Ben-Hur wondered if he wanted to die. Not yet, of course. He had not survived three years as a galley slave to allow this opportunity to slip away. But there was something impressive about Arrius’s resolution all the same. Ben-Hur admired the notion that a man might control his own destiny. The choice between success and nonexistence seemed reasonable. Even attractive. But not the way of the chosen people.
He lifted his head as high as he dared. The galley in the distance was still heading toward them, but he could make out no special features. What did the barbarian galleys look like? It would have been useful if they had distinguishing features, like striped sails or brightly colored hulls. Useful in battle, too, Ben-Hur thought, to tell an enemy from an ally in the chaos of a fleet action.
He turned, scanning the horizon again. A breeze had picked up, ruffling the water’s surface and producing small swells, and as the plank reached the top of one, he glimpsed a sail coming from the other direction. Much closer than the galley he and Arrius had been watching, and coming toward them with some speed.
He touched the tribune’s shoulder. “Tribune, there is a sail closer to us. It may be Roman, but I can’t quite see.”
Arrius lifted his head. “Where?”
“There . . . right behind you.”
“I don’t dare move,” the tribune answered. “I’m feeling weak. I need not have asked you to push me from our bench,” he added. “I think I can achieve death on my own.”
The mast was just visible at the crest of each wave. It kept coming closer, and more of the sail was visible each time the bench was lifted on a swell. But there was nothing to tell Judah any more. If the galley kept to its course, it would pass well to their right, and he and Arrius might not be seen. It would be worth making the effort if there was a chance of rescue near at hand. But what if the ship belonged to the pirates? Ben-Hur glanced down at his huge, callused hands. He looked like a galley slave, and he would go back to being one. Arrius . . . The tribune lay with his eyes closed and his mouth open, rolling slightly as the bench glided over each small swell. His skin was already reddened by the sun and the wound over his ear gleamed. He might still be bleeding.
Take the chance? Make the effort to greet the nearer ship or wait for the farther one? That one might belong to the pirates too. The issue, Ben-Hur realized, was whether he tried to reach a ship sooner or later, and sooner was the obvious choice. He began kicking, gently at first, to see how the bench responded. It was a steady movement, so Arrius lay still. He slipped down into the water to see if that helped; the bench seemed to rise slightly, but he could see less. Could he maintain his course? Could he steer at all?
He kicked more. Part of his mind noticed that he was not as strong as usual. Or maybe it was that his legs weren’t as strong as his arms. But pulling an oar, you had to brace yourself with your legs. When the hortator beat the rhythm for a charge, men rose off the bench with each stroke, leaning the entire weight of their bodies against the oars. He should have been stronger. They were going nowhere. He slithered carefully back onto the bench to gain the few inches of height that would let him see a little bit more of the sail. Were they closer? Were they in the galley’s course?
A bigger swell headed their way. Arrius was in a deep sleep or maybe unconscious; his head rolled from side to side as the bench moved. Ben-Hur seized Arrius’s shoulder as the bench crested the swell—it would be too easy for the tribune to drown now, when rescue might be at hand. The swell lifted them high enough to relieve Ben-Hur: the galley was still heading toward them. But there was something disturbing about the sight. Was the sail full enough? Ben-Hur knew nothing about the mechanics of sailing. That was left to the men on deck. Maybe it was normal.
There was something missing, too—the steady thump of the hortator’s block. Shouldn’t that have been audible?
The next swell lifted them higher yet and brought more of the galley’s sail into view. It was Roman, Ben-Hur decided. He could not say why he thought so—maybe something about the clean white sail and the . . . Was that a helmet on top of the mast? Ben-Hur squinted, willing his eyes to tell him. There was something, certainly, a rounded shape that didn’t seem to belong there.
Each swell brought the ship closer, but Ben-Hur grew more puzzled as more of the sail came into view. Was it slack? Could expert Roman sailors be letting it spill the wind? He looked back over his shoulder to check on the course of the original galley they had spotted. He didn’t see it, but another swell showed the sheet of the nearer ship, hanging in a loose curve . . . Unmanned.
The galley must be empty of men! How could that be? Was it a trap? Ben-Hur rejected the thought. Trap for whom? Still, there was something uncanny about the ship floating without direction. Soon the empty deck came into view, then the bank of oars, abandoned like a handful of straws at crazy angles.
“No flags,” came Arrius’s voice.
“No,” Ben-Hur agreed. “And no crew. Why?”
“Lots of reasons,” Arrius said. “Injuries, deaths, most of the men taken off to man another ship. There may be a skeleton crew on board.”
“They’d never leave the sails up and the oars out,” Ben-Hur objected.
“Unless it’s part of a ruse.” Arrius sighed. “And the other galley? The first one?”
“Still there. Still far away.”
“Could a lookout from that ship see this one?”
Ben-Hur shook his head. “I don’t know. I don’t know how far you can see from the top of a mast.”
“No, of course not.” After a pause, Arrius added, “Quite a distance.”
What next, then? Ben-Hur wondered. Try to reach the empty galley? Was there any advantage in that? He eyed the ship, imagined himself somehow scaling the hull . . . but Arrius was too weak. That was out of the question.
The galley that was farther away might come to investigate this one. If that was a Roman ship, all would be well. If not, they would have put themselves into danger. He craned his neck again. Was the farther ship . . . ? Yes. As a rower, he knew. The pace of the oars had picked up. He watched them, just distant sparks in the sun as the blades turned over the waves. Fast. Someone had ordered speed.
It was probably not an hour. Probably less than half of that before the distant galley had overtaken the near one. And had, on the way, answered Ben-Hur’s hail. Both ships, it turned out, were Roman. The distant ship had come to investigate the unmanned one—and found the two men drifting on the sea.
CHAPTER 13
ROMAN
It was difficult to transfer Arrius into the boat. One of the oarsmen recognized him as the tribune and commander of the fleet, and out of respect, the sailors were all too timid to grasp and haul him off the waterlogged bench. Judah had to take charge, reaching out from the gunwales with his long arms and using his enormous strength to lift the Roman into the bottom of the boat.
“And who are you?” the boat’s captain said. “You look like a galley slave.”
“He saved my life,” Arrius whispered. “Show him every respect.” He spoke no more, and the men rowed in silence back to the galley.
It was a strange moment for Ben-Hur when he mounted the deck of the ship. Within moments a steward had approached him with a robe. Soon there was a meal, and water was heated so that he and Arrius could wash off the salt water. A healer was summoned to look at Arrius’s wound and insisted on rubbing a salve on the cuts on Ben-Hur’s hands. The healer looked at his calluses and glanced at Judah’s face but asked no questions. By then everyone knew that Ben-Hur was to be treated as Arrius’s protégé. Belowdecks he could hear the hortator. Sometimes at night, he listened, twitching to the beat, to the creaking of the oars. It was strangely difficult to sleep on a couch, and he often rolled himself in a blanket and fell asleep on the floor.
Arrius recovered quickly from his wound and took command of the ship. When they rejoined the fleet, he and Judah transferred into the biggest galley, a trireme, and hoisted his flag. From the new ship he directed the acti
on that captured the entire pirate fleet. Ben-Hur was fascinated to see how he managed both men and ships. By the time the entire Roman fleet and its captured ships returned to Misenum, the two men had spent hours discussing philosophies of war and leadership. When they walked down the gangplank onto the shore at Misenum, there was an obvious ease and affection between them. After the official greeting, the trumpets, the trophies, the speeches, the introductions, two men lingered to greet Arrius with warm embraces and laughter. One of them carried a laurel wreath that he tried to put on Arrius’s head.
LAUREL WREATH
Romans and Greeks used a wreath of laurel leaves to represent the honor of victory—both martial and athletic.
The term has been incorporated into today’s language in such expressions as “resting on one’s laurels” or honors like poet laureate.
“No, Caius,” Arrius said, laughing. “The man who deserves the laurels is this one—you’ll know him from now on as young Arrius, because I am going to adopt him as my son. He fished me up after Astraea sank and held me on a piece of planking until we were rescued.”
“Well, then, here you are,” Caius said, turning to Ben-Hur. “Maybe you could bend your head. I can’t quite reach it. Only Arrius would have the luck to be rescued from a burning ship.”
Ben-Hur smiled and settled the laurel wreath onto his head with one hand. But when they walked past an altar to Fortuna, he caught Arrius’s eye and twitched it off his head. Arrius nodded and watched as Ben-Hur laid the tribute on the altar.
That gesture, it turned out, was typical of the young man. Arrius had known from their first meeting that he was intelligent, but his young protégé had an uncanny sense of what was expected of him. He watched and listened and acted with a perfect sense of tact. He spoke little until he had mastered the style of Latin spoken in Arrius’s household. He resumed his education, studying mostly in Greek like other men of learning. He dressed like a Roman. He followed Arrius’s style of worship. In time, Arrius adopted him and he was known throughout Rome as young Arrius.
ROMAN ADOPTION
Adoption of boys was common among the powerful families of Rome, generally to foster political and financial gain through alliances and inheritances, not as an act of affection. There was no sense of shame or secrecy, and adopted children benefited from connections to both their original and adoptive families. Julius Caesar famously adopted Gaius Octavius, who went on to become the first emperor of Rome and began a tradition of imperial succession by adoption.
Arrius wasn’t given to examining men’s motives, but he did wonder from time to time why the former slave stayed on with him. Gratitude? Obligation? Ambition? Or simply because there was nowhere else to go? When they’d first returned to Rome, Arrius had naturally inquired about the fate of the Hur family, but no information returned from Jerusalem, and even a private investigation found only dead ends. So perhaps to this late-come son of his, Roman life was as good a choice as any.
He certainly made good use of his opportunities. Mutual gratitude, both men found, could be a foundation for a friendship. Arrius spoke often of his position in the Roman government, and Ben-Hur paid attention. Before long, he was spending many hours each day in the famous Roman palaestra, which trained soldiers for battle or athletic competition. Which was just ritualized battle anyway.
To Arrius’s pride and pleasure, Ben-Hur became known as a fierce competitor and skilled fighter. He had a hunger for knowledge. To his hours in the palaestra, he added weeks in military camps, observing and eventually joining the ranks of the young officers. He was admired but not especially liked. He smiled very little and rarely laughed.
BEN-HUR’S SEARCH
Lew Wallace’s original novel does not address why Judah tarries with Arrius so long before personally beginning the search for his family.
If it hadn’t been for the horses, Arrius thought, Ben-Hur would have become a hard man at a young age. Jerusalem was not an equestrian city—too dry, too congested—and Jews were more at home with donkeys. But the Roman army depended on its cavalry, and Ben-Hur turned out to be a natural horseman. He had a calm demeanor and met each new horse with an air of respectful curiosity. He learned to ride and drive and soon acquired the level of skill he expected of himself—which was complete mastery. And that did not surprise Arrius. But he also believed that Ben-Hur’s care for his animals fed something essential in the young man. Other drivers stepped out of their chariots and tossed the reins to a groom, but Ben-Hur always walked his horses until they were cool, leading them on foot to watch their gait, their breathing, their communication with each other. He sometimes took the brushes and groomed them himself. The quiet of the stables, the simple tactile pleasure of leaning against the warm bulk of a horse gave him a comforting sense of a benign universe. He never connected it with the comfort and routine he had known in the Hur palace in Jerusalem.
For the rest, he watched and learned. He acquired deadly skills. He kept his ears open for mention of Messala, whose military career seemed to stall as he was transferred to one remote outpost after another. Five years passed this way, and when Arrius died, he left all of his immense property to Ben-Hur. It took several months to settle the estate, and during that time Ben-Hur made his preparations. He put an overseer in Arrius’s villa in Misenum. He politely declined suggestions that he run for political office; people had evidently forgotten that he was a Jew and could never be a Roman citizen. And one day he simply vanished from Rome. He had spent five years making the most of Roman military training. Now, for the first time since Valerius Gratus crumpled to the ground outside the Hur palace, he was free. So he took ship and headed east. His father had a business manager in Antioch, a port where the silk and spice roads from the East met the shores of the Inland Sea. This Simonides might have news of Naomi and Tirzah. It was a long way to go for a very slight hope.
PART 4
CHAPTER 14
BROKEN
Esther could tell it was going to be a good day for her father. He never complained, but he couldn’t control the gray tinge his skin took on when his injuries bothered him. He would not admit pain, of course, and once he had fully recovered from the second beating, he never allowed her to nurse him. But she knew it all. He had been unconscious when they brought him back the second time and for days had lingered near death while she and the servants and the healers did what they could to repair his broken body. It seemed to her at the time that he was making up his mind whether to live or not. Or possibly waiting to see what force might emerge that would allow him to live. Most of the time, she thought that force was anger, burning like a tiny, fierce flame somewhere at his core.
ACTORS WHO HAVE PORTRAYED ESTHER
May McAvoy—1925
Haya Harareet—1959 (the only Israeli playing a major role in the 1959 production)
Kathleen Barr—2003
Emily VanCamp—2010 (miniseries)
Nazanin Boniadi—2016
So on days when the servant wheeled him into the atrium and his dark eyes gleamed, she was glad. On a day like that he would eat a little bit more. He might let her wheel him out onto the balcony overlooking the River Orontes, to survey the ships of his fleet that lay moored below. To please her, he might even close his eyes and rest in the middle of the afternoon, during the sultry hours when nobody else in all of Antioch was doing anything more strenuous than slowly plying a fan. He might even tease her a little bit, gently.
On this day one of his ships had returned from the far side of the world with an impressive cargo of spices. When Esther pushed her father’s special wheeled chair into his office, his assistant Malluch was already there, arranging a series of small ivory boxes on the big worktable. There was much sniffing of various brown and tawny powders, along with exclamations about purity and freshness. The scents of cinnamon and turmeric began to cover the familiar odor of seaweed and mud wafting up from the riverbank below.
The business was not Esther’s primary focus. As her father and Mall
uch worked their way through a bundle of papers, she moved around the house, from rooftop to cellar. Her concern was simple: her father’s comfort and health. Housekeeping was not easy when you lived over a warehouse next to a wharf. But Simonides could sit on a balcony and watch the crates and bales and barrels travel from the hold of a just-arrived ship into the vast warehouse and watch them leave again on wagons or camels or smaller ships for ports on the Inland Sea. On an especially good day he even consented to be carried down the stairs and gently lowered into a small skiff so that Malluch might row him around the ships swinging at anchor in the river. He claimed he could learn a great deal about his captains by the state of their ships’ hulls.
So Esther battled the dust and the disorder, the noise and the smells. Her father’s satisfaction each time one of his ships arrived was her reward. They flew small canary-yellow flags at their mastheads on the return from a trading voyage to indicate success from far away. Esther could not remember the last time one of her father’s ships returned without the yellow flag. She had heard a competitor joke about this once in the market: “His camels only die of old age; his ships never sink; his slaves never cheat him.”
That was true. But he would never walk again, nor live a day without pain. Esther thought his trading triumphs were poor consolation. Yet she admired her father immensely. He had kept his secret through the first beating, though the Romans had left him bleeding and unconscious. Months later they had come back. Esther’s mother had pleaded with her husband, begging him to give up the secret. Esther did not hear the reply—she was only a teenager at the time, lurking outside her parents’ bedroom door—but she knew what it was. Her father had been entrusted with his owner’s estate. He would yield it to the heir and no one else.
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