ly after they had
plighted their troth the great barons of the realm approached the
King with a proposal that he should marry, but Equitan would have none
of this, nor would he listen to even his most trusted advisers with
regard to such a subject. The nobles were angered at his curt and even
savage refusal to hearken to them, and the commons were also greatly
disturbed because of the lack of a successor. The echoes of the
disagreement reached the ears of the seneschal's wife, who was much
perturbed thereby, being aware that the King had come to this decision
for love of her.

At their next meeting she broached the subject to her royal lover,
lamenting that they had ever met.

"Now are my good days gone," she said, weeping, "for you will wed some
king's daughter as all men say, and I shall certainly die if I lose
you thus."

"Nay, that will not be," replied Equitan. "Never shall I wed except
your husband die."

The lady felt that he spoke truly, but in an evil moment she came to
attach a sinister meaning to the words Equitan had employed regarding
her husband. Day and night she brooded on them, for well she knew that
did her husband die Equitan would surely wed her. By insensible
degrees she came to regard her husband's death as a good rather than
an evil thing, and little by little Equitan, who at first looked upon
the idea with horror, became converted to her opinion. Between them
they hatched a plot for the undoing of the seneschal. It was arranged
that the King should go hunting as usual in the neighbourhood of his
faithful servant's castle. While lodging in the castle, the King and
the seneschal would be bled in the old surgical manner for their
health's sake, and three days after would bathe before leaving the
chamber they occupied, and the heartless wife suggested that she
should make her husband's bath so fiercely hot that he would not
survive after entering it. One would think that the seneschal would
easily have been able to escape such a simple trap, but we must
remember that the baths of Norman times were not shaped like our own,
but were exceedingly deep, and indeed some of them were in form almost
like those immense upright jars such as the forty thieves were
concealed in in the story of Ali Baba, so that in many cases it was
not easy for the bather to tell whether the water into which he was
stepping was hot or otherwise.

The plot was carried out as the lady had directed, but not without
much mis