So, there once was a king of Hampton, whose wife was princess of Scotland.
She had a son named Bevis of Hampton.
The king was old, and she was young. So she soon developed a taste for her former love, the German emperor. She tells him to ambush the king and murder him. The king is set upon during a hunting trip, and though his retinue of fifteen is slaughtered, he manages to kill hundreds before he is finally subdued. O, if only he were at his full strength.
Now, before the body is cold, the two marry and have lots of sex. Bevis, all of seven years old, is now disinherited. So he goes up to his mom and calls her a filthy whore. She is scandalized, and orders her retainer Saber to kill him. Saber forbears, smears some pig’s blood on him, and calls it a day. She soon sees through this ruse, and Saber must hide the boy away, promising him a pastoral upbringing. But Bevis’s big mouth ruins it again, as he goes to visit the emperor and berate him. When he returns to Saber, Saber sends Bevis off into exile, pretending to have sold him. He ends up in the hands of the king of Armenia, Ermin, and his daughter Josian.
So Bevis gets raised and trained to fight with spear, sword, shield, and horse, as any good (Armenian?) knight does. Ermin asks Bevis to convert, which he refuses. The king respects this, but some knights don’t. Bevis slays these Saracens and nearly earns the contempt of the king, but gets off the hook. Eventually he ends up receiving Arondel, a true horse, which will only obey him.
Soon after, Bevis goes to kill a boar. There’s more violent bloodbathing in that fight. Shortly, a corrupt steward challenges the weary Bevis with lots of men, but ends up being overcome. Rather than exposing the treachery directly to the king, he presents the boar’s head first, because one discusses honor before treachery.
Anyway, soon after that there’s a challenge to Josian’s purity issued by Brademond, an assaulting king. Bevis sets him straight in war. Josian gets a liking for Bevis, but he refuses until she agrees to convert to Christianity. (It’s cool because she’s fair, and so is he.) Anyway, a chamberlain that Bevis forgave ended up betraying him by lying about Josian and Bevis hooking up to the King. Ermin sends Bevis to Brademond with a letter saying that Bevis should be condemned to death, though he doesn’t know it. Following a Judas-bear-hug, Bevis is imprisoned for seven years at the bottom of a pit, where he gets a meager amount of food (half a loaf once every two days, or something like that). Josian meanwhile gets traded off in marriage, and must preserve her chastity from King Yvor. The guy’s fairly inept; Arondel makes an ass of him when the king tries riding him. So the horse ends up in chains. Lo, the dark point of the romance.
Bevis finally escapes by luring a guard down, overcoming him with a club which he previously used to keep the evil adders and other symbols for evil away, and then calling down to the other guard and putting a knot in the rope to disrupt his descent. Then Bevis equips himself as a guard and slips out of the place after a three day fast and some help from Jesus. He has trouble getting away, but ends up praying so that he can ride his inferior steed across the water. Bevis then overcomes a Saracen giant and orders the lady of the castle to feed him, which she does. Then he swings by Jerusalem and visits the patriarch there. The patriarch urges Bevis to only marry a pure maiden – she can’t have had sex before. “Ooookay,” Bevis replies. Then he disguises himself as a pilgrim seeking alms. Josian comes out to give the alms, knows him without knowing him, and invites him in. Bevis’s disguise is discovered when they go to see the horse, and the horse responds by being calm and docile.
They hatch a plan of escape, but Bevis’s rather lame plan gets overturned by Boniface, Josian’s servant, who comes up with a plan to fake a message to a distant castle, so that King Yvor must leave to take care of it. He does, but not before leaving another king, Garcy, to watch over them. Garcy knows “nygromancy,” that is, black magic. On the other hand, Josian knows how to drug him up. He wakes up a day later from his trip, realizes they’re gone by looking into his ring, and pursues. They can’t find the escapees, so Garcy sends Ascopard the ambiguously evil giant to go take care of it. Meanwhile, while Bevis goes out to hunt for food, lions attack. Boniface is killed, and Josian is under dire threat when Bevis returns. Bevis gets batted about, but manages to take one of the three lions. Josian tries to wrestle a second one so that Bevis can slay it, but he refuses, because this would be a way for Josian to tease him once they were married. Ever the man, he takes one on. Josian again offers to hold the other, but Bevis insists that she not. Then she throws him his shield instead and calls it a day.
So then Bevis fights Ascopard, wins, and makes him his squire. They’re all baptized, including Ascopard, for whom a special font is required. Then they go off and come across a dragon that is assaulting Cologne, where Saber is now bishop. They go to attack the dragon, but Ascopard is too scared to. Bevis nearly dies here, but through pain and overuse of the virgin-bathing healing well, he manages to triumph over even the dragon’s poison. From there, they concoct a plan to take over his inheritance. Eventually, they decide to send a messenger to the emperor claiming that Bevis is some other knight that wants to fight for him against Bevis. This happens; they sail across the ocean and kill many of the Emperor’s knights by deception, and Bevis sends a second messenger to tell of the deceit. The Emperor in a rage tries to fling a dagger at the messenger, but due to the copious amounts of sex his aim is off and he hits his son instead.
While all this has been going on, Josian was left at home. She gets an offer to marry from Miles. Ascopard, who should have guarded her, was tricked into going out and was trapped in chains. So Josian marries Miles, but on the wedding night pleads modesty so that everyone will leave her alone in bed with Miles (oh, they would’ve watched). When alone, she hangs Miles from the bedrails. For this act, the townspeople decide to burn her in a barrel, but Ascopard escapes and Bevis gets there first.
After that, the climactic battle with the king of Scotland and the Emperor occurs, and both fall, the former to the giant and the latter to Bevis. Bevis begs his inheritance of the king, who grants it. Josian and Bevis marry (finally). There’s a race, where Bevis wins against cheaters who start two (out of seven) miles ahead. But the good fortune isn’t to last. A king’s son covets Arondel and tries to steal him, but the horse kicks his brains out literally. King Edgar orders Bevis to die, though the barons dissuade him from it. Bevis says, “Screw this,” and absconds with his wife, horse, and Saber’s son Terri.
Josian goes into labor in the woods, but refuses to have men about. They stray too far, and Ascopard comes across them. Ascopard has been paid off by King Yvor because he had too many money problems. His retinue take Josian and whip her with naked swords. The two children are left behind when Bevis and Terri return. They immediately realize what Ascopard has done, with no apparent evidence. The two sons are given to foster parents, Guy (after his grandfather) to a forester and Miles (after his mother’s near lover?) to a fisherman. Bevis can’t find Josian, and so settles in this kingdom where a tournament is held. Terri was intended to win the hand of the princess, but Bevis does better. He promises to marry her if Josian doesn’t show up in seven years, and if Josian does show up, the princess can marry Terri instead.
So Josian knows medicine from great teachers in Armenia. She uses her talents to make herself appear like a leper. The king sees her and sends her away. Eventually she’s rescued by Saber, whose men cut up the giant. Josian becomes a traveling minstrel to earn her way, a skill she also knew from great teachers in Armenia. Eventually she does get to Bevis – in seven years, in fact. So they’re back together, and they go and take back Armenia. Thus taken, they convert it to Christianity, kill King Yvor when he refuses to convert to Christianity, redeem the disinherited son of Saber, Robaunt, who was ruling Hampton, and then go on a farewell journey setting each son in his rightful place: Miles gets England by marrying King Edgar’s daughter, Saber gets Hampton, Terri got his Aumberthe, Guy got Armenia, and the couple return to Mombraunt, where King Yvor ruled.
The two rule in peace for a long time, twenty years, but finally Josian is about to die. Bevis goes to see his horse, which is dead in the stable. He comes back to find Josian dead, and he dies in Josian’s arms.
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