“I throw myself on your knightly faith,” said Morcar. But he had come in an angry and unlucky hour.
“How well have you kept your own, twice a rebel, that you should appeal to mine? Take him away.”
“And hang him?” asked Ivo Taillebois.
“Pish! No,—thou old butcher. Put him in irons, and send him into Normandy.”
“Send him to Roger de Beaumont, Sire. Roger’s son is safe in Morcar’s castle at Warwick, so it is but fair that Morcar should be safe in Roger’s.”.
And to Roger de Beaumont he was sent, while young Roger was Lord of Warwick, and all around that once was Leofric and Godiva’s.
Morcar lay in a Norman keep till the day of William’s death. On his death-bed the tyrant’s heart smote him, and he sent orders to release him. For a few short days, or hours, he breathed free air again. Then Rufus shut him up once more, and forever.
And that was the end of Earl Morcar.
A few weeks after, three men came to the camp at Brandon, and they brought a head to the king. And when William looked upon it, it was the head of Edwin.
The human heart must have burst up again in the tyrant, as he looked on the fair face of him he had so loved, and so wronged; for they say he wept.