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the revolution. But on the small Caribbean island, it had been slaves who rose up to declare their freedom, crying, “Death or liberty!” A bloodbath, the merchants called it.
    At night, Gabriel and Solomon talked about the world and their work. They lay side by side beneath the window in the small room off the forge where they shared a bed. They had long ago stopped arguing over whether to leave their window shut at night, and with the sash wide open, they heard the usual Friday-night joking and singing from the street. Even the washerwomen were out there, crowded onto a single stoop beneath the flickering light of a street lantern, hooting and hollering this evening instead of quarreling. He heard the laundress Nanny out there with them.
    Solomon lay on his back, looking at the ceiling. “When I hammer,” he told his brother, “I think ’bout each strike; that’s all. I watch the fire and, for once, don’t worry ’bout you findin’ trouble or Ma takin’ ill. When I hammer, I even forget they took Pa.”
    Gabriel fidgeted in the bed; he wanted to be out dancing with the people by the river. He thought how the spray from the broad, rocky falls of the James would keep him cool. He figured a mug of grog, or maybe two, would loosen his fear of Nanny. Maybe tonight he would start a conversation with her, talk about something more than making fire or drawing water. He often noticed how the skinny, long-legged laundress watched him while she pretended not to. Just the other day, she fell right into Shockoe Creek when Gabriel and Solomon walked past. The older women around her had laughed at the girl when it happened. Now Gabriel could hear all of them out there in the street, and he longed to hear Nanny’s laughter. He dared not hope to hear her say, “Wish Gabriel would come on and join us tonight.”
    Solomon interrupted Gabriel’s yearning. “What is the forge like for you, Brother?” Solomon asked.
    With enough heat, I can turn iron into whatever I please, Gabriel thought. “Fire changes everything,” he said. The moon bathed his brother’s face, and Gabriel saw Solomon’s confusion. He went on. “Hammering helps my mind make sense. If I face a problem, I go to the anvil. I hear and see so much in the city. When I bend over the anvil with my hammer, our people, our worries, and our river all melt together, and all my questions come out like a plan. Do you understand?”
    He kicked off the bedsheet. The sounds of the girls and the banjo and the drunkards of August poured through the window and quenched his skin. The sounds of the James tumbling over the bedrock eased his spirit.
    The James sets its own course.
    He wanted Solomon to understand how his heart was growing and changing from working in the forge, from living in the city. “The tavernkeep next door — the one who sneaks us grog out back — told me a constable arrested the free woman Mrs. Barnett for harboring runaways,” he said.
    Solomon yawned and scratched his crotch. “That’s news to you? Even the free aren’t free, Little Brother.” Solomon stretched out his legs and took up even more of Gabriel’s space in the bed. “Everyone knows Angela Barnett will hang at the gallows. She killed the constable who broke into her house!”
    Gabriel sat up. “No, what I’m telling you is, she will live! The laundresses whisper how Mrs. Barnett turned up with child at the jail. I overheard that Nanny tell how all the Richmond ladies have taken up that free woman’s cause.”
    “Your hammer’s got good ears, but why bother thinkin’ ’bout that? The well-born ladies would never take up for Gabriel or Solomon. The sight of us, just the whiff of our business, offends the well-born ladies. The stench of you is likely what made your laundress, Nanny, end up falling in the creek.”
    Gabriel started to push Solomon out of the bed, but suddenly he caught among the sounds outside his window the determined voice of his laundress, sticking up for