On the day that he moved into his fine town house, Gregor was scurrying back and forth helping to unload the family’s belongings from the cart. He carried a bag of tools down into the musty cellar and flung it into a corner. As he turned on his heel to run upstairs again, he heard a sound that rooted him to the spot. Before he could focus on it, it had gone, so that his attentive ears could hear only the footsteps and laughter of his children as they ran from room to room above him.

After fetching some more items into the cellar, he brought a candle down and started investigating. Everything appeared quite in order, until he came to the bag of tools. He picked up the bag to look underneath. There was nothing but the stone flags. So he dropped the bag – and again the sound came, quickly swelling and quickly dying away. He opened the bag warily, half expecting to see some creature trapped inside. But there was nothing other than his familiar tools. He pushed the bag to one side and looked closely at the flags. From the bag he took a hammer and tapped the floor. Whenever he tapped in that corner, between the old range on one wall and the pile of coal beneath the coal-shute on the next one, he conjured up the mysterious noise. Anywhere else in the cellar, the tapping produced only a normal sound of iron on stone.

“What are you doing down there, husband?” called his wife, Marguerita. “Come up and help me find the dinner service. Cook has our dinner ready”. So he left off his researches and went to rummage through the many packing cases for the family plate and silver cutlery. Then with a flourish the cook brought in a huge omelette, a dish that didn’t require her to use the unfamiliar oven. There’ll be time enough tomorrow, she thought to herself, to get to grips with that.

After dinner Gregor told the housekeeper to take the children off to bed, and they needed no persuading as they were thrilled to be spending the first night in their new nursery. His wife went to wish them goodnight, and found them each lying rigid with excitement, eyes wide open, staring in wonder at the elaborate painted plaster patterns on the ceiling.

Downstairs she found her husband still sitting at the dining table, staring straight ahead. “My stars! Gregor,” said she. “Whatever’s wrong? Are you not happy to have become master of this fine house?”

Gregor took her hands in his. “I hope that we will all be very happy here, wife. But there is something strange in the cellar. I have no idea what it is, but it has unsettled me.”

“Good gracious! What kind of thing? Are we safe here?”

“I heard a curious noise when I tapped the cellar floor in the corner. So curious that it made my heart race.”

“When you tapped the floor? So that’s what you were doing earlier? Probably there is an old well under the floor. That’s all”.

“I don’t think that’s it. That would be a hollow sound. What I heard was like nothing on earth. Or rather, it was like all sorts of things at once.

“What sorts of things?”

“There was a bit of the boom of a cavern, a bit of the sloshing of water, a bit of crunching of grit. I thought I heard the growl of a dog, the purr of a cat, the cooing of a dove and the croak of a frog – a little of each. And a sighing of winds, a crackling of dry leaves, the hissing of summer rain”.

“That can’t be right. What’s got into you? Are you sure you didn’t knock your head going down those cellar stairs? said his wife. “I’ll tell you what – it’ll just be the creaks and groans of an unfamiliar house. Or a rat’s nest! – that’s all”.

“There’s nothing wrong with me. But there’s something wrong with that cellar. In the morning you must come down with me and hear it for yourself”.

Each taking a candlestick from the table, they went off to their bed, where the unperturbed Marguerita soon slept, but Gregor lay awake, running through the remembered sounds in his head, trying in vain to make sense of them.

In the morning, it was arranged that the manservant should take the children to the lake for an hour. As soon as they had gone, Gregor hurried the sceptical Marguerita down to the cellar to demonstrate the sound that had haunted him all night. She screwed up her nose at the acrid smell of damp. It was just a cellar like any other. She confidently looked forward to presenting him with a simple explanation. However, as soon as he tapped in the corner, she cried out with amazement.

“Saints preserve us! What is that? What is under there?” she gasped.

“Tell me exactly what you hear,” said Gregor, and he tapped again and again.

She listened intently. “The whinnying of horses – the rattling of a cartwheel. The spitting of logs on the fire. A cracked church bell. The rasp of a beach sucked by the sea.”

“Yes, yes, I can hear all those. And the clattering of a pheasant, the squeak of a finger on a pane of glass.”

“Husband, you will have to pull up those flags and look underneath,” said Marguerita.

But Gregor could not agree to that. The sound was one thing, but the possibility of releasing some terrible force was quite another.

“Well then, you must get the priest to come and listen. If it is demons, he will know how to get rid of them.”

Nor could Gregor agree to that suggestion. He doubted the priest’s abilities as an exorcist, especially as he was tipsy from morning till night. Gregor was quite sure, however, that the priest would tell all the town about the weird goings-on and they would never be able to sell the house, should they feel unable to stay in it.

“No, but what I will do,” said he, “is go and see what old Salomon knows about it.” Salomon was the previous owner of the house, an elderly widower who, being unable to look after himself any longer, had gone to live with his daughter on the other side of the town.

Salomon was sitting on a bench outside his daughter’s house, in his elegant silk dressing gown, smoking his pipe contentedly, when he saw Gregor striding towards him urgently. Had he been as young as he was feeling, now that he had unburdened himself of his big old house, he might have skipped off down the narrow alleyways to avoid the coming confrontation. But he could hardly raise himself a couple of inches from the seat before Gregor settled him back down with a firm hand on his shoulder.

“Now then, Salomon, sit for a moment. Don’t worry, I haven’t come to make trouble. I’ve bought your house, and that’s the end of it. But I do want to ask you what you know about your old cellar.”

It was no surprise to Salomon that Gregor should ask such a question. For forty years he had lived in the town house happily enough, only occasionally remembering with a start that there was an unexplained presence beneath the cellar floor. As he now explained to Gregor, he had heard the eerie sound when he first moved in to the then brand new building. Like Gregor he had not wanted to lift the flags or let the mystery be known to outsiders. So he had taken down to the cellar a large chest, a family heirloom, big enough to cover the corner. He filled it with a barrow-load of books that he bought cheaply from the bookseller, who was glad to be rid of a lot of useless stuff that his customers ignored. Over all the years since then, the heavy chest had lain on those flags and protected them from any knocks.

Then, when he’d sold the house, Salomon’s daughter came to help him prepare to move. “That’s our family crest on that trunk, isn’t it, Dad?” she said. “That will look grand standing in our hall. You must let me have it. And I’ll hand it on to your grandson one day”. Salomon realised that he could no longer move the chest and books, but he didn’t want to risk that anyone helping him should hear the noise that must surely result. So he hit on an idea. When his daughter had gone, he called his servants down to the cellar, asked them to take the books and dispose of them, and then carry the empty chest to his daughter’s house. He sat on a stool on the other side of the cellar, ostensibly to supervise the proceedings. As soon as they started work he picked up his violin and began to play a fast and furious jig.

“Lord, what’s got into the old fellow?” one muttered to the other. “He hasn’t played that thing for years and now he starts up such a deafening racket!”. They tried to discourage him by withering looks, but he persisted. “Let’s get this job done as quickly as possible and get out of here!” they whispered. And so they did, without noticing the cellar’s own special music at all.

“And you didn’t hear it either?” said Gregor. “Not as long as I played,” replied Salomon, “but as soon as they’d carried the chest out of the front door I tapped on the floor, just once, to find out whether it was still there after all the years – whatever it is. And of course, it was.”

Gregor asked Salomon to describe the sound. “What a question!” said the old man. “It sounds like all sorts of things. The cry of a gull, bees around a hive, the rumble of potatos tipped into a barrel. And a baby gurgling.”

“That’s so”, said Gregor. “Now tell me; you said the house was new when you moved in. So what was there before it? – what was it built over?”

“You won’t find the answer there,” said Salomon. “You’re thinking it might have been a graveyard, no doubt, or the scene of some terrible deed. Well, I say not. It was just a meadow of grazing cows, and no-one could recall anything happening there, ever, except for some country dancing, once in a while. But for all that we don’t know what makes the noise, there’s no need to fear it. I lived with it all that time and prospered. And if my poor wife hadn’t died I’d still be living there contentedly. You just cover up the spot, and you’ll be all right too.”

Gregor set off, determined to do as Salomon advised. When he arrived home he found his wife in the kitchen, with the cook, both of them engrossed in trying to fathom out how the stove worked. They were evidently oblivious to the distant clattering that had struck him as soon as he’d walked in the front door. “Is that the children? Are they back already?” “They might be. I did fancy I heard them come in a while ago, but I was too busy to go and see”, said Marguerita. Gregor went into the passage and saw the cellar door open. The clatter was certainly coming from there. His face strained with fear, without a word, he took Marguerita by the wrist and pulled her behind him down the cellar steps.

There they saw the children in the corner, their feet flying in a wild ecstatic dance in time to beautiful music which, though quiet, filled the fragrant air.

Gregor and Marguerita watched spellbound for what seemed like hours. Gradually the children tired, their steps slowed, and so did the music. As the drumming of their feet became infrequent, so the music disintegrated into the chaotic variety of sounds that the adults had heard before. One by one, the children staggered into their parents arms, and at last the sounds ceased.

The children had found what none of the adults had, that the flags were like the keyboard of a fabulous organ. Anxious, tentative prodding only made it wheeze and crack, but it flowered in response to a carefree and exuberant touch. The children had played it instinctively and expertly.

The parents were nevertheless concerned that the children might be bewitched, and watched over them all that night as they slept in their beds. In the morning, much to their parents’ relief, they were their usual happy selves. However, they remembered their adventure of the previous day and were eager to go into the cellar to make music again.

“Now, children! There must be moderation in everything, especially something so marvellous as you found in our new cellar. So, you may go down again for a little while each afternoon, provided that you have earned such a treat by diligent work at your studies.” Marguerita spoke wisely, because the children readily accepted this.

Janek’s architectural drawings became widely admired, Paula rapidly improved her performances on the flute, Leonora solved ever more difficult mathematical problems, and little Cassian soon mastered his alphabet and began to write charming tales.

So they were allowed their daily reward.

It was not long before Gregor and Marguerita dared to try. Once the children were in bed, they put on their dancing shoes and crept down to the cellar, shutting the door behind them. Soon they were whirling each other round to a jolly tune made by their own light feet and light hearts.

The manservant confided to the cook that he had secretly attempted to play the wonderful instrument but had only succeeded in scaring himself with the cacophony. She had to admit the same to him. This led to them wondering whether they might help each other. On an evening when the family were out at the pantomime, fortified by several glasses of spirits, arms around each other’s waist, they found that together, they too could make entrancing music.

Gregor was no longer concerned to keep the marvel a secret. Soon everyone in the town had visited the cellar, and word was spreading around the province. Whether they danced or merely watched, all comers agreed that it was the most uplifting experience.

Meanwhile, the books that Salomon’s servants had removed lay where they had been tipped, in a ruined cattle byre. Over the forty years that they had spent in the cellar, they had also been transformed by the power of the magic beneath the flags. Every book, once outmoded, or dry-as-dust, was now better than the best new books proudly displayed in the booksellers’ windows. Sooner or later someone would be curious enough to open one – even, perhaps, as they were just about to throw it onto a bonfire – and they would be dazzled by the wonderful pictures, poems, riddles, stories, puzzles, and plays that would leap from the pages. They would also see on the first page of each book the message, “Not for re-sale. If any charge is made for this book its contents will instantly disappear”. Thus the magic books made sure that their delights were not to be reserved to those who could pay, but were to be enjoyed by everybody.

As for the chest, that too had absorbed a little of the magic, that only children’s ears could enjoy. Whenever Salomon’s grandchildren and their friends lifted its heavy lid, they would hear a quiet tinkling like that of a music box. But the adults could not hear it, so they told the children to stop messing about and talking nonsense.