simonides and Balthasar had gone out into the streets to see the celebrations. Iras, however, was in the great chamber.

  Iras! Alone! Ben-Hur paused for an instant. H
e had forgotten about her! Somehow the four days with the women of his family had altered her image in his mind. Was it the contrast between the Egyptian and his sister that made him hesitate? Iras’s sultry charm, her ambition, the flicker of cruelty he’d perceived in her?

  Cruelty? As he climbed the stairs, he tested the thought. Yes, he decided, Iras could be cruel, even malicious. She was dismissive of her father and of Esther as well. Could she be blamed? he wondered. She was a woman of great ambition, thwarted by loyalty to her aging father. What was there for her in Jerusalem, anyway?

  Iras was also, Ben-Hur admitted to himself, a woman of intense allure. As he pushed aside the curtain hanging at the door of the tall room, his heart raced. A seven-branched lamp stood at the center of the room, and Iras sat on a divan at its feet with her back to the doorway. Her gossamer veil moved slightly in the current of air as the curtain fell back in place.

  She did not turn to face him. There was nothing soft or receptive about the view of her spine. So Ben-Hur crossed the room and stood before her, saying, “Peace be to you, daughter of Balthasar.”

  “Peace?” she said flatly. “I didn’t think that was what the hero Ben-Hur was seeking. Or . . . wait. Maybe you are not a hero.”

  The edge in her voice was new. “I don’t believe I ever claimed to be one,” he countered.

  “No? You certainly never contradicted me when I called you heroic,” she said. “After the chariot race, for instance.”

  Ben-Hur sighed. He looked around the room for a chair, but Iras stood instead. “You will not need to sit down. I am not going to remain in the same room as a coward. No. Perhaps I should call you a cheat!”

  He stepped back, surprised.

  “Yes, a cheat,” she went on. “You deceived me! That man, the Nazarene . . . you had me believe he would be King! King of the Jews—isn’t that what you said?”

  She pushed past him, striding to the end of the room. “I thought you understood me. I love Rome even less than you. This man, you said, was born to be King. You were building an army for him!”

  “I was. I have,” Ben-Hur broke in.

  MESSIANIC MISINTERPRETATIONS

  The Jewish people were expecting their Messiah to be a charismatic leader who would drive away the Roman occupation and reestablish Jewish independence (Psalm 132:11) with a powerful and prosperous reign (Psalm 72:10-11). There was even an idea of when this ruler would announce himself (Daniel 9:25). But these views failed to take into account other prophecies, particularly in Isaiah, that indicate the anointed one would be despised, rejected, and even killed. The coming Messiah was not a military champion; he was a redeemer and a restorer.

  “Not for that man!” she spat. “I saw him, you know. My father insisted, frail as he is. The procession was impressive, I suppose, if you admire country bumpkins waving branches and wailing. I looked for a cohort of Galileans led by a prince of Judea, but I saw nothing so grand.”

  “I was detained—”

  She didn’t let him continue but waved her hand. “In fact, there was nothing of grandeur! There were thousands of grubby Jews in dusty robes. Some were gray and some were brown and some may once have been white. And the King himself, trotting along on the back of a donkey! Looking mournful—at best! Oh, my heart sank,” she went on. “There is no glory here! Where are the swords and breastplates? The drums? There wasn’t even a flag, not a streamer, not a banner. And do you know what your man did when he got to the Temple?”

  “No, I have not heard,” Ben-Hur answered. “I am glad you can tell me.”

  “I was on the porch. The courts were all full of people. The priests, at least, in their vestments, brought some splendor to the scene, but your man, the Nazarene—he entered the Temple on foot. He gazed here and there, like any dazzled rustic. Then without saying a word, without lifting a hand, he merely trudged onward and left by the opposite gate. So what do you have to say to that?”

  She flung herself down on the divan again with her back to him, and for a long moment Ben-Hur was silent.

  She was right, of course. In one way. He could imagine the scene as she had described it: the Nazarene entering the courts of the Temple, glancing at the gathered crowds, the massive walls, the mosaics, the turrets, the solid presence of the established faith. He had called it “my Father’s house.” And the Nazarene had seen it and walked on. Walked on to something else. Something different. New.

  But of course that was not what Iras had wanted. Ben-Hur looked at her again, feeling both foolish and relieved. Whatever it was that the Nazarene had in mind, Ben-Hur knew it was nothing Iras would value.

  “I am waiting for your answer,” she reminded him. “What kind of King have you been supporting all this time?”

  “I still don’t know,” he said. “Your father believes that he is the Son of God and that he will rule over a world to come, an eternal realm for our souls. Simonides and Sheik Ilderim and I thought, like you, that he planned an overthrow of Rome. A rebellion, like those the world has known before.”

  “And what do you believe now, this minute?” She turned around, frank curiosity on her face. “The fable? A story concocted for the credulous, like my age-addled father? I thought you were wiser than that.”

  He responded honestly. “I am torn. But I have seen that the Nazarene is capable of marvels. He can bend the world to his will—if he chooses. Tonight is the night for him to declare his earthly sovereignty. But he may look forward to a different kind of rule.”

  “Oh, nonsense!” she exclaimed. “There is nothing besides the earthly world.” She stood and shook out her robe. “Messala was right about you from the first,” she said, watching him to see his reaction.

  He felt his eyes widen and his heart clutch. “Messala? What does he have to do with this?”

  “He is the real hero,” she said. “We met in Alexandria. We became lovers. He was sent to Antioch later. Where he goes, I follow. My father is so old, so silly, that I can persuade him of anything. Like meeting Messala at the Fountain of Castalia.” She laughed as Ben-Hur visibly made the connection.

  “And the palace of Idernee?” she went on. “You never did figure out who hired those assassins, did you?”

  Now Ben-Hur was feeling his skin crawl. “You? And Messala?”

  She nodded calmly. “He will never walk again. It was your doing.” She crossed the room toward him, closer and closer. He tried not to recoil but could not help leaning back. All the same she put a hand on his shoulder. Ran it up his neck to the back of his head. Stretched up and kissed him on the lips, long and deep. “You thought I might be yours,” she said finally. “I never could. Know this, son of Hur: Iras the Egyptian is a consort fit for a mighty leader. And that man is not you.”

  The draft from her departure made the lights in the chandelier flicker, and he stepped over toward the divan, knees collapsing.

  Iras and Messala. All along. He thought back to each encounter with her and saw clearly Messala’s shadow. All that time! At the Grove of Daphne, at the Orchard of the Palms, even here, in the palace of his family—Iras had been living in Jerusalem as Messala’s eyes and ears! All her talk of overthrowing Rome—had that been meant as a trap? Would she have betrayed him to the Roman authorities once he moved with his army?

  Would she now? A chill ran down his spine. Of course she would, if she could. Iras would not hesitate. Yet on this night of all nights, with Jerusalem at its peak of festivity, Ben-Hur felt himself safe from Rome’s reach. Let her go, if she could. Let her try to elbow her way through the crowds to the Antonia Tower and find the captain of a legion and make a complaint that she knew of a traitor. She would be ignored. The empire’s guards and soldiers would have other preoccupations.

  He shook himself. Thank God he had not mentioned his family to her! He had imagined sharing the good news, his relief and his joy, but now to link them, even in thought, felt unseemly.

  “Judah? You’re here alone?” said a woman’s voice, and he spun around.

&nbs
p; “I’m sorry I startled you,” Esther continued. “I thought I heard voices and I wondered if my father had returned. What are you doing here? I thought you would be out with the Nazarene.”

  “I am on my way,” he answered. “But I have just come from . . .” He paused and looked at her. Such a contrast to Iras! he thought. Her skin was like milk and her brown hair had an auburn glow. It looked alive in the glow from the lamp. “Come, sit down,” he said, moving toward the divan. “I have such news! My mother and sister have been found! Amrah knew where they were all along, but they insisted she keep the secret.”

  He held out his hands and clasped hers, drawing her to sit next to him. To his surprise, her eyes were full of tears.

  “Oh, Judah!” she said. “I am so glad for you! But why would Amrah keep such a secret?”

  “They were lepers,” he said gently, not wanting to shock her. “But they were cured by the Nazarene.”

  She pulled her hands away from his in surprise. “That night, when you were telling us the story—Amrah was sitting by me. And she heard you talk about him!”

  “Yes, of course. And then she left the room.”

  “Did she go and tell them?”

  “Yes, and they met him coming into Jerusalem! My mother called out. And I saw it, Esther. I saw the disease leave their bodies. Minute by minute, they became themselves again.”

  She was silent for a long moment while she wiped away tears. Then she nodded. “What a blessing,” she said.

  “It is. They are in tents in the Kidron Valley. In a few more days, they will go to the priests in the Temple for purification, and then they will come here. I know they will love you, Esther,” he said to his own surprise.

  Judah and Esther in a scene from the 1959 MGM film

  “And I will love them,” she said, blushing deeply. Then she stood and looked away from him. “But surely you should be out tonight. The Nazarene may need you.”

  “Yes, I am just going.” He rose and closed the distance between them.