Royal Rhubarb

MERCHANT OF THE RUBY (447 pp.)--Alice Harwood--Bobbs-Merrlll ($3.50).

Once upon a carefree time, escapists could pick up a historical novel confident of finding a simple mixture of sword play and midnight love. Nowadays, as part of the now fashionable pedantry that corrodes everything from highbrow poetry to lowbrow science fiction, the historical novel is often as minutely researched as a Ph.D. thesis. Merchant of the Ruby, a fearsomely thorough drenching in the 15th Century Wars of the Roses, is a prime example. Readers of the Merchant need a refresher course in history, an elaborate diagram of royal genealogy, and a passionate interest in the problem of which English kings were legitimate and which were not.

The novel's hero, "tall, slim and fair . . . with tanned cheeks, a square uncompromising jaw, and an air of sufferings overcome," is Pierre Osbecque, a youth raised by a family in Flanders. Pierre's great aim in life is to win the English throne. He announces that he is really Richard, Duke of York, who was supposedly murdered by his evil uncle, Richard III. As proof of his claim, Pierre flashes a ruby ring given him by the Duchess of Burgundy--whom everybody else admits is an honest-to-gosh descendant of York.

While his Scots friends are deviling the English on the border, Pierre lands in Cornwall and tries to dethrone Tudor King Henry VII. With Pierre comes his lovely bride, Catherine Gordon, a granddaughter of James I of Scotland. But, in the crucial battle, Pierre falters when he sees that the stolid English really prefer Tudor stability to York dash.

At the end, he is a prisoner in the Tower of London, publicly confessing that he is a mere impostor and not the Duke of York at all. Shrewd Henry VII suspects a deeper, secret truth: that Pierre is really a bastard son of the Duchess of Burgundy and the Bishop of Cambrai. Thus, as the proud, yellow-haired pretender is led to the gallows and his bride languishes an unwilling attendant at Henry's court, it may be that Pierre has the Plantagenet blood in him after all. But everybody is too exhausted to care much.

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