Then the problem got even worse.
One summer, there had been some men working on the road outside her convent school. There were three of them, all dark haired and swarthy. She saw them from a distance as she approached one warm morning. She was wearing her new white panties and a light cotton dress. Even before she got close to them she felt an excited fear prickling across her skin as she sensed their rough masculinity. Their torsos were naked in the warm sunny morning and they leant lazily on shiny steel shovels with hard-skinned hands. They flexed their glistening muscles and looked up eagerly as she approached; then they leered at her and instantly she felt a sting of shame and fear run through her ripening young body.
Their hole was right across the gates to her school. It was deep and contained a heavy iron railing against one of its sides; it looked like the entrance to a subterranean cavern. The three men stood around its rim, pushing each other and laughing as she approached nervously. There was no way around them; she hung her head, drew her brown leather school bag up onto her shoulder and scurried towards them, hoping to get past as quickly as possible. As she drew alongside them she could smell their sweat; it was sweet and sticky and hung heavily in the air like steam rising from overrun horses.
The one nearest her said something, she did not know what, or could not understand. Then, as the others chimed in, she gripped tightly to the leather strap of her satchel and ran past them shaking with fear. When she got inside the school gates she looked back at them and they laughed and jeered at her. They leant back on their shovel handles and as they stretched their bodies backwards she could see how their stomach muscles ribbed up hard and shiny with the tension of their laughter. She turned and ran inside, shaking and gasping for breath.
The next day it was the same, but this time she did not hang her head so low. As she came up alongside them the first one shouted something. Again she could not really make it out, only the word 'panties'. It frightened her as it had done the day before, but this time she also felt something that thrilled her. When she got inside the gates she turned and looked back at them and this time she noticed the way the material of their trousers mounded up at their crotches.
For the next few days, though she dreaded running the gauntlet of the workmen, she also found herself looking forward to it. One night she woke up sweating with her fingers probing high between her thighs and she lay awake for quite a while before she moved her hands outside the bedclothes. The next morning she felt so guilty she cried as she wrote down what had happened in the little notebook.
Every day they were causing her to be sinful and providing her with everything she needed. On the Thursday morning of that week, as she excitedly pulled up her satchel and ran towards the hole in the road, her heart sank when the men were not there. She stood at the rim of the gaping excavation and looked down into it.
There were two girls from the school down in the bottom of the hole with the men!
It was muddy around their feet and the girls' white ankle socks were spattered with dirt. Both of them were crying. They were being bent over in front of the three men with their bottoms up. One of them had her panties pulled down to just above her knees and Maria could plainly see the rosy darkness pressing out from between her young buttocks. One of the men was pulling down the panties of the other girl but they were tight across her bottom and were hard to get off. He had to pull at them roughly and the white, sewn edges cut into the girl's slender bottom.
The girl who was having her panties removed looked up in tearful appeal. Maria recognised her, she was in the fifth form. As the girl turned, the man swung back to her and ripped her panties down violently. She gasped as he pressed one of his hands on her back to force her to bend over even more, then spanked her hard across her rounded bottom. She let out a bleating cry. Maria saw the expression of pain on the girl's face before she was finally forced to turn away by the pressure of the man's hand on her back. There was another smack and an even louder scream and Maria turned and ran.
Her heart felt as though it was going to explode. She felt violated and frightened by what she saw, but even more frightened by what she thought. More than anything, more than fear, or wanting to run away, more than disgust or sympathy for the girls, she wanted to go back and clamber down into the muddy hole herself and have her panties ripped off by the men and be spanked and…
She flushed terribly, wild thoughts spinning uncontrollably through her head as she ran in panic for the sanctuary of the convent school, and when she arrived she dared say nothing.
At the end of the week it was all of this that she confessed. She poured out her wicked thoughts and wrongdoing as normal, but this time she admitted something she did not fully understand. This was no simple misdemeanour. This time she had enjoyed shaking with fear every time the workmen made rude gestures and offered to 'take her little white panties down and give her a good thrashing.' This time, she told him how she had kept her fingers high between her thighs as she lay awake in her bed thinking of the mounds in the men's trousers. This time, she trembled tearfully as she told him how she wanted to be one of the girls in the hole.
As she made her confession to Father Thomas she heard him sigh loudly. She knew he was angry with her and the realisation set off a tingling in her stomach and sent shivering thrills throughout her young body. She pleaded for forgiveness and punishment; she wanted to throw herself on the floor and beg for punishment. She wanted to stretch out before him and kiss his feet until he said she was saved. She felt so guilty and yet so satisfied; she felt so fulfilled with her sinfulness.
"Father," she had begged, "I'm so wicked, I walked past those horrid, smelly men and listened to the horrid things they said. I can't get to sleep at night because I think of them; their muscly stomachs and what it is beneath their trousers that makes them bulge out at the front. I can't stop thinking about what it would be like to be bent over in that muddy hole and have my panties torn down and my bottom spanked by those rough hands. What can you make me do to put things right? What has made me so bad?"
"What did they say again my child?"
"About taking my panties down?"
"Yes, what did they say exactly?"
"They said they would take my white panties down and give me a good spanking."
"Why? Why would they do that?"
"They – they said that I looked as if I would enjoy it."
"And would you?"
"I don't know Father. I don't know what is right any more. Father, perhaps they were right, perhaps I deserved a spanking. Perhaps I still do."
Father Thomas hesitated, then, stroking his beard to its thin point, spoke softly.
"You have been very wicked indeed. Your punishment should be severe this time, very severe, my child."
She shuddered with fear and clasped her school notebook tightly against the tops of her thighs. Suddenly, this was not a game and a sense of real fear spread through her.
"There is only one thing for it,' he continued.
Her hands started to shake and she pressed them down even harder against her thighs. What would it be? Would it be enough to save her?
"No prayer will make this better," he said, "you will have to be punished directly, here and now – by me."
She felt herself beginning to sweat with dread. The pages of her little notebook were sticking to the sweat that was covering the smooth skin of her young thighs. She waited, barely breathing.
"I will have to spank you my child. I must take your panties down and spank you now." He spoke slowly as he adjusted himself on his seat. "Come into my confession box and I will bend you over my knee."