Play, Gypsies!

TKE WHITE WITCH (439 pp.)--Elizabefh Goudge--Coward-McCann ($4.95). "0 boro Duvel atch' pa leste!" cried Froniga to Yoben--meaning, in Romany, "The great Lord be on you!" Then Froniga "came into his arms with the simplicity of a child." But, as usual, Yoben held his fire. "I am a man to whom the love of woman is forbidden," this stern gypsy tinker had told Froniga, and try as she would to penetrate his enigma with darts from "her long-tailed dark eyes," Yoben was mute and cold as old pewter.

The setting of this latest, bestseller-bound historical novel by Elizabeth Goudge (rhymes with Scrooge) is 17th century England. King Charles I has put John Hampden in prison for refusing a Forced Loan, thus setting many a British taxpayer ablaze with indignation. Now, battle is joined--King v. Parliament. And though Froniga is a gypsy on her mother's side, she is also a Parliamentarian on various other sides, while Yoben is a Royalist. Enter, inevitably, Oliver Cromwell, whom Novelist Goudge feels she knows intimately, including his conversation. "My lord, we must act at once!" cries "Old Noll" Cromwell to his C. in C., the Earl of Essex. "Let us do nothing hastily, Colonel Cromwell," answers the slower-moving peer, then adds: "Decisive victory now would prevent incalculable suffering." Probably, muses one character, they are saying the same thing in the enemy camp--and sure enough King Charles had told his aide, Lord Leyland: "Francis, if I can win an overwhelming victory . . . my people will be spared the misery of a long war."

In Goudge novels few are ever spared. For hundred of pages, battles sway to and fro indecisively--allowing ample space in between for dispatch riding, witch hunting, potion brewing, gypsy camping, idol smashing and other 17th century pastimes. Acting as spy for Charles, Lord Leyland falls in love with Froniga's (Parliamentary) niece, then falls victim to a gypsy beauty (mother of three cute little bastards named Dinki, Meriful and Cinderella) who hexes him with thorns stuck in his wax image. At death's point Francis is rescued by Yoben, who proves to be a disguised Roman Catholic priest and is hanged at Henley (near Author Goudge's home) in full view of poor Froniga. At last the Restoration comes. "The winter was over and ahead lay the months of color and delight."

None of Author Goudge's work seems labored; she writes with the spontaneity of a child. Goudge fans think that in her earlier novels--Green Dolphin Street, Pilgrim's Inn--she has already excelled herself, but The White Witch suggests that she has still not reached her peak.

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