It was a good thrashing and, though low, well spaced-out so that the whole of her bottom stung, hard. Wedell always had a lot of weight in her cuts. If only she'd get these last ones over with quickly. Monika knew just what she looked like from behind-a pair of welted buttocks which, try as she might, could not keep from squeezing and squirming and rolling, the slotted oval of her sex shamelessly on display beneath. She jammed her knees into the woodwork and found that her fingers were scratching at the same in front.
“That one made her jump a bit.”
There was low laughter.
“Anyone would think she wanted it… up her.”
“One of our Emperor's lange Kerle!” Ph-ph-phrrrrrpp!
Monika lost and found her tongue-“Haiee!”
That had hurt very considerably indeed. Oh God, how that beastly cane could sting. She shot out a leg. Christ! Could she hold it for another! She had to… for Brandenburg, for… Prussia. She knew the Praelictor outside would be counting the cuts, which would come to her as thin flicks of air and she wondered if a finger would be under her skirt working up a hungry tongue of gristle in her slit.
Phhhhrrwpppp! Over!
But this was the worst. The pain was at its very worst about thirty seconds afterwards, and lasted so for a full minute; she had to show her control by waiting for Erlaubnis, the ritual word of permission to get up, and then she had not to rub herself after. She tried to freeze herself to the horse, tried to still the seething writhing of her ribbed cheeks in her rear.
“All right.” she heard.
She stood up a trifle unsteadily, clamping hands to her sides to stop them wandering, out of control, made weakly for her knickers, which she shiveringly pulled up. Having frantically tugged down her skirt she approached the Duty Mistress, dropped to one knee, said, “Thank you for punishing my fault, Fraulein,” and kissed the tip of the cane. To her dry lips it seemed somewhat warm. Then she was blundering out.
The Praelictor waiting outside, just under the well-known Duty List, frankly grinned when she saw Monika's writhen lips, and miserably fisted hands at her flanks. Although she was not supposed to speak, she said, “Good caning? I hoped you were going to get ten.”
She started striding back. Monika stumbled into step behind, but was now able to grab her beaten buttocks and knead them beneath her tunic. The Praelictor walked fast, knowing (as knew mewing Monika) that the pain was still mounting nicely in the pair of whipped bottoms and that self-control on re-entering the classroom was going to provide a salutory task of will-power. It was for that one went to places like Schloss Rutenberg, after all.
“Hey, keep in step,” she more than once turned back angrily to declaim.
A good caning? Monika knew it had been. Excellent. Eight sweeping strokes right under her chubbiest parted person, a seething cauldron of purplish weals that made her suddenly pant and stop, squirming, her forehead pressed to the ice-cold wall.
“Please, Gundling. Just a second. Honestly. We-dell cuts so tight.”
“Come on. Or I'll have to report you for Dawdling.”
The Prae was pulling at her tunic when, from an intersection ahead, a mistress appeared. She was young and pretty, with rather mousy hair, and under normal circumstances they would have detected her approach by the jingling of keys at her belt. This mistress as yet wore none. She was new this term and her name was Maria Daunitz, from near Gentin. By chance she had got to know Monika Vorst and came forward, smiling shyly, at the already much embarrassed girls. Stopping in corridors was a caning offense. In some schools you had to run in all passageways.
“Poor Monika. Have you just been caned?”
“Yes, Fraulein,” came the answer, after both girls had curtseyed.
“Let me see.”
The mistress parted skirt and panties and inspected. The weals were thick and hard and hot. Another caning across them could be agonizing, if well applied. Which, at Schloss Rutenberg, it invariably was.
“Hurt a lot?”
“Yes. I was j-just…”
“Well, you'd better be on your way, hadn't you? I know the Head doesn't approve of Dawdling in corridors. Any more than I do.”
She tapped the slabby butt and watched it joggle out of sight, round another turn of the corridor, as Monika followed the martial Prefect. As the latter finally opened the schoolroom door for her charge to enter she, too, smiled. The girl was doing well. It might be interesting to find out one day, one night, if she… and just which dormitory was Vorst in?
“Thanks, Gundling.”
“Just as well it was that new mistress. Or, she'd have had both our hides.”
Red of face and wet of eye, but hands beside her, Monika went up to the Monitress and requested permission to return to Prep. It was granted and, when she resumed her desk, stood at it, as was required of any girl who had just suffered correction. In the total silence of the softly ticking room, every aspect of it proclaimed one thing and one only: I have been caned… I have been well caned across the naked buttocks and it stung like such sheer hell I wished I didn't have any. Eight slow juicy strokes, driving in just above the sulcus until I wanted to scream and squirm but I couldn't. I couldn't, because of my country's honor. At Magdeburg a soldier had just had his ears and nose cut off. Probably been decapitated or shot thereafter, she wasn't sure. What was a trifle of stripes on the seat in comparison? All the same the tip did eat in like fury. She could feel it still.
Across the aisle Barbara Mack saw sidelong the little fatty quivers that shot through that jut of rump. Her eyes were moist and gleaming.
Yes, it was still hurting a very great deal-as each single breast, beating beneath those thin green tunics knew. Monika herself bore no resentment. Such a notion never even got near to her mind. She was happy she had again “come through,” without disgrace, and that was simply that. It had been a routine beating, and thus another ordeal and challenge to rise to. Like an athletic activity, in many ways. She had broken a rule, and reaped the consequences. She admired Wedell for making it so painful, so “tight,” and knew she had got everything out of her eight strokes she could. Once or twice she had been a trifle wild, she had “overhit” perhaps at the end, but by and large it had been a methodical, calculated caning of the type that made you feel corrected through and through. Monika's burning bottom now felt thrice its size, heavy as lead, but she knew corporal punishment achieved its goal. If she made that same mistake again, she'd be more likely to get a dozen. And anyway the worst of the smart was now subsiding nicely, melding into a pervasive heat, and sense of satisfaction at her center. Relaxed and torpid, she stared at Caesar's rank prosaic prose and knew she would have to borrow Barbara's bone thing from her again tonight.