The Prussian Girls Page 12

  “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.

  Chapter Eight

  “Do you think the Head'll order four? I do hope it's four.”

  Ingeborg Untermacher lay back in the low leather chair in her private chambers and touched her auburn hair. She gave a surreptitious glance across at her friend, Maria Daunitz, equally casually seated opposite her. The morning Sunday service was over, conducted in chapel mostly out of the front of the Bible, the Head having read a stirring “lesson” all about Moses and Zipporah, and now all were awaiting convocation, by Matron's bell, in Great Hall for the birching. Marshalled by their Prefects, the girls had already assembled, including, in their class places, the two culprits, brought up from Solitary.

  “I had a look at some of those birches, up in Matron's room,” said Maria Daunitz in an attempt at a casual tone. “That pickle's made them tough as hell. The buds at the tip are like stone. Not to mention how the twigs have swollen. I'd have thought fifty quite a task for anyone under a Senior.”

  “Stuff and nonsense,” came back Ingeborg at once. “Admittedly that Monika's only a fifteen-year-old, but Barbara's well able to bear it. She's sixteen, rising seventeen, I think. Have you beaten her this half?”

  “Haven't had that pleasure,” answered Maria laconically.

  “Well, I have. I gave her eight with a classroom, and it was bliss. Although it doesn't look it in the tunic, her bottom's surprisingly full and sloping. Pear-shaped, you know, with a good fatty under-slung overhang. Full of nerve. Heavens, the birch is perfect for a pair like that. It isn't brutal, or bruising, really, it just keeps the sting going like fury, until, until…” Her voice tailed off, she felt absently for her switch.

  Both mistresses were bandbox in their black leather, which had been shone to perfection for the ceremony.

  “You can hardly wait for it, can you?” said Maria, looking steadily at her friend. “Frankly, no. Can you?”

  “I don't know.”

  “Oh come on, confess it, Mary. You're intrigued, and why shouldn't you be? It's a just punishment. You're excited, say it. You're probably just as squidgy inside as I am, and you'll probably come watching it, too. Do you still have your marks, by the way?”

  “Yes.”

  “Still hurt?”

  “I feel them, yes.”

  “May I see them again?”

  “Jacqui really slogged into you, didn't she? It must have hurt like absolute murder.”

  “I thought so,” said Maria Daunitz. “Yet it was justice.”

  The younger mistress sat up. “Yet it wasn't, Inge. I never knew that bit of bone was a gode at all.”

  Incredulous, Ingeborg stared at her friend- “You… never knew? You're serious, Mary? Do you mean it? Why then…”

  But a clanging bell interrupted them. Both leapt to their feet and filed in orderly fashion along the corridor outside. Their high heels made aggressive click-clock on the flagged flooring.

  At an intersection three other mistresses, equally impeccable in black with their switches swinging, fell into step with them-Christina Holz, the gym mistress Frau Dick, and Fraulein Marit, a lively brunette from near Gentin who was fanning her face with a brand new Strafzettel. She rubbed her behind expressively, saying, “I'm afraid this is going to hurt someone else rather more than me.” All five mistresses looked bright-eyed to the point of girlish mischievousness.

  “Have you heard the rumor?” said Christina Holz, as they strode along.

  “What?”

  “That the Privy Councillor, Count von Rantzau, has decided that it'll be either us or Wolfenbuttel for the Princess Elizabeth, and that the decision may well be made as the result of a sort of duel between our two academies.”

  “A duel… how?”

  “What is it, Kit? Explain.”

  “I don't know, but they do say, the Directress may have requested it-well, a sort of representative contest in discipline!”

  “Hm,” said one.

  “Mistresses, too?”

  “Why not?”

  “Good old mistresses.”

  “I've also heard,” said the chillier voice of Frau Dick, “that three of us are going to be sent to Count von Schmettau's Grenadiers some time next week.”

  “Nine inches of sturdy gristle, I feel it in my guts right now,” said Wilhelmina Marit with a wink.

  “Who?” asked Maria Daunitz quickly.

  “I believe you're one… and Ingeborg…” But they had rounded the last bend and had to descend the big staircase in stately, awe-inspiring silence, five robust school mistresses each eagerly anticipating her share in the infliction of righteous castigation to come.

  “Whee-whee!” whispered Ingeborg Untermacher in her friend's pink ear, imitating the whistle of the twigs.

  The rows of girls in their respective classes who lined each side of Great Hall dropped like mown grass in curtseys, as the mistresses filed in and took their places on the dais confronting them. The space between the two ranks of Prussian maidens was eloquent of only one thing-corporeal fustigation of a severe sort. The black stone block had been installed centrally, and beside it, on a bench, several long birches lay steeping in flat glass trays of vinegar or brine, with other instruments beside. At the foot of the dais, on a level with the girls, stood in regulation costume the Duty Mistress of the day, tall Luzie Rombau, the Duty Prefect, whose name was Borcke, daughter of a Graf, and the Duty Maid. The Prefects stood like officers in front of their ranks, only they did so facing inwards-for it was their duty to see no girl took her eyes off the correction to ensue, little likelihood though there was of that. Almost at once Frau Grumkow came in, breeched, booted, and in three-quarter flared coat, looking immensely elegant and well bewigged, her monocle winking. The assembly sank to its knees, only rising on her word of command to do so. The stern Directress proceeded with the ceremony immediately, the mistresses seating themselves in a line.

  “Barbara Mack?”

  “Present, Ma'am.”

  In the silence a girl marched out from the side and stood on the far side of the block, facing the dais.

  “Monika Vorst”-another did so, by her friend's side.

  “You two stand accused of the disgusting offense of unnatural practices, namely self-abuse. How do you plead?”

  The two girls looked at each other-as if to say, who's to answer first? — then Barbara Mack called out clearly, “Guilty, Ma'am.”

  She was a well-grown girl, with brown to tawny hair, and her mien suggested that she had resolved to face the worst with courage. Ingeborg Untermacher's description of her nether regions was, however, exact; the scant tunic seemed to hang loosely from waist until it espoused the very full center of the bottom, which clearly announced a prominent overhang. Monika Vorst the reader has met already and she stood less bravely, her cute blonde crop falling forward over tearful eyes, her liquid limbs shivering.

  “Ger-guilty, Madam,” she said.

  “Look up, girl, when you answer.”

  Neither offender knew how many strokes she was to get; both had had plenty of time in Solitary to reflect on the count. Now the moment of sentencing was upon them, it was Monika who seemed to feel the occasion most obviously.

  “We punish onanism severely at Schloss Rutenberg,” continued the Directress. “Have you anything to say why you should not be so punished?”

  “No, Ma'am.”

  “Ner-nothing to say, if you please. Madam.”

  “Very w
ell. Let this be a lesson to the whole school, in case anyone else present is so inclined. You will be stripped and publicly whipped on the naked buttocks with the birch-rod. You Monika Vorst, as the lesser offender, and mere accomplice, will be let off lightly. You will receive three dozen cuts, slowly laid on, and at full strength, with the birch, followed by seven Master's strokes. Furthermore, you will be reduced to the rank of scum for the rest of this term and, starting next week, you will report to Matron on rising and retiring for six strokes of the cane-for a period of five days, Monday through Friday.”

  Monika Vorst's head fell. She visibly blanched. Next week, too! Allmachtiger Gott! An assured sixty cuts, outside any other correction she might acquire. She began to sob. How could she ever get through it?

  “You, Mack, as the importer of the heinous object and instigator and corrupter, will be more severely dealt with. You will be scourged with the birch to the extent of sixty strokes-five clear dozen across your naked arse, to be followed by ten Master's cuts. You too will be reduced to scum for the remainder of the term, and you will do two weeks, of five days each, of a double six with the cane, on rising and retiring, from Matron.”

  A gentle susurration, a sort of hushed gasp, ran through the assembly at this frightful sentence.

  “Do you wish to appeal?” snapped the Directress.

  This time Monika Vorst replied first, in nearly a wail, “Ner-ner-no!”

  Suddenly, in a collected tone, adult for her years, Barbara Mack spoke out. “If I might throw myself on the leniency…”

  “You wish to appeal?”

  The words stood in the shocked silence a second.

  “Against the rigor of the sentence, Ma'am, yes, if I might presume. It is more than required, for I did not commit the offense so very often. And am wholly remorseful for it now. I beg you to remit the second week of caning. I would willingly exchange it for another dozen of the birch, now, to be got over with at once.”

  This sensible and mature address seemed to faze the Frau Directress a moment. Then she turned and consulted with her colleagues. There was a buzz on the platform, finally a rank of right thumbs turned down. Frau Grumkow came forward again, one foot slightly in front of and at an angle to the other.