Ben-Hur Read online

  Gaspar nodded. “And then the voice—which was so sweet!—said that with two others, I would see the Redeemer.” The eyes of the three men met. “And I was to be guided by the Spirit to find you.” He spread out his hands. “I have been following a light, and here you are.”

  Balthasar sat back on his heels and gazed into the gathered fabric surrounding the tent pole, where the afternoon sun glowed through the folds. “I believed, but I did not trust. Our Lord is greater even than I knew.” He dropped his eyes and added, “I wonder . . . we have all spoken of light. Should we travel onward by night? It will be cooler for the camels.”

  “And I believe we will be well guided,” Gaspar answered.

  Melchior nodded. “The star I saw shone bright as the sun.”

  So after sunset they broke their little camp, and each man mounted his tall, white camel. The beasts seemed glad to be together, pacing faster than ever through the moonlit night. It was exhilarating, Balthasar thought. Fresh, cool air flowed over his face, and the footsteps of the other camels made him joyful. It was such a godsend not to be alone.

  Suddenly before him, no higher than a low hilltop, flared an immense flame. Behind him came the shouts of Gaspar and Melchior; then he gasped with them as the flame shuddered and burst. In its place burned an enormous star. And Gaspar said, “Truly God is with us.”

  CHAPTER 2

  THE ROAD TO BETHLEHEM

  The three wise men saw the star. The fifteen-year-old wife of Joseph of Nazareth saw humankind in a variety and quantity that astounded her. She sat on a small, dusty donkey beside the Joppa Gate of Jerusalem, and watched from beneath her veil as Jerusalem’s people went about their business. They called out, they sang, they shouted, they whispered. Men strode or limped or sidled, sometimes passing in muttering pairs. Women carried baskets and jars. Mary could make out few individual voices in the crowd, but she understood only half of them. The others spoke in languages she had never heard.

  She shot a glance at Joseph—her uncle. Now her husband. He stood beside the gate, squinting into the sun and leaning on his staff. The donkey’s leading rein hung from his hand.

  Joseph leads Mary to Bethlehem

  What were they waiting for? Mary didn’t know. Her eye was caught by a cage of birds, a vast airy structure woven from split willow, carried on the back of a tall man and full of brilliant, flashing scraps of color, birds like none she’d ever seen. She followed the cage as far as she could with her eyes. The donkey moved suddenly beneath her, and she grabbed at its bristly, black mane as a pair of tall Roman soldiers paced by, steps matching unconsciously, their scarlet cloaks billowing behind. Joseph muttered and shortened the leading rein, but there was nothing to be said. The Romans did as they pleased. Mary wondered if she should ask him why they were waiting at the gate. She wasn’t afraid of her new husband. He seemed kind. Talking seemed to pain him, though.

  The baby kicked and Mary put a hand to her belly, then forgot about the kick as her eye fell on a peddler across the road. A gap in the crowd had shown her the fruits laid out on his rough square of fabric: figs and dates and grapes and . . . The crowd closed in before she could be sure, but she thought there had been oranges. It was not yet hot, but the sun was getting stronger. Oranges! Her mouth watered. She glanced at Joseph. He was staring into the middle distance, eyes unfocused.

  Just as well. There was no money for fruit. And she was indebted to Joseph, now and forever. Who else would have taken on a young girl with child to . . . ? Mary’s mind flinched away. After all these months it was still too strange. Better to simply accept the fact: she was going to have a baby. And Joseph, to whom she had been promised as a virgin bride, would acknowledge the child as his own. A dream, he had said. In a dream he had been told he must do this.

  Maybe she had had a dream, too. Maybe that was all it was, that light and that voice and that compulsion to say yes. Yes despite the mystery, yes despite the fear. Yes despite the scandal and her parents’ utter panic. Joseph had said yes too, and though he might be dull and was very old, she loved him for that.

  So she would not ask why they were waiting, and she would not look at the fruit seller, and she would smile at Joseph when he looked her way. He had never asked her to explain. She would not ask him to explain either. Eventually she would understand.

  And soon enough it turned out that they were waiting for a caravan. It was not a long way to Bethlehem and the road ran directly there. Mary thought they might have gone by themselves. But Joseph was cautious. She already understood that. The tumult of the Joppa Gate made him uneasy, and being uneasy, he would want company on this journey in which so much was already singular. So they stood and waited, and eventually a small group of travelers came through the gate and Joseph moved to join them. These were people among whom her husband was comfortable, country people, plainly dressed and watchful, all on the same errand. Some were resigned. Some were resentful. This requirement from Rome! How dare the Romans order every man in Judea to return to his birthplace to be registered! And then the tax . . . the tax was iniquitous! Jews did not pay taxes. There might be those in Jerusalem who did not belong to the chosen people, but in the country—in villages like Nazareth, for instance—what was Judea but Jews? Which raised the question: was this an intentional slight? Was the tax merely the first gesture in a campaign against the Jews?

  There was muttering and voices were raised, but Joseph plodded on steadily, guiding the donkey down the road, which was barely more than a broken track. The donkey picked its way carefully, but even so, Mary was tossed about, lurching from side to side. From time to time Joseph glanced at her with his eyebrows raised. She always smiled back. But increasingly she found her hand going to her belly. There was something new, beyond the usual movement of the baby. Her skin seemed to tighten, like the skin of a horse flicking off a fly. Then it would pass, and she would wonder if it had actually happened.

  A souvenir basket Lew Wallace brought home from a trip to Jerusalem

  By the time they reached the khan, she knew. The group had not stopped at midday to rest—there was no shelter anyway. Better to keep moving through the rocky, uneven landscape than to roast beneath the hot white sky. Joseph silently offered Mary a handful of dates, but she refused them. The water he proffered, though, she swallowed. She twisted her hair into a long rope and held it high beneath her veil for an instant, hoping some air might caress the back of her neck. But she had to grab again for the wooden saddle horn and dared not let go after that because a cramp seized her back, and when it released, she understood that the baby was on its way.

  She looked ahead for the khan. They had slept in one the previous night on the outskirts of Bethany. It was nothing more than an enclosure around a well, but it provided what travelers needed: water and safety on the road. Now, however, the horizon just dissolved into amber-colored mist ahead. She shielded her eyes with her hand. Then she impatiently pulled the veil from her head and tried to rise in the saddle. All she could see was rock and dust and the occasional thornbush. She settled herself and rearranged her veil. It wasn’t so bad. Only her back hurt a little bit, from time to time. The sun was starting to creep down in the sky. No, it wasn’t so bad.

  Joseph was worrying as they walked. The road was busier than he had expected. More people on the road meant more people in Bethlehem, he supposed. More people in the khan. No room for him and his wife and their little donkey. His eye was caught by Mary’s movement in the corner of his eye and he turned to watch her. She had just pushed back her veil, hoping to see farther ahead, he suspected. Her hair gleamed in the sun. Like some kind of metal, he thought, watching her. She grimaced slightly and reached up to pull her veil over her head again. Her hands were still those of a child. Joseph eyed his own hand on the leading rein, callused and gritty. He had lost half of his thumbnail to a chisel weeks earlier and the place still looked raw. He gazed again at his young wife and saw her close her eyes for a moment. Her hand went to the small of her back. When she open
ed her eyes, she saw that he was watching and she smiled slightly. Bravely.

  “Not too much longer,” he told her, stepping closer to the donkey. “Are you . . . ?” He paused. “Are you uncomfortable?”

  “Yes,” she admitted. “But not very.”

  “Is it the baby?” he blurted out. She had been so stoical until this moment. He had not thought—the baby? Now? “Now?” he asked.

  Mary nodded, eyes on the donkey’s mane. “I think perhaps.”

  He peered forward, squinting along the road as she had. Then he surveyed the people around them, whom he hadn’t observed until that moment. Behind walked a middle-aged man with a staff. Next to him rode a substantial woman on a donkey larger than Mary’s. Everything about the couple was sizable and new: their clothes, the donkey’s saddle, the baskets hanging behind the woman.

  Within moments Joseph had arranged it: Mary would stay with the couple while Joseph went ahead to try to arrange a place for them to sleep. As he turned once more to check, he saw the matron leaning over to talk to his wife. He felt reassured.

  But when he finally reached the khan, his heart sank.

  Joseph of Nazareth was a modest man. He was a carpenter from a small village set in the hills near the Sea of Galilee. He built tables and benches and pens for sheep. He knew the grain of wood and the character of tools but made no claims for his knowledge of people. Yet he admired his young wife. This thing that had befallen her was puzzling. She had sworn she was chaste. He believed her. Still, there was this baby on the way, which was impossible if she was chaste. She said the baby would be the Redeemer. She appeared to believe this. An angel had told her, she said.

  He had been instructed by an angel too. That was why he had married her. But these things had been easier to accept at home, among their relatives. Joseph felt unsettled when he left Nazareth. He didn’t like the anxiety of travel. Every day he wondered where he would sleep and whether he would be able to buy food for himself and Mary. All the same, Mary had seemed serene. She accepted what came. She looked eagerly at everything new and asked questions. She was patient as well as brave.

  And he did not want to fail her, so he slipped through the crowd that had gathered at the gate of the khan. It was a good one, he could tell. The walls were solid and high. They extended some distance. Normally there would be plenty of room. But the census must have drawn hundreds of families. The closer he got to the gate, the harder Joseph found it to move. There were many donkeys, some mules, even some camels embedded in the crowd.

  “They’ll never let a camel in there!” he heard a woman exclaim as he sidled past.

  “I hear they aren’t letting anyone in, with or without camels” came the answer, but he didn’t see the speaker. People crowded more densely, but there was no forward progress at all. Joseph stepped into some fresh dung and slipped. He grasped at a burly man’s arm so as not to fall, and the man whirled on him fiercely, but Joseph had already moved away with a determination that surprised him.

  Finally he reached the gate. A semicircle of dusty gravel lay before it, outlined by a length of rope laid on the ground. A small man with a fringe of beard sat on a massive cedarwood block, staring at the crowd. A dog sat next to him and scratched its ear. A spear lay nearby, its head bright.

  With a last wriggle Joseph worked his way into the cleared space and crossed it to the man sitting on the block. He would be the steward, the administrator of the khan. He would be in charge.

  He looked at Joseph and said, “There’s no room.”

  Joseph nodded and looked down at his dusty feet. “The peace of Yahweh be with you,” he said.

  “What you give, may you find again,” answered the steward. “And when found, may it be multiplied to you and yours.” Ritual greeting over, he repeated, “There’s no room.”

  Joseph nodded again. He would not be diverted from what he had to say. “I am from Bethlehem,” he stated. The dog left off its scratching and sat up, watching him.

  “Like all of the people waiting here,” the steward replied. He had not moved, but his gaze was bright.

  “I am a descendant of David. This is the house of my fathers,” Joseph went on. He was not boasting. Probably there was not a stone or a brick or a piece of wood in the khan that had been there since the reign of David a thousand years earlier. But a dwelling had been on that spot, and the descendants of David had lived there.

  The steward looked at him. “Rabbi,” he said, “we do not turn people away from here. Least of all those of David’s line. But there is no place left to stretch out a pallet. All of these people have come on your errand. They are all here to be registered in Bethlehem. And yesterday the caravan from Damascus to Egypt arrived. With dozens of camels.”

  “We could sleep in the open court,” Joseph suggested. “We are not grand people; we do not insist on a roof and four walls.”

  “The court is full of the caravan goods. You might like to sleep on the bales of silk, but the camel drivers would not permit it.” The steward slid off his block of cedar and said, “Come with me, then. I will show you that there is not a place to lay your head.”

  “It isn’t for me,” Joseph told him, standing still. “I could lie out on the hillside. There are so many of us gathered here, we could set a watch. I’m sure we would be safe. But my wife . . .” He struggled for a moment. “She is the daughter of Joachim and Anna of Bethlehem. Did you know them?”

  “I did,” the steward said. “They were good people. That doesn’t change the problem.”

  “My wife is with child,” Joseph said with a rush. “I think it might be soon.” He looked up and met the steward’s eyes for the first time. “She cannot give birth out on the hills.”

  “No,” the steward agreed. “You could have said that first, you know. I can’t turn you away now. Go and get her. I will find something.”

  So Joseph plunged into the crowd again, unconscious of the muttering as he shouldered his way back to Mary. He feared it would be even harder to return with her and the donkey toward the entrance. The crowd had become thicker. But most of those waiting gave way when they saw the young girl seated on the little beast. She was so young and so obviously pregnant. Her veil had slid down to uncover her hair, and she was too preoccupied to replace it. Joseph noticed that she was gripping the wooden saddle frame with her little girl’s hands. Shadows lay dark beneath her eyes. Resentment and complaint died on people’s lips when they saw her.

  The steward was waiting at the gate. The dog, which had ignored Joseph, looked up at Mary and wagged its tail. The steward tried to get it to stay behind and guard the gate, but it trotted behind as the steward set off through the stone-paved passageway into the vast court. The steward looked back, but the crowd at the gate had not moved, staying behind the rope on the ground.

  The sun was dropping now, and shadows gathered in the corners and between the bundles on the ground. Scattered fires had been lit, sending resin-filled smoke into the air. A wooden flute sounded several plaintive notes of a melody that cut through the hum and rustle of voices. A donkey brayed, and someone laughed nearby.

  “It will have to be the cave,” the steward told Joseph in a low voice.

  “We are grateful,” Joseph answered. “It will be better than the court, considering . . .”

  “Yes,” the steward answered, sounding doubtful as he led them past a camel spitting at its owner. “I suppose so. We go this way.”

  Long ago the khan had taken shape as an enclosure propped against a tall limestone cliff. It was an ideal situation for herdsmen, since a reliable spring provided water and the cliff gave shelter from predators. In the thousand years since David’s sheep rested there, the wall had grown higher, the spring was dug into a well, and the caves in the limestone had been masked with facades like the front of a dwelling. They had doors but no windows. The steward pulled open the largest of these and gestured inside with an air of apology. “It will be dark soon. Do you have a lantern?”

  Joseph sh
ook his head as he looked around. The pale stone made the most of the light from the door. It was large and dry. True, there were some cobwebs in corners. But the floor had been swept not long before. The donkey was already straining toward a pile of hay against one of the cave walls.

  “I’ll send someone with a lantern,” the steward said as Joseph lifted Mary off the saddle. “And water,” he added. “There’s plenty of fuel there, kindling and some wood.” He pointed. He took a step toward the door, watching Mary as she clung unsteadily to Joseph. “I’ll leave the dog, too,” he added and slipped out the door. Then he poked his head back around it. “I think there’s probably some grain left in the manger as well,” he said. “The donkey is welcome to it.”

  CHAPTER 3

  GLORY

  There were still herdsmen in the hills around Bethlehem. They had never been inside the khan and had as little to do with the city as possible. But they knew every track on the hillside. They knew where the scarce rainfall lingered in hollows. They knew when their sheep had grazed and cropped every bit of sustenance from the terrain, and then they hitched their slingshots onto their shoulders, took up their crooks, and set their sandals for new pasturage.

  The afternoon that Mary and Joseph arrived at the khan near Bethlehem, a group of shepherds clambered to a level field tucked between folds in the hills. Icy water trickled in a stream, and the sheep clattered over its rocky bed to drink.

  The shepherds didn’t talk much. One swept the ashes out of the blackened fire circle. Another crackled through the brush, breaking off dead branches to serve as fuel. A third mounted the rise behind the meadow to watch over the approach to the hollow. By sunset the shaggy men and their shaggy beasts were fed and watered, dogs huddled together just outside the circle of firelight. The watchman wrapped his woolen cloak tight and perched on a boulder to stand guard until the moon began to wane.