“Relax yourself,” said Jacqueline Bellais soothingly, in one retracted ear, “the Frau Direktrice has never split a nipple yet.”
The whine of the switch was completed by the sifting slice of its impact. It was a sound of water struck, and the lean limb laced the twin breasts with purple. Euphemia Seckendorff whinnyed, lifting off the greasy tubes up her insides. She was cut again, and then asked, “You are quite sure you knew of no one using this… thing?”
Her head shook desperately again.
The Head went to the other side and cut, twice, from the other direction. The second drew a quick blob of blood where the tip had fallen.
“Ggggghhhh…!”
And then her flesh seemed to go into a frenzy. Muffled cries escaped her bit; the impaling and serrated staff eased up and down her rectum as she tried to move, to escape, to… anything… For the Duty Mistress had reached over and lifted each breast carefully upwards by its plummy nipple, and the fearful Frau Direktrice had stationed herself in front. The most excruciating form of “Heidi” was to be hewed by this rapier-like length of bone under the breasts, in the very tenderest…
“Aaaaa… uuuuieeee!”
All who had had two cuts like this agreed that there was no pain like it; and yet the wand did not bruise or harm, it merely stung. To the very soul.
Ten minutes later the girl was brought in, after restoratives, to see the Directress. Jacqueline Bellais stood beside her victim, who had donned her tunic and was still mournfully rubbing her backside. Frau Grumkow crossed her legs and looked at the splendid specimen of Prussian womanhood, a bearer-to-be of warriors and heroes. She saw the patch of red on the right breast and said, “You'd better get Matron to see to any abrasions, Euphemia.”
“Thank you, Frau Direktrice.”
“Well, I'm glad that's over,” went on the elder woman, in her chatty, nonchalant tone, “I'm sure you'll agree that it had to be a severe hiding for a Prefect, and Fraulein Bellais was merely doing her job.”
“Oh yes, Ma'am.”
“You took it like a trooper, Euphemia, and certainly won't lose your rank this term. I'll see to that. All the same, if I were you, I'd keep that bottom of yours-and hands by your sides when I speak to you, please-out of mischief for a while. It might hurt, to be caned after a Skinning.”
“I certainly will, Headmistress,” said the girl, entering into the bonhomie of her mentor's tone. She ached dully all over and her bottom felt thick, contused, twice its weight. All the same, she was most conscious of having come through. She had not expected anything like such an ordeal, but her body had borne it somehow, and she felt proud- she would show her marks to her colleagues with distinct pride shortly. She would go up in their estimation, she knew. She said respectfully, “I'll assemble my Dorm in the break, Head.”
“Do that, Euphemia. Before you go-is there anything you want to say?”
The girl paused. With charming bashfulness she turned to the inky-haired Duty Mistress and smiled.
“Just that… if I might be permitted, Madam…”
“Go on, what is it?”
“Id like to thank Fraulein here. I think it was the most terrific beating I've ever had, and, and I'm grateful. But above all, I'd like to congratulate her. I'm just about to leave the Schloss and I've had five years here now, so I do think I know a bit about beatings. It was an absolute beauty. My bottom feels beaten through and through, and each cut hurt more than the last. It was almost… unbearable. Thank you.” So saying she dropped to her knees and impulsively grasped the Duty Mistress' hand and kissed it, even licked that rigorous palm.
The gesture touched the two who watched the girl prostrate herself and leave with an odd mixture of feelings. They looked long at each other after she'd gone and Jacqui Bellais said quietly, “I think you'll get your culprit, Head.”
Frau Grumkow said, “The birching of her life, in Great Hall.”
Again their eyes met. This time both pairs dropped to the erect object of bone standing on the desk between them. And they laughed.
Spread-eagled on the “Dome,” a leather-covered tabouret less than a foot high under the pelvis, was not a position conducive to sensible reflection, and Maria Daunitz, being tightened in it to joint-cracking distension at ten o'clock that night, was in no mood to count the cost. All she knew was that somehow or other she had to call up courage to face a frightful fifteen, yes with the pizzle.
The Head's Chastisement Chamber was brightly lit, the rank of leather-clad mistresses along one wall impassive spectators, their faces expressionless, their hands by their sides, to attention. They had been summoned to watch correction of one of their number for Dereliction of Duty-to whit, not reporting an alien object found in a Dormitory on inspection-and they were going to watch it to the full. The broad buttocks of the new mistress were nicely parted as she was triced in this St. Peter's Cross position, with Duty Mistress Bellais browsing out her tackle at the four points carefully. Maria Daunitz was nude as a slug but for her boots-and a few withering lines across her hips from Inge's playful beating, doubtless a “training” infliction, so the watching eyes considered. Spliced to the ringbolts on the floor like this, she had her seat turned up by the so-called “dome” under her mons, more especially since a waist-belt kept her middle sections well down.
“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.