Solomon said he didn’t mind, so they loaded the chest of new plates into an open wagon and drove it through the streets of London, which were deserted save for the circulation of Vault-wagons to and from the brink of Fleet Ditch. Through Ludgate in the shadow of St. Paul’s they entered into the city, and Daniel told the story of riding past Old St. Paul’s, before the Fire, at the height of the Plague, when the City had been as empty and quiet as it was tonight, and the doomed church surrounded by a rampart of half-buried corpses. Presently they came out of the churchyard onto Cheapside and trundled east to the threshold of the money-district where the way forked into several streets: Threadneedle, Cornhill, and Lombard. They chose Threadneedle, and went up but a short distance to the fabrique of the Bank of England.