Chapter 1

“BE MY WIFE and I will give you anything your heart desires,” Prince Drake said on bended knee.

“Anything?” Princess Isolde asked, teasing him.

“I would bring down the moon and hang it about your neck if that was what you desired,” the prince affirmed.

“You know, I’ve always wanted a dragon!”

The princess smiled innocently. But the prince stood, drew his sword, and swore that he would call for her when he could give her a dragon. It seemed hopeless, but the prince finally had an idea; he got a large piece of paper and a pencil. On it he began to draw the perfect dragon. He summoned a woodcarver, and together they brought a great log into the castle and began carving a dragon.

When it was finished, the prince called for the princess and showed her the dragon and asked her again to be his wife.

“Yes!” she declared. “What other man would honor his wife’s most frivolous wish? I give my heart to you forever.”

The prince and princess were married on the third step of the Staircase of Dragon Jerico, and they lived happily ever after.

Thirty-two-year-old Preston Carver, Chairman of the Board and CEO of JeriCorp, closed the storybook and showed the cover to the gathered children as he stood on the third step of the great dragon staircase. The third-graders applauded, though the story was a little simple for them. Preston had written and illustrated it himself when he was about their age.

Lawrence Jerico, Preston’s grandfather, stood nearby and beamed with pride. His grandson had made it through the reading of the entire book without a stutter or tremor. Little victories in his battle against severe anxiety were always welcome.

“Did it breathe fire?” asked one of the children.

That was off script and Lawrence could see Preston freeze up. He turned to his grandfather with panic written on his face.

“Mr. J-j-j- G-Pop!” Preston spit out.

Lawrence laid a hand on his grandson’s shoulder and pointed him off toward the kitchen where Preston fled. He explained to the children that this dragon had dropped walnuts.

Preston sat at the kitchen table gasping for breath as if he’d run a marathon. Matilda, the family cook and housekeeper, gave him a glass of water that he gulped down. She rubbed his shoulders.

“I’ve always loved that story,” she said soothingly. “You read it so well. Here. I have a nice sandwich made up for you with bread I baked this morning. You’ll need your energy to go out to the lake with Mr. Lawrence.”

“Th-thank you, Tilly. I’ll be okay. I just couldn’t a-answer the question. It’s a piece of wood. How could it breathe fire?”

“They’re children. They imagine all kinds of things—just like you did. Now eat up. I’ll go rescue Mr. Lawrence before the children have him too flustered to speak.” Matilda placed a Rubik’s Cube on the table next to Preston’s plate and left while Preston focused on the calming effect of the toy.

Everyone privileged to tour Jerico House stopped to stare at the massive staircase carved in the shape of a dragon. It had been the sentinel of the Jerico family for nearly two hundred years and had been a significant part of the reason Jerico House was listed on the Register of National Historic Places, even though the family still owned it and mostly lived in it.

Part of the agreement in having it listed was permitting tours of the grand old mansion at least twice a year. That’s how Timmy Blake happened to be in the house with eyes as big as those of his third-grade classmates as Lawrence Jerico attempted to tell a bit about its history. And Timmy had questions.

“Where did the dragon come from?” Timmy asked.

“Well, it was carved from a huge old walnut tree. My great-great-grandfather was the artist who drew the picture of the dragon,” Lawrence said. “A wood carver executed the design here and was the sculptor of the city’s dragon gate in Waterfront Park.”

Lawrence kept telling himself that he loved kids and this was a way the family could give to the community, as four generations before him had done—though each in a different way. He had only one child himself and she in turn had only one, so the Jerico name was at a dead end.

“The picture of the dragon is hanging here on the wall. You can see how detailed it is. Not to minimize the great artistry that the woodcarver had, but the whole concept was my ancestor’s.”

“But did the prince go fight the dragon in the woods to bring it back here?” Timmy asked.

“No, no. That’s a fairy tale. Mr. Carver wrote it when he was your age and has signed this copy to give to your class. An interesting thing, though, is that many artists say that carving a statue like this is a process of revealing the subject inside by cutting away everything that wasn’t a dragon.”

“Is there a dragon in you, too?” Timmy seemed convinced the dragon was more than the walnut stair railing.

“People said old Drake Jerico, Senior could be a dragon at times, but I think they were just referring to his temperament. The stories say he could become very angry,” Lawrence said. “Of course, I never met him myself. He passed away before I was born.”

Lawrence was thinking he should definitely have had another cup of coffee this morning in order to keep up with these kids. He wished he had a script like Preston had.

“Did anything exciting ever happen here?” Lily Thomas, another of the children in the class asked. Lawrence wondered what third graders thought was exciting.

“There have been many weddings on this staircase, of course. The first was back in 1838 when the dragon was first completed. Drake Jerico married Isolde LeClerc right here where I’m standing. It’s been a family tradition to marry where the dragon can bless us,” Lawrence said. “Oh, and Princess Bea of Moldavia visited a number of years ago, and had her portrait painted while standing on this stair right here.”

The princess had also continued up the stairs to Lawrence’s bedroom where things progressed to the point of Lawrence’s wife departing from the house and moving to Florida, where she lived comfortably until her death some fourteen years prior. Sadly, Beatrice had stayed with Lawrence only a few months before she traveled to her country for the first time in her life, attempting to reestablish the throne there. Unsuccessfully.

“My own father was awakened in the middle of the night from where he slept in the study. He grabbed his shotgun to shoot a burglar on the stairs as the intruder ascended toward the master bedroom.”

There had always been questions about that. The seventeen-year-old Peter Jerico was quite drunk and the burglar in question was also a drunk seventeen-year-old, perhaps making his way up to the bedroom of Peter’s sister. Neither Lawrence nor the law had discovered any reason to believe it was a setup. They’d all assumed it was legitimately a home invasion and Peter was just protecting his home and sister. She never forgave him, and died a spinster some thirty years later.

“Did your great grandpa turn into a dragon on the stairs or is he still alive in the forest?” Timmy pressed, still not satisfied with the dragon.

“My goodness, boy. Drake Jerico Senior died many years ago and is interred in the city cemetery in the Jerico family mausoleum. His son, Drake Jerico Junior is there, as is Drake Junior’s son, Emmet Jerico. My father, Peter Jerico, is out there, and I expect one day I will be laid to rest there.”

“Don’t the girls get buried there, too?” Lily asked.

“Well, yes, of course. Isolde LeClerc Jerico, my aunt, my own wife, all the wives and those female children who stayed around here. They are all interred in the family mausoleum.”

Children were so different these days than when he was that age. Some days, he couldn’t remember ever being that age and other days, he was certain it was just yesterday. So much for sharp wits and eternal youth in his seventies.

The staircase had not been quite finished in 1838, when Isolde LeClerc was sent from the finishing school in Massachusetts to become Drake Jerico’s bride. Drake gave her the mansion and lots of money with which to furnish it, while he resided at the hotel in town a mile away. It would not have been proper for them to live together before the wedding, and Drake felt the hotel was better suited to a man. There was plenty of domestic help to keep Isolde company, and Drake visited twice a week to court his bride-to-be.

Isolde was utterly fascinated with the carving of the dragon—and the sculptor, Joseph Carver. As talented as Drake was with pencil and paper, he was hopeless when it came to cutting wood and making the dragon take shape. That task had fallen to Joseph, who had selected the tree trunk and hired the men to move it into place so he could begin cutting and carving and sanding and polishing. The log—an old growth walnut tree from the Jerico estate—was over twenty feet long, and bent in such a way that Joseph could fashion the sculpture along the arc of the curved staircase.

The head of the dragon was at the second-floor landing, overlooking the main foyer. The tail curved over the back, forming the newel post at the bottom of the stairs. Wings spread to support the rest of the railing. The burl grain of the wood made the dragon look as if it were a living being, just taking flight.

Joseph worked on the sculpture nearly every day for over a year. For much of the last month, before Isolde and Drake were married, she sat at the foot of the stairs enrapt, watching the mighty beast take shape.

Drake, on the other hand, properly staying in the hotel so as not to cast a shadow on the honor of his bride-to-be, was occupied as the architect and planner who turned the riverfront into a city. The other eleven men, who had each been given a land grant of some 1,200 acres to found the town, depended on Drake’s planning and design. They willingly named their fledgling settlement Jerico City.

The precise service the twelve had rendered to the government, entitling them to such extensive land grants, was still unclear, even closing in on two hundred years later. Some said the land, at the confluence of two navigable rivers, was part of Thomas Jefferson’s dream for westward expansion. It was no accident that among the founders were men skilled in iron and woodworks, steam engines, mining, river navigation, fabrication, and various industrial practices.

Within a decade of the founding of the city, barges and paddle-wheelers had made the city a regular stop for repair and maintenance. Twenty years later, the rail line broached the river with an iron bridge, carefully planned to be sure not to obstruct the river traffic.

Jerico City was a thriving metropolis before Isolde arrived. Already, the two-story frame businesses along Main Street and branching onto Water Street along the river were being expanded and rebuilt of brick to reach higher and spread wider. Nearly two thousand souls occupied the settlement.

Of course, Drake had reserved a block fronting both Main and Water Street for his own business. This included his architectural and planning firm, and the headquarters of the construction companies in which he was a partner. Drake was a very busy and prosperous man.

“Can we see it fly?” Timmy asked a perplexed Lawrence. He merely shook his head.

“Do the steps go all the way to heaven?” Lily asked.

“No. That’s a different stairway,” Lawrence chuckled, thinking of an old rock and roll song.

“How many steps are there?” asked a different child. It was a question Lawrence was actually prepared to answer.