The Staircase of Dragon Jerico
Chapter One
“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.
“There are twenty-three steps from the main floor to the second-floor landing,” he said. “From the second floor to the third, there are nineteen more. Another seventeen steps lead from the third floor to the rooftop terrace. You will notice that all the flights are prime numbers: twenty-three, nineteen, and seventeen. The sum of the three is fifty-nine, also a prime number. That was part of the genius of the architect, old Drake Jerico Senior,” Lawrence said.
“Can you turn into a dragon now?” Timmy asked excitedly, refusing to be derailed from his assertion that the dragon was more than carved wood.
“Boy, what makes you think the dragon is anything more than an old walnut tree a man carved almost two hundred years ago? There is no such thing as a real dragon. Just this old carved tree!”
Lawrence was ready for the tour to be over and the little brats to get out of his house. Allowing the educational tours had been part of having the house declared a national historic site, but he didn’t think the agreement required him personally to be confronted by children who had more questions than he had answers. Besides, he had a meeting soon and needed to get out to the new site to monitor the surveyors with his grandson, Preston.
“My nan said Old Man Jerico is more dragon than man,” Timmy sulked.
“Your nan?” Lawrence would need to find out more about the kid’s family so he could decide what he’d done to offend the old woman. But he was done for now. “Matilda will take you on the remainder of the tour,” he said shortly. “Don’t touch anything!”
While Drake Jerico was in town being the newly elected mayor, Isolde continued to spend much of her time watching and talking to Joseph Carver, and becoming quite infatuated with the woodworker. He was more than a craftsman. He was as much an artist as her husband-to-be was. They simply worked in different media.
She appreciated the skill and artistry of Drake. He had sent her many drawings during their courtship, while she still lived back East. She had chosen this one to realize as the great stairs. Joseph was also working on a monument sign that would welcome people to the city at the waterfront. It was another of Drake’s designs and Isolde was convinced the town would one day be known as the City of Dragons. After all, it was the meaning of Drake’s name.
“How do you make this creature so lifelike?” she asked Carver.
“The secret is in hiding the action of the knife,” he said as he worked on a fine detail near the eyes. He stood on the ladder to reach the bit. “No part of the dragon can give away its true nature as a walnut tree. The grain, the colors—the carving must all become the dragon.”
“What do you mean by hiding the knife?” Isolde asked. She found Joseph’s words to be almost as mesmerizing as his actions in carving.
“Well, Miss, if you touch the eyes, here, I believe you will be able to tell,” Joseph said.
“What? Am I supposed to lean over the unfinished railing and feel for the eyes, while all the time being perched at my peril?” she teased.
Joseph Carver was a simple man when it came down to it. He embodied the very essence of innocence and artistic awareness that was required by the delicate work he was doing. Isolde could not help but think of him in the same breath as the dragon, the two being so closely linked to each other.
“My lady, if you would climb my ladder, you would be in less peril,” Joseph said.
“I foresee that my peril would be different, but at least equal,” Isolde sighed. “Yet it seems the only way I will ever see the image closely. Is the ladder sturdy?”
“I will steady it to be sure you are secure,” he answered.
Joseph stepped off the ladder and held it as Isolde began her ascent. She was scarcely aware that Joseph stayed just a rung below her as she climbed. Yet when she reached out her hand to touch the dragon’s eye, she was fully encased in Joseph’s arms. Her heart beat wildly.
“If you stroke across the area I have been focused on, you will find it as smooth as the finest silk,” the craftsman said. Indeed, he was proud of the work he had done. Polishing the cut wood with sandpaper and wool cloths had left no mark of the chisel. In fact, this was the part of the job he liked most, for he could feel the living wood beneath his fingers.
Joseph guided her hand to the dragon’s eye and as she stroked the wood, he caressed her hand.
“Oh, my!” Isolde said. “It is so smooth; it almost feels soft. It is so sensuous.”
She let her fingers explore further and Joseph, emboldened, also explored further with his fingers. Both found all the features they could reach were silky beneath their fingers. Her heart beat more rapidly as she turned on the ladder and found herself face-to-face with Joseph.
“As soft and sensuous as you, fair lady,” he whispered.
She was not sure who moved to let their lips come together, but the kiss at the top of the ladder, as her hand felt across the dragon’s nose, was full and sensual and led to much more than was permissible. Isolde fell into Joseph’s arms.
Two hundred years later, Lawrence did not mention to the children—nor did he know—a child was conceived of their passion right there on the staircase of Dragon Jerico. Isolde fled from Joseph’s presence and swore herself only to her husband’s arms. Drake and Isolde were married just days after the final polish was applied to the dragon. She took her wedding vows on the very step on which she had only recently been sullied.
Lawrence watched the children disappear up the stairs after Matilda, who was gleefully filling their little heads with more impossible stories about people who had seen the dragon fly. She also pointed out the little indentations on the back of the dragon where some of the shot from Peter’s gun had struck when he killed the burglar.
Lawrence went to the study where he sat to go over the most recent progress in the purchase of land for Preston’s planned community. The concept was good. It harkened back to the family roots, two hundred years previously. Acquire a sufficient amount of land to develop an entire community—just as Drake had done with his eleven partners and Jerico City.
Of course, Royce Duval, the public face of the company, would be responsible for funding the development, but Lawrence had committed himself to the land acquisition nearly twenty years earlier. The property was sufficiently remote that his purchases of acreage surrounding the lake had gone unnoticed. All except the one holdout. He assumed the consortium owning the last parcel of land would sell it, once a premium was set on its value.
The concept itself had all been Preston’s idea. The boy was a genius when it came to envisioning a community. Boy. Lawrence’s grandson was thirty-two years old. His mind was as sharp as any Lawrence had ever encountered. It was too bad Preston was seized with such anxiety that he couldn’t face so much as a board meeting to talk to the directors. He sat as the chairman of the board and CEO at his grandfather’s insistence. But the talking was all done by the President and Chief Operating Officer, Royce Duval. Most people just assumed Preston was a figurehead and Royce was the brains of the company.
One-on-one with people he knew, Preston had learned to communicate without difficulty. There were few people, however, who managed to get close enough to him to see the real brilliance of the chairman.
“Grandfather,” Preston had said, “our ancestor made his mark by planning and designing this entire city. There are plat maps still in the files for the expansion of Jerico City, which could be pulled and executed as needed, nearly two hundred years after the initial platting. It was built around transportation—the shipping lanes and the railroad right of way. Times have changed. Now we are the center of other kinds of commerce. We have furniture manufacturing, woolen mills, a printing company, electronics, chemicals, food processing… We have all these. But we don’t have tourism! Tourism and recreation are the bywords of the future. That is what we need to build.”
Lawrence was less certain, but Preston’s enthusiasm was contagious. Then they were struck with the damn plague. It looked like it would kill all tourism forever. But Preston had rolled with the punch to see a wider expansion for the resort as a ‘working retreat’ where people could connect remotely to their offices.
Even while he was designing the Jerico City Community Center Complex at the peak of isolation, Preston continued to make plans for his resort community. His anxiety and his stammer made it difficult for some people to work with him, but his life was controlled by his vision. Preston was surely made from the same mold as his ancestor, Drake Jerico.
Lawrence packed up his notes, his briefcase, binoculars, and heavy boots. He stepped into the kitchen to grab his sandwich and join Preston, going to the site to observe the surveyors as they began to stake out the perimeter of Cloudhaven, about seventy miles upriver from Jerico City.
The children finally left to return to school with their teacher. Lawrence and Preston were already on the road, and by this time, the inexhaustible housekeeper Matilda was ready to go back to bed. She would have if not for needing to get lunch ready for Jacqueline Carver, Lawrence Jerico’s daughter and Preston Carver’s mother. Jacqueline had divorced Lyle Carver only months after Preston was born and the hapless teen boyfriend had gladly taken the share of her wealth he was entitled to in his prenup, and left town. Jacqueline considered it to have been a fair price to pay for the son she bore.
Lawrence had been the only father figure Preston had ever really known. Maybe that was why he was such a social recluse.
Jacqueline descended the dragon staircase more regally than the children had, and headed to the dinette where Matilda was setting out lunch.
“Miss Jacqueline, your meal is ready,” Matilda said, setting a simple salad and tea before her.
“Did my father and son get lunch?”
“They asked that it be packed and it is gone, so I assume they took it before they left.”
“How did the tour with the halflings go this morning?” Jacqueline asked as she sampled the baby arugula and spring greens salad.
“Oh, they are energetic young ones, they are. I don’t remember Mr. Preston being half so lively as a child.”
“It’s just been so long ago that we’ve forgotten how much livelier we were ourselves,” Jacqueline laughed. “I wish he’d get busy and marry so I could have grandchildren around.”
She enjoyed lunches with her long-time housekeeper and friend—not what one might assume of a privileged woman. When she finished her salad and tea, she cleaned up her own dishes and prepared for a meeting of the arts council in town. Jacqueline was quite active in the community and even tried to keep a hand in what happened on the JeriCorp Board.
On her way to her car, she stopped and looked at the giant dragon staircase again. On that step… the step where generations of Jericos had spoken their wedding vows… One day she would see her son stand there, if only she could find the right match for him.
The staircase was the silent witness to all that had occurred in the past two hundred years. Isolde’s infidelity before her wedding vows. The birth of Drake Junior. And the knowledge that all the generations of Jericos who came after were not related to Drake Jerico Senior at all.
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