Ingeborg had cut low, into the very tenderest part of her whole integument, it seemed, and the flame of pain waved over her, drenching her hips.
“Aaaah!”
Maria got to four. Five was a filthy beast of a stroke and she heard her own quick whine of protest.
“Christ! You might at least hit me on the bottom. That last was on my legs.”
“How are you enjoying it, by the way?” asked upside-down Ingeborg, taking a rest on her table for a minute. “You're marking beautifully, and you've only had half.”
“Please… Inge… c-cut me up higher. Not on the thighs.”
“No, you're really nice and tender there. Am I coming about right for time? I mean, when the pain's at its peak.”
“I… yesss,” Maria hissed, in no mood for academic discussion.
“I'm going to continue to work just under the cunt.”
The sixth sang into the stretched meat. The seventh. Eighth.
“Chrissst! Inge… pleeeease.” Nine… ten!
Stay down, she had to stay down… Maria counted, panting. Ingeborg was standing right behind her. “All right,” she heard and jacked upright in agony-to find Inge's arms grabbing round her waist, Inge's furred cunt thrust, tunic-less, into her plump and maddened right buttock; yes, she even felt the slippery stub of flesh there, as Inge hissed, and heaved, and cursed, and buried her face in Maria's hair, wriggling her clitoris into ecstasy on the powerful mound of whipped round womanflesh of her friend.
And five minutes after this, reordered, if not restored, they were presenting the completed Duty Book of the day to the Head in her study.
The mistresses had gone; they had been replaced by a tall, raw-boned officer in loose shirt and pale-blue trousers. Presented to the well-wined Colonel Karl von Dessau, the two young mistresses curtseyed.
Elizabetha Grumkow, still in the same chair, smiled at them cheerfully-“Did she take it well, Ingeborg?”
“Admirably, Frau Direktrice.”
“Show the Count your bottom, Daunitz,” came the next instruction and already Maria found she could obey this order without the slightest hesitation. “I want him to spread the word how strict we are, so that we may be honored with the royal presence. Karl, this is the new mistress I was telling you about.”
“These two will do for my Grenadiers,” the man murmured, feeling at the front of his trousers. “Gad, that's a good pair. And well marked, too. Use a cane, did you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, you two can run off and console yourselves,” said Frau Grumkow, eyeing the Count's growing bulge. She was a jealous woman, and in the mood for cock.
On the way back to her room Maria Daunitz stole a look at her friend. Strange to say, she felt no resentment. She was fast slipping into the sense of discipline, the mystique of destiny, at Schloss Rutenberg. And when Inge squeezed her arm and said softly, “I'm sorry if I did cut rather low, but you must admit it hurts more there,” she was able to answer with a touch of admiration, “You caned me terrifically well, Inge. It hurt horribly.”
“And that,” said her friend, with another comforting squeeze, accompanied by a mischievous wink, “means it's going to be much, much nicer in a minute.”
Chapter Six
All agreed that the birching of Barbara Mack was a very brilliant affair. It took place shortly after half term, some full six weeks subsequent to the events already described, and the occasion was attended by some remarkable complications. Frau Grumkow had been a tartar all term, determined to defeat Wolfenbuttel as seminary elect for the Princess Elizabeth Christine, before she married the Prince Royal. To date, the matter was evidently still unsettled-and so was she, pacing her halls with whalebone switch, restless, nervous, on the lookout for offenders.
Christina Holz and tall Luzie Rombau had come in for a lively whipping each, having been detected in a public quarrel, in front of the pupils outside Hall. No matter that this had concerned whose right it was to punish an erring girl, the Head had heard them and had them into her Chastisement Room in front of all the others that evening. Maria Daunitz had been one of that solemn rank lined up to watch Luzie place eighteen aching strokes of her switch across Christina's full bottom the first night, and then receive the same herself from the other the next. Each chastisement was effected in total silence except for the hiss of the switch and gasps of the delinquent, over a period of some three minutes. And she had watched it with beating heart and brightened eye.
For it was a new Maria Daunitz who put on the chain of office over the white Duty costume that fateful day. She had by now been thoroughly initiated into the regimen of the Schloss. She had accepted her friend Inge's easy reasoning-if a girl had done wrong, and had to be whipped, why should not one get pleasure out of the infliction? The culprit was treated in a much more humane, interested and thoroughly personal manner as a consequence; it was not like being whipped on a barracks square by some brute of a Drillmaster.
Consequently she was smiling as she heard Recitation that cold November morning. She stood in the center of the Duty Room holding the text of Cicero handed her, while the anxious-faced Junior duly read off her lines. There were four to do so today. The first succeeded without an error, as did the second, but the third, when ushered in, a charming brunette called Elrich, stood plucking at her tunic, toes turned in, a very picture of apprehension.
“Commence,” said Maria, her nostrils widening at these symptoms. It was evident the girl hadn't learnt her lines, too well. Nor had she done so. Maria counted five errors. She snapped the book with a clip. Still smiling tenderly at the almost tearful Backfisch she asked, “Do you know how many mistakes you made, Elrich?”
“Ner-no, Fraulein.”
“Five.”
“Oooh.”
Maria unsnapped the eel-like switch from her belt.
“How many stripes does that make?”
“Fer-five,” blubbered the girl, “please. Miss.”
Not so bad as all that, surely? But Maria had developed a delightful way of administering these “hunting” strokes for failures in Recitation, one that had earned her rapid and total respect within the Institution's walls.
“You won't require your knickers for a moment, dear.”
Maria stood with legs astride, running the tough, oiled switch through her fingers. It was a lovely weapon, particularly since it ended in a short forked tail, like an adder's tongue, which the mistresses toughened in the faire of an evening when they had nothing else to do.
“Tuck up your skirt. Good. Now lie on your tummy and hold on to my ankles with your hands and don't let go. Now-part your legs wide.”
The recumbent girl was, in this position, vulnerability personified. She shot up a glance, imploring-“Please, Fraulein.”
“What is it?” asked Maria Daunitz, amused.
“Ooh… it stings so… like this… all the girls say they'd rather get it any other way. I c-cer-can't take it like this, I'm sure.”
“Is it the first time I've given you cuts in here?”
“Yer-yess, Mistress.”
“Well, if you don't take it, I shall have the pleasure of seeing you later on today, during Duty, and I assure you I will give you a caning to remember.”
In anguished apprehension the girl dropped her face to the ebon floor. Her hands clutched the lean, booted ankles as if for very life. Her legs widely parted as she lay face down on the floor, her short round bottoms were spread, waiting.
Maria did not wait long. She scalded the switch from well overhead, sending it singing down inside the right cheek; she did not strike with abnormal effort, but very judgingly, snapping her wrist to make the tail eat in with venom at the end of the stroke. She felt it drive and worm into the puppy-flesh close to the cunt.
“Hou-aaaaaah!” wailed the girl, jerking her legs together, and writhing. Her grip almost made Maria stumble. It had been a punishing cut, indeed.