Books: Spice & Spectacle

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THE KING'S CAVALIER (377 pp.)—Sam-uel Shellabarger—Little, Brown ($3)..

"At your service," said Blaise ... the scar on his nose showing whiter than usual. "Certainly you aren't conceited enough to expect the honor of being chastised by my lord in person. He has better things to do. But he'll not deny me that pleasure. I'll satisfy you on horse or afoot with any weapon you please. Or make it now . . ."

Young Blaise de Lallière ("There's promise in him . . . Like France") never cold-shoulders a villain's challenge, never flinches in his dedicated task: foiling a 16th Century Bourbon plot against the Valois crown. He rides up & down the countryside, carrying messages and giving chase to enemy agents, almost loses his life when he falls for a comely English wench over from London to spy on King Francis (her eyes "expressed a contradiction of emotion: gaiety and daring, with an undercurrent of sadness"). But when the rebel trap is sprung, Blaise bares his steel and redeems himself, shoulder to shoulder with the king.

From Dumas to Shellabarger, no significant change has occurred in the plots and protagonists of cloak-&-dagger fiction. Few of the customers who bought a million copies of both Author Shellabarger's Captain from Castile (1945) and Prince of Foxes (1947) would have it any different. Even so, scholarly ex-Princeton Professor Shellabarger gives them a little more than their money's worth. For all its gaudily costumed corn, The King's Cavalier is built on a solid base of research which pays off in such things as a manor house painstakingly reconstructed right down to the canopied fireplaces and the perfume pastilles. Readers who find the dialogue less convincing will nevertheless have to admit that it can sometimes be mighty engaging:

"I suppose you would have me coquette with the King. Well, I've done that before."

"To be sure," he nodded, "and superbly ... Of course it might be necessary to sacrifice your more intimate charms . . ."

"I thought we were betrothed."

"Bon Dieu!" he stared. "Are we not people of the world? Are we concerned with pettifogging prejudices? I marvel that you strain at such a gnat."