“What I am at a total loss to understand, Fraulein Daunitz,” said the figure standing behind her desk, almost exactly one hour after this scene, “is why you allowed this to happen both so early in the term, and in front of a Prefect. You know our rules by now.”
“Yes, Frau Direktrice.”
She did. As a new mistress, Maria Daunitz had arrived at Schloss Rutenberg three weeks before first classes. She had been thoroughly drilled in the regulations by the permanently resident Matron, a grim woman called Steinkopf, and for five days prior to school opening assigned to one of the younger mistresses, Ingeborg Untermacher. She knew the regimen by heart, had been familiarized with all the tricks of the trade, such as soaping the skin or sitting on stone, on the part of the girls, to try to lessen corporeal sting, as well as devices on the part of their superiors, like leaving off one's key ring in order to move more quietly and catch out offenders.
For such, it seemed, was their relentless and unremitting task at Schloss Rutenberg. No girl was ever to feel free of the suddenly descending Damoclean sword of “tight” chastisement. The mere passage of a mistress, with her thinly dangling switch, ought to, and did, inspire a frisson to ripple the skin of even the Seniors. Nothing was “let off,” nothing allowed to get lax. Finally, each evening for five days Inge had taken her charge to the gymnasium where, under the expert eye of Frau Dick, gym mistress and champion high-diver, Maria had practiced her aim with cane, switch, strap and martinet on a leather-simulated buttock for the purpose. Those had been among the merrier moments of her preparation, while Frau Dick would call an encouraging “Good shot!” or advise more follow-through, and transfer of weight, and grinning Inge would “ouch” and rub her bum. For if in the new Army the officers were more feared than the enemy, at Schloss Rutenberg the motto was that the mistresses should be feared more than fear itself. And the Headmistress, Elizabetha Grumkow, had her name spelt in the souls of several past sinners t-e-r-r-o-r. She had never been known to forgive a single offense. That was why Maria had shivered in her steeple heels when the maid had knocked at her door-“Frau Direktrice would like to see you, Miss.” It was an invitation that boded no good. Nor, she found out soon enough, did it do so in fact.
Elizabetha Grumkow was not tall. She inclined, especially in comparison with her usually towering mistresses, to look rather short and stocky. One did not inquire the age of the Frau Direktrice but it might have been forty, a very fit forty indeed. She had actually a friendly, open face, blue-eyed and square-jawed, with a laughing slant to her lids under a close crop of sandy hair. This one seldom saw since she affected, certainly in duty hours as now, the uniform of an Army officer, involving a white pigtailed perruque. She wore high boots, gallooned at the thighs, and extremely tight-fitting fawn trousers. These fitted her, in fact, without a crease behind and since she wore the flaps of her three-quarter coat pinned back, as was fashionable, the prominent, stubborn jut of her chubby cheeks was aggressively visible, as it bounced about. She stood now behind her desk, on which were decorously littered a glove the world (Hohenzollern territories turned towards her), books, compass, divider and the like. Between her fingers she toyed with a long switch of black whalebone.
Maria Daunitz knew she was for it on entering. She had dropped to her knees (a girl would have prostrated herself), been bidden to rise, and stood now like a sentry, staring straight ahead, as the Frau Direktrice paced about, “lecturing” her. Some spying eye had seen, and reported, her encounter with Monika in the corridor; by rights she should have sent the girl back to Duty Room for more. Part of her punishment was to control herself in front of her colleagues while the worst of pain still raged beneath. It must have been some maid who had seen, or even the Matron, though it was said that the Frau Direktrice's eyes were everywhere. You were seldom unobserved in Schloss Rutenberg. All the same, as it was her first “offense,” Maria hoped she would be let off with a warning. She badly needed this employment, her parents having perished two years before in an accident at sea. But her hopes of a pardon began rapidly to wane, and fall with her heart to the well-carpeted floor. The Frau Direktrice was shaking her head almost sadly.
“You know that to have any favorites is one of the worst of crimes in a mistress?”
“Yes, Madam.”
“Excessive Leniency is punished extremely strictly.”
“Yes.”
The Headmistress thought. “Even though it is your first time before me, I don't see how I can possibly let you off. You are aware that it is a principle of our whole regime to demand especially high codes of conduct from those in privileged positions. All our mistresses are whipped when in error, and of course more severely than their pupils.”
“Of course, Frau Direktrice.”
“Were you whipped at home?”
“A little.”
“How? What with?”
“My father's belt, as a rule, Ma'am.”
“Across the buttocks?”
“Yes.”
“Hm.” The Headmistress mused. She took an elegant time-piece out of a fob-pocket, consulted it, and sighed. “Well, I shall have to have you flogged. You understand that, don't you, Daunitz? Obviously I can't let this go by unpunished. I'm only sorry it's happened so early in term, but perhaps that is all for the best, and will clear the air between us a little. The girl will have to be thrashed again, too, and the Praelictor concerned.”
“Er, with your pardon, Madam,” Maria ventured a little dully, “it was scarcely the latter's fault. The girl's perhaps, but I do not think Gundling's. She was indeed trying to hasten the youngster on.”
There was an ominous silence. It was broken by a cold tone-“Fraulein Daunitz, I am not certain you quite understand Schloss Rutenberg. All in all, it will probably do you a lot of good to meet with a whipping yourself this early. Nothing goes unpunished! Do you understand?” The little Empress of a woman stamped out the words, imperiously, and Maria Daunitz paled.
“Yes, Madam.”
“Our girls are being molded into mothers of a superior race, a new breed of man, able to withstand all shocks and stresses to the system. You must not relax your attention a minute-not if you are to stay here, Fraulein, rather than be sent to the vaults of Spandau for a spell. No, we are hardening this womanhood in its own interest. All our girls are grateful to us later. Why, I had one writhing in here this morning just for looking impertinent. A fingernail too long, an unpolished shoe-heel, anything, anything, I tell you. Your job is to keep after them all the time. No, you will be flogged, but first you will cane the girl in front of me here- without mercy, do you understand-eight more cuts and work across her previous weals, and then we shall decide what to do with the Prefect. Apart from yourselves, they always,” finished the Frau Direktrice rather gloomily, “get it the worst of all.”
“Yes, Ma'am.”
The Headmistress rang a bell, and took a seat behind her table desk. Maria remained standing. After a while there came a timid tap on the door and Monika Vorst appeared. She prostrated herself full length, burying her nose in the carpet, and was duly told to rise.
“Fraulein Daunitz has something to say to you, I think,” was the dry comment of the Directress.
Turning to the new mistress Monika's eyes softened in greeting. They had passed in passages and courtyards and a genuine rapport had sprung up already. But this gaze fell when she saw the hostility the other had conjured into her own hazel orbs.
“I have just been telling the Head here about your disgraceful little exhibition in the corridor, Vorst. I suppose you thought I was going to say nothing about it. The only reason I did nothing about it at the time was that I knew the Head would appreciate the demonstration of courage you would give, when ordered a duplicate copy of those lines you just received.”
The crestfallen look of the little Backfisch achieved a comicality. Fingers plucked at her tunic, notably behind. Her eyes swelled moistly.
“I'm going to give you eight with the cane for Dawdling, and let's see you show our beloved Directress how well you can take it, Monika.”
“E-eight. Please. Mistress.”
“Strip.”
The girl looked forlornly from one to the other. The Frau Direktrice watched in silence, with amused eyes. The girl's fingers worked weakly, unconsciously at the command. Soon she was as she had been an hour before, in the dreadful Duty Room. Only now the cheeks were richly wealed, with purplish, swollen lines, blotchy black on the right where the tip had fallen. A few more cuts would bruise the whole buttock area, Maria knew, but she steeled herself to be impersonal in her task.
It was the only way to effect it properly. She had still a long way to go, however, in the eradication of pity from her mind.
She took the cane she had been allotted by the Head and whisked it through the air a few times. Then she pointed.
“Stand here with your feet together and lean forward. Stretch your arms up over your head, and let the Frau Direktrice see your face while I whip you.”
The pose was assumed on pitiful feet. It had not been prearranged and Maria chose it on purpose. She thought the Headmistress would like it, and have much of her attention taken by that really picturesque pageant of expressions that pain pulled over even the most stoic of countenances. Chiefly, however, Maria would be able to spare the poor girl a trifle in this way, but cutting into virgin skin. Heavens! When she turned to address her victim, whose outstretched arms pulled up her pathetically quivering bottom-globes, she had to blink. To hit into that lumpened blue bruise at the very bottom would be hell. After sixteen strokes with a stiff yet supple stick like this anyone's bottom might justifiably feel it had had enough.
“Further forward still.”
Maria thrashed the girl well. Each stroke juddered the buttocks, which cringed in as she slowly straightened. Her neck muscles stood out, her jaw was locked like a terrier's. It was the first caning Maria had administered and she only wished it had been deserved. There was an undoubted, scientific satisfaction about any work well done, and each flinching squirm told her she was cutting true. But she let the cane whip in above the other stripes.
“Hou! Au… wen!”
Seven. One more. A really good one. There! “Au weh, mein Gott!” whined the girl with shaking knees.
Maria let her stand there for a moment. She wondered whether she or the Head ought to give the Erlaub'. The girl's blonde pudding-bowl crop had fallen forward, curtaining her screwed-up face slightly, and she stretched erect, trampling with her feet, like a bow. Finally, she herself said, “All right.” A quick thrill went up her spine as she saw the tensened hands grab back, the lithe body arching in a hectic pant. She rubbed and panted until Maria said crossly, “Get on your things, and let that be a lesson to you.”
When Monika Vorst had dressed, curtseyed, prostrated herself, and left, the Headmistress continued to sit in taut silence.
“Is there anything else you require, Frau Direktrice?” Maria asked uncertainly.
“No, I don't think so, thank you. I shall now have you flogged.” She paused, then went on, “You accomplished that task quite well, Daunitz. Make sure that girl reports to Matron in case there are any cuts or grazes, for the pimentade, and return to your room. I'll send for you in due course. In the meantime just let your mind dwell on your impending punishment, it helps to drive it home.”
“Thank you, Frau Direktrice. Did you wish me to send you the Praelictor first?”
The woman shook her head gravely. “No. I'll let you see how we deal with Prefects yourself. Wedell should be finished with her Duty Room shortly and then she'll flog you both.”
“Thank you very much.”
“You know, I suspect, that a Prae is never thrashed in front of other girls-that is, unless she is being reduced to their ranks in the bargain. Similarly, for the sake of discipline, a girl never sees a mistress under the rod, of course. No, that would be unthinkable. Excessive Leniency is not a common crime here. Normally, I might send out for an Orderly Flugleman from the barracks to administer the infliction on your person, but in this case I think Wedell will suffice. You realize, of course, that the choice of her is entirely coincidental, and that she will, as Duty Mistress for the day, merely be carrying out her duties to the letter by doing what I say. It might just as well be the other way around. In any case, totally impartial. And as severe as possible. You will not bear any grudge.”
“Of course not, Head. Only gratitude.”
The blue eyes held hers for a moment. “I'm glad. Frankly you showed considerable promise as a corrector just now. I hope you can receive chastisement as well. It will be across the bare buttocks, bent.”
“Thank you, Frau Direktrice.”
“You will not require any clothing beneath the skirt.”
“Yes, Madam.”
“Oh, and Daunitz.”
“Ma'am?
“You won't get up to any tricks, will you? Trying to numb your senses and so forth. I don't advise it. Just bring your buttocks as they are, and they'll be beaten. I pride myself our mistresses are flogged as tight as any in the State and I demand complete submission under the rod. Usually I would have you dealt with in the presence of the rest of the staff, but for the first time it will suffice to give it you in private, as a warning. One thing.”
“Frau Direktrice?”
“Do you wish to be secured?”
“If it might be permitted, please.”
“Very well. Now go, and don't let this happen again. A maid will fetch you for flogging shortly.”