The next day the inexorable Directress went into action with a vengeance. She had made up her mind to deal stringently with the affair and shortly after breakfast Prafekt Seckendorff was standing in front of her Headmistress literally shivering in her high heels. Her anxious face, from which the blonde braids drew back her hair, was entirely different in expression from when she had strapped little Anna Erland, and her eyes kept dropping, despite herself, to the long inky rapier of the whalebone switch on the table there. Her tunic merely accused the full flesh it gently covered. Euphemia Seckendorff knew her Directress, and was extremely frightened.
“So you know absolutely nothing about why this… shaft of bone was found in your Dorm, then?”
“Nothing, Headmistress.”
“I take your word for it, Euphemia. In fact, your Dormitory has been quite a model until now. Nevertheless,” went on the matter-of-fact tone sending chills down the girlish spine, “I shall have to have you thrashed since this lapse did occur there. I mean to get to the bottom of this matter, and a good lashing of that rump of yours will lend a little zeal to your helping me in the task. You have no idea who it might be?”
“None, Headmistress. But I guarantee to find out…”
“You will,” came the curt answer. “By tomorrow at noon you will report to me with the culprit who has been using this masturbatory device in your Dormitory, together with any other girl involved. I don't mind how you acquire the information, I simply want the sinner in question. If no one owns up, you can tell your Dormitory it'll be three dozen each with the birch plus ten nightly with a Dorm cane for a week. As for you, you will be stripped of your privileges, reduced to the ranks, publicly birched and join scum for the rest of the term. To start off with, Euphemia, I shall send for the Duty Mistress and have your bottom thoroughly flogged. Go in there, take off your things, and summon up your courage.”
The Praelictor curtseyed slowly, turned and with small steps and an utterly sick look in her face made for the far door indicated, that leading, as all too well she knew, to the Head's personal Chastisement Chamber. Her buttocks churned turgidly, as if knowing, too, the menace which they were under. A bell-pull made a distant resonance that echoed through her marrow. She suddenly, quite definitely, wanted to pee.
Five minutes later she was standing to attention, nude but for stockings and shoes, the strong ledge of her mons softly flossed above her downy thighs, and her insignificant garments folded on a nearby stool. What little courage she had left vanished as the Headmistress entered, close followed by the ironically smiling Duty Mistress of the day, elegant, black-haired Jacqueline Bellais. Euphemia Seckendorff prostrated herself, and then arose on bidding. The French teacher was by no means the strongest, but she was known as a refined punisher, skilled in the subtler nuances of the rod. It was all too obvious from her smile now that she was looking forward to the task for which she had been summoned.
“You realize,” said the Head, addressing the stock-still figure of the girl, “Prefects have to be especially strictly punished, when so. You are going to be thrashed for Negligence in your duties; have you anything to say?”
“Nothing to say, Headmistress.”
“Give her a dozen, please, Bellais.”
“By which you mean, Head,” slyly insinuated the now frankly grinning mistress, running a hand over her own saucy posterior under the silk, “thirteen, I take it?”
“Very well,” assented Frau Grumkow, taking a seat to one side and pulling on a newly lit cheroot. “Do you think you can drive home the lesson on a big girl like this with a butcher's dozen, Bellais?”
“I do,” said the mistress calculatingly, “if you would let me use the Hauter, Directress.”
There was a pause.
Then Frau Grumkow said, “Very well. It won't do her any harm to have her fat hams well thrashed.”
“Please, Headmistress,” came in the girl's worried tone.
“What is it, Seckendorff?”
“I… if I might be permitted to speak… I feel sure I could extract the information for you, without this… trouble. Our Dormitory is a true team. If you please, Headmistress.”
The good lady thought. She frowned, then said, “You have never had the Hauter, have you, Seckendorff?”
“Never,” came in immediate, and hollow, echo.
“I am glad to see it instills such respect in your soul. But it will do you a world of good to know what true pain is before you leave the Schloss. Not many girls get it. You should be proud. Make this a thoroughly significant experience for her, Bellais. You may add on two for Making Idle Excuses.”
“Thank you, Head,” said the mistress deferentially. “And with your permission I shall use Position Five.”
“By all means.”
Jacqueline Bellais approached her victim who had visibly abandoned all hope. She ran her hands over the full satiny globes behind inspectingly; spongily solid, they were unmarked, very white and curiously well downed up the crease. They would be lovely to whip. There was, for the little French mistress, only one pity-that they were not those of Maria Daunitz. She had pined to flog the newcomer all this term, and an idea had come into her head whereby perhaps she might. Fifteen with the Skinner-as the Hauter was locally known- what utter, utter bliss!
Jacqueline Bellais knew how to whip. Which was to say: she knew how to prepare the mind of a culprit until her imaginings of disaster reduced her to a jelly of emotions inside. It was important now to let this sinner see the weapon-see it, hear it, if possible even smell it, before she felt it on her person. The mistress went to one wall-noting with satisfaction that the Duty Maid of the day had left a tub of boiling brine and other impedimenta to hand-and took down the dreaded Hauter. It was a simple enough instrument.
“Afterwards you can put her on the saddle. I shall interrogate her at that time.”
“Very good, Headmistress.”
The Skinner consisted in a small polished walnut-wood handle in the shape of a T, in the bar of which-no longer than ten centimeters or so-had been inserted three leathery-looking limbs of ash, or sometimes willow. These were fresh cut by the Duty Maid of the day, full of sap, and-in added refinement-wound in wire, latticed along their great length, and this dreadfully compounded the difficulty of accepting a “Skinning,” as the girls called it, with any stoicism since the wire so abraded and grazed the skin. Jacqui Bellais saw with approval that the three greedily wavering tips had been especially well twined with the cutting wire.
“Every girl ought to have the Skinner once before she leaves,” said the Headmistress in a grumbling undertone, watching the trinity of wands shudder the air in the mistress' hand. “I declare it's even better than the Sole.”
Prafekt Seckendorff watched it with a visible gulp. She did not have to be top of her Arithmetic class to know that fifteen strokes, which she was going to get, meant exactly forty-five agonizing weals across her bottom with this evil-looking instrument-a bottom on which, if rumor and appearance were correct, she would not care to sit for a good two days. She was rescued from her trance of apprehension by an order.
“Position Five!”
She did an about-face and went to the wall for the straps. This much she knew, having secured a Senior in the celebrated position as Duty Prefect on one occasion. There were seven straps, the mystic number, and each carried sewn into it a small brass ring. Two she tightened on her ankles, with the rings outermost, two just above her knees with the rings behind her; the broad waist-belt had to be breathtakingly tight with the rather larger ring in front, while one strap went on each pulsing wrist. With a tug to her stockings she pulled back her shoulders and went to her fate. If she had to go through with it, better to do so bravely. She felt no resentment, and the aspect of that awful instrument, which made her whole being cry out, “Au weh!” in advance, was, she well knew, a proper part of her punishment.
The sturdy girl was bent over, facing a wall. Her legs were well parted and ringbolts on the floor were attached to her ankle-straps. Her wrists were drawn to a bolt about a meter high in the wall. Next, a chain was fastened to the ring on her left leg, taken through a ring in the flooring behind her and brought up to be secured to the ring on her right leg. This simple V most effectively braced back the legs, which could not now bend in the slightest at the knees. Finally, the ring at her belly was connected with its mate on the flooring beneath her, also by a chain, pulling down her waist in a deep arch; this, working against the V hauling taut her legs, had the effect of cambering up the pelvic girdle in a most powerful, indeed painful-looking manner. Nor was Mademoiselle Bellais satisfied until she had gone round and tightened the screw-links at each point until the girl might well have been on the rack. Her face red, her breathing rapid, she seemed to stick out her buttocks like a mare in heat, the slice of her sex a choice and quivering morsel beneath. And the mistress attended even to this. After the wet slide of the suppository up the cushiony velvet of her victim's entrails, soon to long to expel that peppery burn, the inexorable Bellais went for a bowl and soft brush. Parting the pussy lips she laved inside with a caustic solution, one that would also burn. As she worried the brush deep in, Seckendorff hissed audibly. Her effort to squirm off the impalement showed the watchers how little her bonds let her move.
The Head drew up her chair, the better to observe. The caustic was not absolutely necessary, but she approved, oh she undoubtedly approved. Bellais was really an educated corrector. One who did not flinch before the most severe beatings.
“Bit her,” ordered Frau Grumkow, biting on a new cigar. “I don't want to be deafened, thanks. The last time I saw a Skinning they thought we were sticking a pig in here.”
“Might I… prepare the terrain a trifle first?”
And the Duty Mistress asked it with such a charming smile the Frau Direktrice inclined her head at once.
Jacqueline Bellais cheerfully collected a hard-bristled floor brush from the side, steeped it in boiling brine, and, addressing herself to her target with concentration, began to curry the buttocks so well displayed there.
This she did at first with strong strokes upwards from above the knees, where the constrained stockings now ended. The cheeks soon flushed a vivid red, then became near beetroot, as she altered her attack and worked downward. The Directress raised her eyebrows. This scouring was even better than the sandstone, with which every bottom to be birched was rubbed by Matron Steinkopf until it was tender-after all, the sandstone was normally employed on the copper and pewter-ware that hung glowing in the kitchen. Finally, stiff-armed, the mistress hit the stretched flesh several times with the bristles, at which a rash of dark pimples leapt up. She so plied the right that Frau Grumkow, impatient, muttered, “Enough. Proceed with the whipping, please.
First the big heavy bit was placed in the girlish mouth, already gasping now; it was not put in, however, before the corners of the sensitive lips had first been coated in salve, for they were not brutal at the Schloss, and the mouth might have been cut into by the steel. Then a slender cutting golden chain was fastened to the belly ring in front, drawn through the burning purse of the pussy, up the anal divide, already rippling in response to inner protests now, was threaded through a ring in back of the belt and connected tightly to the bit at the girl's head. This was thus brought strongly back and any movement, any natural inclination, to alleviate the tension, or drop the face forward, would only serve to tighten the chain beneath. This was at the pitch of excruciation as it was. Jacqueline Bellais stepped back with the Hauter in her hand, satisfied.
She might well do so. The stately contours of the ruddied backside were well separated, so that the tender insides would feel the limbs. Moreover, the entire rump was so well secured it could scarcely squirm-at least, only enough to make it more amusing. Drawing in her breath she delivered a long, air-throbbing lash. Whhrrru-rrrupp!
It was greeted by a chinking start from the girl, and a snort of snot. Three violet bands painted themselves lividly across each side.
“One,” said Frau Grumkow calmly.
By five the girl was in an extremity of pain and the wales and grazes on the right were such that Mademoiselle Bellais would knowingly apply some pimentade to their rawness. She paused to do so, eliciting a mewling whine stifled by the bit. The broad buttock tried to clench, cringe in, its inner surfaces shivering.
The Skinner resounded again, its three twigs making a dolorous ripping thwlack occasioned by the fact that they impacted one slightly after the other. The girl's sweating face came back, her eyes glassy, almost wild, her mouth distended by the bit, her braids shaking. Mistress Bellais was pitiless, however, and meant her to go the whole distance of the frightful fifteen. She worked low, attacking in particular one lumpy area of tip-weal. The slits and grazes were increasing, oozing a dark dew. The limbs continued to thump into the flesh, to the antiphony of stifled squeaks and squeals got out through the roof of the mouth.
Nine, ten, eleven, twelve…
The right buttock was quite moist, and the tips seemed to whip into wet flesh. The jerks and squirmings squeaked the rings and screws pitifully. But the last three were given with full strength, at intervals of nearly one minute.
“A splendid flogging, Bellais,” pronounced Frau Grumkow, getting up, and smiling at the panting mistress, “I think she knows she's been beaten now, eh? Give her ten minutes to recover, and then put her on the saddle for me, will you?”
“Of course; Frau Direktrice.”
The good widow went back into her room for some brandy. Her hand was steady and her mind was clear. It was essential that they did not get slack. It was imperative to defeat Wolfenbiittel in vying for the Margrave's attentions, and the possibility of the Princess's presence. She would have to get Karl to come again on the morrow. Even if he…
The Directress broke off and strode rapidly to the brandy decanter. She still seemed to hear the whirr and whistle of those eager limbs, the leathery rapping sound they made as they wrapped round the leaden-wealed buttocks. There was a knock on the door.
Even the round little knee which Jacqueline Bellais cursorily ducked in entering seemed to be grinning, as she came forward to the Headmistress and gratefully accepted the beaker of brandy held out to her.
“You certainly made her sit up a bit,” said Frau Grumkow with genuine respect. “Those last three on the thighs were stunners. I really think a Skinning's too severe for anyone under a Senior. How is she, by the way?”
“Right as rain and looking very pretty, Head, on the saddle,” came the smiling reply, after a gulp of fiery cognac. “She seemed somewhat uncomfortable afterwards…”
“Naturally.”
“But she's a good big girl and recovered very well. She wanted to relieve herself, and I let her. Some smelling salts soon set her up. The cuts are purely superficial but I think she felt it all right. Thank you for letting me thrash her so strictly.”
“Are both,” the Frau Direktrice began ruminatively, “those nice thick things… well up her?”
“Well up her, Head.”
Frau Grumkow picked up her switch. “I hate to have to do this,” she said. “But I must make sure.”
Jacqueline Bellais fingered a fold in her skirt. It had been annoyingly speckled with blood. “If I might make so bold, Head…”
“Um?”
“It's just an idea.”
“Go on.”
“The phallus was found by Fraulein Daunitz, it appears, Headmistress. And then replaced. I do not want to spread unkind rumors about other instructors, but it would seem to me evidence not simply of dereliction of duty, but of a desire on her part to return and use the tool herself. Resi says she returned to the scene of the crime, later the same afternoon.”
The trim little Directress caught the drift at once. She nodded amicably. “You are quite right to remind me of this, Bellais. I was going to see that Daunitz was flogged in any case. I imagine you wish to be charged with the execution.”
Jacqueline Bellais modestly dropped her lids.
“'Twould be a signal honor, Frau Direktrice.”
“What would you suggest? The woman has been whipped once this term already.”
“That was by Wedell.”
“I think she felt it.”
“Would not you possibly think fit, in order to make a real example of the case, to employ the pizzle?”
“The bull's pizzle!” exclaimed the Directress.
“She's well built, and could stand it,” exhorted the French mistress. “She should feel real pain once in her life, Ma'am.”
“And how many would you suggest?” asked the senior wryly, after a pause.
And equally wryly, after an equal pause, the other replied humbly-“Fifteen.”
“Fifteen! With the pizzle that's quite a count. Given how, pray may I ask?”
“Domed,” said Jacqueline Bellais.
The two stared at each other in an amusement of total complicity for almost a minute. They sensed, they understood each other totally. Finally the Frau Direktrice said with almost a laugh, “You're a rigorous cat, Bellais, aren't you!” Pensively she flexed her endless whalebone switch, then in the softest of voices possible said, “Bend over. Touch your toes.”
Once, twice, thrice that licky whip bit into the elastic rounds presented, under their white knickers. There was a long pause, then the Directress cut again. She waited equally long and struck one final time. Where the tip had eaten in, a dark red seeped into the material.
“Hurt?” she asked.
“Intensely,” came the hissed response. “Stand up.”
The mistress did so, bright-eyed, red-faced, constraining her hands to stay by her sides. “Feel better now?”
“Yes,” whispered Jacqueline Bellais gratefully. “Thank you, Head.”
“You will get one for one like that if you don't hit Daunitz as hard this evening.”
“There will be no likelihood of that, Frau Direktrice.”
“Good. Now, let's go and get this over. I'm afraid a touch of Heidi is going to hurt this silly girl a lot.”
It did. Entering, they found Euphemia Seckendorff dramatically disposed. For the saddle was… a saddle. It was the height of a stool and the girl was secured to it with legs strapped back beneath her, her arms manacled behind and her back arched on a strut. She still wore the bit, though this was merely attached, now, to her belt-ring. Nonetheless, it constrained her to stare with intensity straight at the vaulted ceiling. Under the light from the oil lamps her bare body loomed brazenly, offering in lubricious detail her parted, heavy-mounded breasts, tipped with two bullet-like nipples.
These began to judder visibly as the Headmistress stationed herself to the right of the somewhat squatting girl. Jacqui Bellais placed herself behind the straining head, first assuring that the two dongs were firmly up cunt and anus.
“I hate to inform you, Seckendorff, that I'm obliged to give you a taste of Heidi. You know what that is, don't you? Yes. Well, I have to make quite sure, you see. You can nod your head a few centimeters, I think. Now. Are you perfectly certain you knew nothing about this disgraceful affair beforehand?”
The bit chinked as the girl frantically tried to shake her head in negative response. Then the eyes pleaded, the forehead crisped up, the whole body tried to cringe in against the iron strut arching its back-for the Duty Mistress had fondly bounced a breast, and the inky whalebone switch was on high.
“Relax yourself,” said Jacqueline Bellais soothingly, in one retracted ear, “the Frau Direktrice has never split a nipple yet.”
The whine of the switch was completed by the sifting slice of its impact. It was a sound of water struck, and the lean limb laced the twin breasts with purple. Euphemia Seckendorff whinnyed, lifting off the greasy tubes up her insides. She was cut again, and then asked, “You are quite sure you knew of no one using this… thing?”
Her head shook desperately again.
The Head went to the other side and cut, twice, from the other direction. The second drew a quick blob of blood where the tip had fallen.
“Ggggghhhh…!”
And then her flesh seemed to go into a frenzy. Muffled cries escaped her bit; the impaling and serrated staff eased up and down her rectum as she tried to move, to escape, to… anything… For the Duty Mistress had reached over and lifted each breast carefully upwards by its plummy nipple, and the fearful Frau Direktrice had stationed herself in front. The most excruciating form of “Heidi” was to be hewed by this rapier-like length of bone under the breasts, in the very tenderest…
“Aaaaa… uuuuieeee!”
All who had had two cuts like this agreed that there was no pain like it; and yet the wand did not bruise or harm, it merely stung. To the very soul.
Ten minutes later the girl was brought in, after restoratives, to see the Directress. Jacqueline Bellais stood beside her victim, who had donned her tunic and was still mournfully rubbing her backside. Frau Grumkow crossed her legs and looked at the splendid specimen of Prussian womanhood, a bearer-to-be of warriors and heroes. She saw the patch of red on the right breast and said, “You'd better get Matron to see to any abrasions, Euphemia.”
“Thank you, Frau Direktrice.”
“Well, I'm glad that's over,” went on the elder woman, in her chatty, nonchalant tone, “I'm sure you'll agree that it had to be a severe hiding for a Prefect, and Fraulein Bellais was merely doing her job.”
“Oh yes, Ma'am.”
“You took it like a trooper, Euphemia, and certainly won't lose your rank this term. I'll see to that. All the same, if I were you, I'd keep that bottom of yours-and hands by your sides when I speak to you, please-out of mischief for a while. It might hurt, to be caned after a Skinning.”
“I certainly will, Headmistress,” said the girl, entering into the bonhomie of her mentor's tone. She ached dully all over and her bottom felt thick, contused, twice its weight. All the same, she was most conscious of having come through. She had not expected anything like such an ordeal, but her body had borne it somehow, and she felt proud- she would show her marks to her colleagues with distinct pride shortly. She would go up in their estimation, she knew. She said respectfully, “I'll assemble my Dorm in the break, Head.”
“Do that, Euphemia. Before you go-is there anything you want to say?”
The girl paused. With charming bashfulness she turned to the inky-haired Duty Mistress and smiled.
“Just that… if I might be permitted, Madam…”
“Go on, what is it?”
“Id like to thank Fraulein here. I think it was the most terrific beating I've ever had, and, and I'm grateful. But above all, I'd like to congratulate her. I'm just about to leave the Schloss and I've had five years here now, so I do think I know a bit about beatings. It was an absolute beauty. My bottom feels beaten through and through, and each cut hurt more than the last. It was almost… unbearable. Thank you.” So saying she dropped to her knees and impulsively grasped the Duty Mistress' hand and kissed it, even licked that rigorous palm.
The gesture touched the two who watched the girl prostrate herself and leave with an odd mixture of feelings. They looked long at each other after she'd gone and Jacqui Bellais said quietly, “I think you'll get your culprit, Head.”
Frau Grumkow said, “The birching of her life, in Great Hall.”
Again their eyes met. This time both pairs dropped to the erect object of bone standing on the desk between them. And they laughed.
Spread-eagled on the “Dome,” a leather-covered tabouret less than a foot high under the pelvis, was not a position conducive to sensible reflection, and Maria Daunitz, being tightened in it to joint-cracking distension at ten o'clock that night, was in no mood to count the cost. All she knew was that somehow or other she had to call up courage to face a frightful fifteen, yes with the pizzle.
The Head's Chastisement Chamber was brightly lit, the rank of leather-clad mistresses along one wall impassive spectators, their faces expressionless, their hands by their sides, to attention. They had been summoned to watch correction of one of their number for Dereliction of Duty-to whit, not reporting an alien object found in a Dormitory on inspection-and they were going to watch it to the full. The broad buttocks of the new mistress were nicely parted as she was triced in this St. Peter's Cross position, with Duty Mistress Bellais browsing out her tackle at the four points carefully. Maria Daunitz was nude as a slug but for her boots-and a few withering lines across her hips from Inge's playful beating, doubtless a “training” infliction, so the watching eyes considered. Spliced to the ringbolts on the floor like this, she had her seat turned up by the so-called “dome” under her mons, more especially since a waist-belt kept her middle sections well down.
“Fifteen of the best with the pizzle across the naked buttocks,” had been the iron pronunciamiento of the inexorable Headmistress, to which was added a stringent reminder to be especially strict-“Schnell… das zoll heimgezahlt werden, Mademoiselle Bellais! Cut slowly. Give her plenty of time.”
When Maria had been “sent for” to the Head, she had gone with beating heart, imagining her friend to be correct: she was going to be in trouble for taking the punishment of Gulfrida Kraus into her own hands. Accordingly, she stood in front of the Directorial desk in apprehension. She was amazed to be confronted by an angry denunciation of her failure to bring in at once the bone phallus. In truth, she had not known it to be such, and was about to remonstrate, when discretion made her hesitate. Already she knew she had been delinquent-if only mildly so-and that excuses were out of order at Schloss Rutenberg. It was part of what she had learnt. She heard herself sentenced to a public thrashing with sinking heart-she had had no idea it was to be this severe, until she had stepped from the rank of mistresses and heard her actual count.
Now, in the total silence, Bellais' boots creaked as she bent from in front of Maria and pulled agonizingly taut the perineal strap, this supplied with small brass studs on the inside that nipped in to cunt and arse-cleft alike. It had been carefully daubed with caustic, too.
“Ooooh!”
She could not keep from a protesting gasp, or groan. The screw under the tabouret was being turned higher, her hips arched up, she felt all buttock, totally vulnerable. On a stool beside the Head's chair facing the rank of mistress coiled the pizzle, three feet or more of leathery round thong, a bull's member stretched by weights. An appropriate instrument, indeed. Maria Daunitz had heard that they got flogged with it at the cart's tail in England, whence this specimen had been brought back. It was an instrument to crush and bruise and bludgeon a mere woman's shivering sides.
“Breathe in deeply,” came a whispered word in her ear, as Bellais bent over, on her knees, to tighten the saddle strap. She knew somehow that the woman wanted to thrash her very badly, and steeled herself to show as little symptoms as possible.
A matted length of rope, as big as a good beefsteak, was thrust between Maria's teeth; she bit into it gratefully. It helped one to hold out, so it was said. The rotten hemp was moist and its acrid taste suggested nothing less than… yes, urine. But once her teeth were sunk into it, Maria found she could not void it from her mouth. Indeed, she could not unclench her jaws. She took a deep breath and shut her eyes.
“Nice and slow,” the Head was saying now. “Each stroke as hard as you possibly can, Bellais. I want this to be a lesson to all those here. Commence.”
A wet sponge trickled brine onto the quiveringly upturned cheeks and then, with a long preparatory whirr, the hard lash socked into their dripping surfaces-THWLUICK!
“Unnnngh!”
It was impossible. Maria tensened at the branding blow, held still a second, then jerked furiously in her bonds-causing a real squeak of protest through her gag as a brass stud bit her clit. Allmachtiger Gott, she thought with sudden sobbing despair, wie werde ich gehauen! It was worse than she had possibly expected.
“One,” said Frau Grumkow calmly.
But there was two… and three… and four… and five…
By which time she felt she had been boiled in oil.
There was a long pause at five and Maria realized she was gasping and whining through her gag, squirming and tossing her buttocks as much as the bonds, retightened, permitted. Ten more. She could not possibly endure ten more.
“Hit her higher up the arse, there's more flesh there, and the underside is already pretty blue,” came the expert advice from the side. “At this rate you can cover the whole bum.”
Jacqui Bellais did so. She punished pitilessly, her dream come true. Maria mashed herself on the flooring, farting and blowing in utter indignity, and the French mistress took her time, slapping the ferocious pizzle across the central purple of her main weal, one seeping a ruby dew at each indenting thwlack.
Somehow it was over. Somehow Maria Daunitz lay there, heard the ritual words from the Headmistress, felt the rank of mistress file by, each spitting on her buttocks before each left the room, and finally she was alone with her tormentress.
Jacqueline Bellais was taking off her knickers.
“Feel a little warmer now?” she asked ironically.
She undid wrist and waist straps and Maria knelt sickly up, head bowed, holding her buttocks. They were ribboned with weals as thick as findings. Never had she known such furious pain. But already the worst of it was leaving her.
“Like me to scrub some vinegar into them for you?”
Maria shook her head dully, her eyes on the discarded pizzle before her; its tip seemed ruby with her blood.
“I'm sorry if it hurt rather,” said Jacqueline Bellais, kirting up her skirt and approaching with a fat and thickly bushed cunt on display, “but I had to, you know.”
Maria nodded dumbly. She said: “It's… all right. You… it was your duty.”
“It was my pleasure,” corrected the other, straddle-legged before her. “I've been longing to flog you, Mary, since I first saw you at start of term. There's nothing unnatural about it. I'd expect the same from you.”
Her ankles still tethered wide, Maria knelt up wry-faced.
“Why does everyone seem to want to beat me, Jacqui?”
“Because you're so beatable, dear, I expect.”
“That was agony, absolute murder.”
“I'd have liked to have given you more.”
“It wasn't fair… for what I did. I never wanted to use that thing myself. Frankly, I didn't know what it was.”
“Tell that to the Head,” said the Frenchwoman with a chuckle. “Now then. You going to come back to my room with me?”
“I want to rinse out this caustic first. Honestly, it burns hellishly.”
“So will some pimentade if I decide to apply it to that flaming rump of yours, dearie.”
“Please, Jacqui, please.”
“What about the scum buss instead? Is it a deal?”
Maria looked up helplessly. “I couldn't stand anything more… please not the pimentade…” She kneaded her buttocks expressively. “Oooh, you cut me so on the right.”
“Very well then.” The sprightly mistress turned and parted her legs, hands on her knees. “Get going then.”
Maria looked at the firm trim can at the top of the tapering thighs before her; it had a few thin lines of the rod across it, too. The well-grooved cunt beneath looked curiously sensual, thick and hairy.
“I… I've never done this before, I'm afraid.”
“You can start now. Insert your tongue, and don't stop until you can taste shit.”
Miserably Maria approached her face to the wrinkled dimple. It looked clean and rosy, and was definitely perfumed. She stuck out her tongue and with a glare of concentration went about her task stoically. Jacqueline Bellais' right hand moved almost instantly.
“Christ, that's heaven! You don't know. Deeper than that or I'll ask to give you more. Christ, Mary, you don't know what you looked like being whipped. It was like cutting into… ooooah… butter and now, now, YEESSS!”
Barbara Mack “owned up” the following morning after breakfast. She did so a trifle the worse for wear since the entire “D” Dorm, highly alarmed at a communal birching, had taken wet towels in the bathroom that morning and, under the supervision of Prefect Seckendorff, whose bottom was a reverberating vision of mauve and beetroot, had flicked the Junior with their ends until she was thoroughly welted. Monika Vorst had confessed to having utilized the utensil also. The wet towels flacked slapping dark marks on the chubby white bodies, both of which danced most amusingly, to the delectation of the Dormitory. The girls owned up together.
Frau Grumkow let pretty blonde Monika go. She interrogated Barbara in company of the Duty Mistress, this day's being Fraulein Katte again. The girl was repeatedly asked where she had got it, and to whom she had lent it. She confessed completely. The thing had been given her by a “chum” in the vacation and, no, no one except her special comrade Monika Vorst had either seen or used it. She always hid it in the Dorm.
Six thumping strokes across the bottom with a Duty cane did not alter this information, either. It was apparent the girl was telling the truth, and probably all the truth. Still, the Directress wanted to make sure. She had the girl set on the bar, and returned to her salon for a smoke.
This unpleasant and undignified instrument was, in truth, a bar of iron, some four foot long, serrated on its upper surface, and ranged on struts about this height from the floor. The girl bestrode it with her hands manacled behind her back.
Yes, it was a dreaded moment when a sinner had to get up, grim-faced, one leg on the stool provided and swing the other over, and lower herself gingerly, oh so gingerly, while the mistress plucked wide the cunny petals, making sure the rank iron, with its nasty indentations, sank fully into the veinous lining of sweet flesh.
“Whew! Au… oooooh!”
The bar was a feature of Prussian seminaries of that time but the one at Schloss Rutenberg had improvements-there were two parallel bars either side, lower down, making for a most penetrating spread of the victim's legs. And to the ankles of each of these small weights were attached.
“Please… Mistress… Fraulein… I didn't lend it to anyone else… aaaah… aieee, it's cutting me in two.”
Her head went back, tears smarted to her eyes. She felt she could not move a muscle, yet the inexorable iron was eating into her vitals.
“Hou… houah… I can't stand…”
“You'll sweat in earnest in a minute,” said Fraulein Katte, watching the grimacing.
“Phouuuu…”
She was given ten. At the end of which time, indeed, perspiration was streaming down her face and front. Her chest cringed, she tried to sway, only occasioning herself more pain, all the time pleading and begging. The Duty Mistress fetched her superior.
“Please… ach! Gott… ouuueee!”
Frau Grumkow watched the contortions with switch in hand.
“You're perfectly sure there's no one else involved?”
“Yes, yes, Frau Dir-r-rektrice,” wailed the girl with chattering teeth. “No… nooo one. I ner-know I've got to be whipped… I'll take my medicine, Ma'am, only please let me off this… fiendish… houw! it hurts so horribly… there was no one, no one else at all, I swear.”
As if touched by this emphatic declamation, the Directress gave a nod.
“All the same, I just have to make sure.”
“NEIN!” screamed the girl at the top of her lungs as she saw what was happening.
For Fraulein Katte had gone to the fire, where a flat-iron was heating. She returned with it, glowing.
“Nooooh! No! Please not that. Birch me… whip me… not…”
At another nod the mistress placed the face of the hot iron on one end of the bar, that behind the writhing girl. With her free left hand she held the rail, to test its rapidly increasing heat.
And then the culprit began to twist in earnest, for the bar was growing hellishly hot. Fraulein Katte only took away her tool, in fact, when its surface was hotter than she cared to feel.
“How! Ouw! Au-oh!” The cries became quite raucous as the girl strove to lift herself off that burning bar.
Finally, let down, she squirmed on the ground at their feet.
“Silly child,” said Frau Grumkow staring down at her with genuine affection, “you brought it on your own head. But I believe you. Both you and your masturbating amie Monika can look forward to a thorough birching after prayers on Sunday. Until when you will both be confined in Solitary. You will get ten before retiring tonight, and ten on rising tomorrow. After which all corporal correction will be remitted. Until Sunday.”
The good Directress wanted the tints of the lily to which to add her crimson, come Sunday; and she had to talk to Karl. He was pressing her for three mistresses to “service” his Grenadiers. Well Wedell would be good, and why not dear Ingeborg, with her now well-whipped admirer Daunitz? She would see, she would see.