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successor. He might be young, but the other monks looked up to him. Whenever there was hardship, Ranulf embraced it. He was first in the abbey church in the morning and last to leave at night. In his enthusiasm, not only had Ranulf made his vows as a monk but had also become a priest, able to say Mass and hear confessions. He was, Abbot Hugh often mused, almost too perfect.
    But ten years after leaving home, lying in the dormitory waiting for the duty monk to come and touch his feet to wake him for matins, Ranulf had been seized by doubts. Each day prayers were said for the protection of the holy places in Palestine, the places particularly associated with Christ’s suffering and death, and each day these prayers unsettled him more. Jerusalem, in Christian hands since its capture by the first crusaders, was by no means safe. Prayer was all very well. But surely, as a strong young man, he should be holding a sword not a candle? Christ’s enemies would not succumb through prayer alone. Whenever knights or squires rode past the monastery, Brother Ranulf could not resist speaking to them.
    Shortly after William had passed through on his way to choose Hosanna, Ranulf’s feelings grew so strong that he went to Hugh and begged to be allowed to be relieved of his vows and go to seek a position as a squire. Hugh refused. “I see a great spiritual future for you, my son,” he said. “This crusading talk is just the devil testing you.”
    Prior Peter, the abbot’s second in command, a dark man with a sharp tongue, had been less flattering. “Don’t be so arrogant and worldly,” he sniffed at Ranulf. Peter knew only too well how one monk leaving could provoke a torrent and that the abbey would suffer as a result. But it was no good. Ranulf soon became so consumed with the desire to leave and ride to the Holy Land that his attention during devotions continually wandered. Peter, who now made it his business to observe Ranulf very carefully, found fresh cause for complaint with each passing day.
    After Ranulf met Hosanna, he became even more unsettled. As the abbey bell tolled endlessly through the hot summer he shuffled ungraciously through the round of prayers, silent work, and reading, his mind increasingly filled only with thoughts of the horse:
Had Hosanna really been to the Holy Land as the boy suggested? What must it be like, to fight in Christ’s service riding the sort of horse Hosanna must once have been?
    Despite several warnings from the abbot, Ranulf took to visiting the stables just before bed. He petted Hosanna. Sometimes, standing in the straw, he even sang parts of the psalter to him. The stallion seemed to like this and pricked up his ears. Ranulf watched him doing his work in the fields or at the mill. The horse was docile, but with the docility born of pain.
    Eventually, Ranulf began to slip out of the abbey church early or not turn up at all to perform the great round ofcommunal prayer that was the primary duty of every Benedictine monk. He always had an excuse—a manuscript from the library was missing, the cresset lamps had run out of oil, he had to visit the
necessarium
unexpectedly, on account of eating rotten vegetables—and didn’t want to disturb everybody by coming in late. But his excuses always sounded lame, even to him, and eventually Peter lost his temper. He wanted Hugh to punish this deliberate flouting of authority, not just because Ranulf appeared to put talking to a horse before praising the Lord but also because the monk told such flagrant lies.
    â€œPatience, patience,” said the abbot, although privately he thought the prior had a point.
    Matters came to a head through the sins of Brother Andrew, the almoner. He was a large, greedy man, and to punish him for his excesses, Hugh had put him in charge of handing out food, drink, and medicines to the poor. Ranulf had once laughed when Andrew’s misericord (the wooden blocks against which