Back to the Druids

THE DARK ISLAND (312 pp.)--Henry Treece--Random House ($3).

As if to muffle the din of the Thermo-Nuclear Age, some British authors in the last 16 months have pulled the blanket of history over their heads and burrowed in the warm, dark bed of the past. H.F.M. Prescott's The Man on a Donkey was a skillfully done period piece about England under Henry VIII. In The Golden Hand, Edith Simon told a leisurely tale about an English cathedral town and the faith that sustained it (14th century). In The Little Emperors, Alfred Duggan made diverting entertainment out of the fall of the Roman Empire in Britain (sth century). Now, in an almost equally engaging yarn, Henry Treece reaches back to the time (ist century) when the Romans had just conquered Britain--an era when proper Britons worshipped the sun and painted blue marks on their foreheads to show their rank.

Author Treece's is the story of how Rome clamped the vise of imperial rule on the unruly western tribesmen, as seen through the eyes of the losing side. Caradoc, proud and restive young King of the Belgae, dreams of uniting all the tribes of Britain and driving the Roman occupation forces, left by Caesar, into the sea. But the Picts, the Cantii, the Iceni, jealous of their individual little sovereignties, do not want to be united. Caradoc decides to go it alone with his Belgae. The Emperor Claudius himself limps ashore, and in two decisive battles, the short Roman swords cut the Belgae down to serf-size. Fleeing west and hiding out for years, Caradoc is finally betrayed by rival tribesmen, and ends his days under a kind of villa arrest in Rome.

Author Treece's story, which gallops along at the pace of a western movie, is full of soothsayers, blood oaths and hoary legends. Its best scenes catch the rude vigor of the times, e.g., the annual ceremony of a human sacrifice to the sun god, in which a red-haired youth chosen by the druids has his heart pierced with a mistletoe stake; Claudius' surprise weapon, a cavalry of elephants and camels, stampeding the horses of the Celtic charioteers into snorting, neighing chaos.

The Dark Island poses an interesting question for Author Treece's writing colleagues: Are there any earlier British sagas that remain to be told, short of the Piltdown man?

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