The Prussian Girls (15 page)

“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.

“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.