The girl took it well. Maria had got to five strokes when the door opened and Ingeborg Untermacher strode in, a pile of books under one arm.
“I'm caning a Junior,” said Maria thickly.
“So I see. And caning her well, judging from those lines. I can't see the face but that posterior looks to me like Kraus's. Is that you feeling sorry for yourself, Gulfrida?”
“Ja, Fraulein,” came the muffled reply.
“Stinging a little?”
“Ja.”
“I thought as much.”
“She has three more,” said Maria. “You're certainly cutting low. Ouch! That hurt!”
When it was over, and the gasping girl had dressed herself and left, Maria stood panting by the window; she had to hold on to something and grasped its unappealing bars. They were cold. She was afire. The view over the gaffed walls of the Schloss was of the unending tedium of a now snow-clad plain. Suddenly she was aware of her friend behind her.
“What was that mauling for?”
“Recitation. She failed completely.”
There was a pause.
“But that's a mandatory Duty, darling.”
“I know it is. But I wanted to whip her personally. In here.”
Ingeborg whistled. “Dangerous, dangerous, my dear. You know what would happen if the Head heard you were taking the law into your own hands like that?”
“Well. Who's to tell her? The girl won't. We all do it, you know that.”
There was another long pause. Maria's heavy breast rose and fell, rose and fell.
“I might, for one,” said Ingeborg softly.
Maria swung. Her already reddened face flushed further.
“You couldn't… you wouldn't… you'd never peach on me like that, Inge.”
“Why not? I'd frankly like to see you get a real hiding, Mary mine. Not a tickling like the last time, but triced to a triangle and scratched from neck to knees. Though most especially,” and she cupped Maria's mounds under the flap of tunic behind, “here.”
“You're not going to, Inge.” But she said it in an already defeated mutter.
“I'm not going to,” came the reply, catching at this tone, “if you let me give you what you gave that girl just now.” She picked up the cane and looked at it, dreamily. “Ach-come on. You're sopping, admit it. See if you can come during a beating. You'll find it… quite incredible, as a matter of fact.”
Maria Daunitz hung her head. Almost inaudibly she said, “I'll kiss… I'll lick you… off.”
“Yes, you will,” said Ingeborg Untermacher, still brightly smiling, “afterwards.”
“You're… serious, about this?”
“Never more so.”
A century seemed to pass before that aching window. Finally Maria Daunitz said glumly, “Lock that door. Oh, and Ingeborg.”
“Yes?”
“Hit… me… hard.”
“I will,” said Ingeborg, moving to the door, “and low. I know you like it there. Thanks, too, for saving me the trouble of taking down your trews.”
When she returned from the door it was to see her friend bent over as had been the Junior a moment before. This, however, was a distinctly senior sit-upon display, as she flipped the trifling skirt up the arched back. It demanded total attention and the very best in blows.
Maria received them. She took the drubbing with no more than gasps and grunts, however, though the last lashing cuts made her lift up her head. She was growing more experienced in taking, as well as giving, and what went on between the two women thereafter should not be the task of this prudish pen. Let a veil be drawn over it.
Suffice it to recount that later that evening Maria Daunitz returned to Dormitory “D” to get that stubby length of bone and show it to the Matron, or even the Head. But to her surprise it had gone. Little did she know that the mildly sculpted phallus was standing upright on the well-ordered desk of the Frau Direktrice at that moment, whither it had been brought by knowing little Resi who had seen the Duty Mistress extract and replace it, in the Dorm. Frau Grumkow decided to “sleep on” the matter, as was her wont, and slipped the glistening temptress of a gode into a drawer for the nonce.
Chapter Seven
The next day the inexorable Directress went into action with a vengeance. She had made up her mind to deal stringently with the affair and shortly after breakfast Prafekt Seckendorff was standing in front of her Headmistress literally shivering in her high heels. Her anxious face, from which the blonde braids drew back her hair, was entirely different in expression from when she had strapped little Anna Erland, and her eyes kept dropping, despite herself, to the long inky rapier of the whalebone switch on the table there. Her tunic merely accused the full flesh it gently covered. Euphemia Seckendorff knew her Directress, and was extremely frightened.
“So you know absolutely nothing about why this… shaft of bone was found in your Dorm, then?”
“Nothing, Headmistress.”
“I take your word for it, Euphemia. In fact, your Dormitory has been quite a model until now. Nevertheless,” went on the matter-of-fact tone sending chills down the girlish spine, “I shall have to have you thrashed since this lapse did occur there. I mean to get to the bottom of this matter, and a good lashing of that rump of yours will lend a little zeal to your helping me in the task. You have no idea who it might be?”
“None, Headmistress. But I guarantee to find out…”
“You will,” came the curt answer. “By tomorrow at noon you will report to me with the culprit who has been using this masturbatory device in your Dormitory, together with any other girl involved. I don't mind how you acquire the information, I simply want the sinner in question. If no one owns up, you can tell your Dormitory it'll be three dozen each with the birch plus ten nightly with a Dorm cane for a week. As for you, you will be stripped of your privileges, reduced to the ranks, publicly birched and join scum for the rest of the term. To start off with, Euphemia, I shall send for the Duty Mistress and have your bottom thoroughly flogged. Go in there, take off your things, and summon up your courage.”
The Praelictor curtseyed slowly, turned and with small steps and an utterly sick look in her face made for the far door indicated, that leading, as all too well she knew, to the Head's personal Chastisement Chamber. Her buttocks churned turgidly, as if knowing, too, the menace which they were under. A bell-pull made a distant resonance that echoed through her marrow. She suddenly, quite definitely, wanted to pee.
Five minutes later she was standing to attention, nude but for stockings and shoes, the strong ledge of her mons softly flossed above her downy thighs, and her insignificant garments folded on a nearby stool. What little courage she had left vanished as the Headmistress entered, close followed by the ironically smiling Duty Mistress of the day, elegant, black-haired Jacqueline Bellais. Euphemia Seckendorff prostrated herself, and then arose on bidding. The French teacher was by no means the strongest, but she was known as a refined punisher, skilled in the subtler nuances of the rod. It was all too obvious from her smile now that she was looking forward to the task for which she had been summoned.
“You realize,” said the Head, addressing the stock-still figure of the girl, “Prefects have to be especially strictly punished, when so. You are going to be thrashed for Negligence in your duties; have you anything to say?”
“Nothing to say, Headmistress.”
“Give her a dozen, please, Bellais.”
“By which you mean, Head,” slyly insinuated the now frankly grinning mistress, running a hand over her own saucy posterior under the silk, “thirteen, I take it?”