Taming the Lion Read Online Free PDF

never be able to get it back.
    He turned back to his textbook, a first edition of the Reverend Neville Farthing’s A Complete History of the English Pagans . Written in the 1850s, the book had largely been discredited as a credible work, since it claimed that most of the country’s ancient stone monuments had been built by pagan worshippers in the years shortly before the birth of Christ. Modern archaeologists had dated Stonehenge, Avebury and the other sites Farthing discussed to the Neolithic period, a good two thousand years earlier. But Farthing’s theories still fascinated Jon. There were so many ideas, some plausible, some downright crackpot, as to the purpose of the standing stones. The good reverend claimed they had been used for human sacrifice and though he had no evidence to back up that assertion, his accounts of the rituals the pagans had performed were deliciously lurid.
    The main reason Jon had taken a position at the university was because of its proximity to the numerous stone circles that had been erected across Somerset and Wiltshire. Ever since he’d first seen a picture of Stonehenge in an encyclopedia he’d been given for his tenth birthday, he’d been fixated on the thought of who might have built it—and why. The more he’d read about the site, the more fascinated he’d become. Some people believed the stones were a kind of calendar, designed to mark the passing of the seasons. Others held that they had healing powers and had been a place of pilgrimage for the sick in Neolithic times.
    Driven by his need to know more, Jon had studied archaeology and anthropology at Cambridge, graduating with a first-class degree. By his own admission, he’d been a bit of a loner, preferring to spend time in the library rather than on the rugby field or in the junior common room bar. He’d begun to realize he was gay around the time he’d taken his GCSEs. Though he was completely comfortable with his sexuality, all his relationships had been short-lived and usually ended badly. It was his own fault, really. He always fell for bad boys, thinking he had the ability to change them when he knew in his heart it would never happen. And still he clung to the idea that the right man was out there and he just hadn’t found him yet. After the crappy way Simon had treated him, he’d begun to believe he never would.
    Since he’d moved to Bath, Jon had become increasingly interested in the standing stones close to the village of Stanton Combe, a dozen or so miles outside the city center. The circle of six weathered slabs, one of which had toppled to land on its side in the years since the monument’s construction, was known locally as the Foolish Brothers. Like all the other similar sites, it was steeped in myth. One account Jon had read described how King Arthur had been laid to rest beneath the fallen stone, and now lay sleeping, waiting to be roused when his country most needed him.
    However, the most intriguing stories talked of a race of strange creatures—part man, part lion—that had lived in the woods of the south-west. The pagans had begun to worship these beasts, and the Foolish Brothers had been at the heart of their religious ceremonies, an altar where sacrifices would be made to the lion god, Leweilun. Jon didn’t believe a word of it. Big cats had never been native to the British Isles. The romantic in him, however, couldn’t help but be attracted to the thought of being able to change his shape into that of such a strong, magnificent animal. And even though the pagans had seen their influence diminish with the rise of Christianity, the lion still lived on as a symbol of Bath. The city’s coat of arms bore its image in honor of Edgar, who had been crowned the first king of all England there, more than a thousand years ago now. And lions adorned hundreds of local buildings, in the form of sculptures, frescoes and gilded doorknockers. Maybe there was more to these old stories than he could bring