There were adjustments to make. The ankle-stocks kept the legs about a foot apart; the wrist holes had to be pulled down for a tall girl, ensuring her weight well forward. There was a belt to be tightened across her lower back, assuring a pelvic camber upward as the leathern boss snugged under the furry and well-fatted mons.
To the five aching purple wales across the tender underbum seven excruciating slices were added, with a murderously whippy cane. Ingeborg took her time and cut slightly upward into the cringing sulcal skin at intervals of no less than quarter of a minute each. The girl first panted and blew, then frankly yelped, head back, as the tip bit into the right buttock like a brand. Released, she bounded about, regaling the mistresses with some helpless, hectic kneading of her upper legs and hips. Left alone again at last, they exchanged looks. Ingeborg closed the book and turned her back.
“I now have to give this to the Head,” she said thoughtfully.
“I thought you caned that kid beautifully,” Maria said, passing a tongue over her lips.
“Beautifully?”
Maria laughed. “What I mean is… I wouldn't have liked to be in her place.”
“Unfortunately you're going to have to be.”
There was a long heavy silence. Maria felt her heart beat up.
“What do you mean?” she asked at last. Her friend was still standing with her back to her, her scant tunic rucked in her cleft and showing the end of one of the weals Maria had just given her. As if sensing Maria's thoughts, indeed, Ingeborg ran a finger over this hot line.
“The Head said I was to give you a training caning,” she said rather hollowly. “I'm sorry, but I have to. Don't make it difficult for me. If I report you took it well, it may be the last.”
“Because I didn't 'take it' well enough from Wendell, I suppose,” Maria said bitterly. “Oh damn and hell, this is ridiculous. It would have to be you.” But already her fingers were flipping undone the bone buttons of her belt to which the tops of her silk knickers were secured. She had undone sixteen when Ingeborg said, with still averted face, “Mary, I do have to do this, I'm sorry. I also have to report if you get up, during.”
“If you don't?”
“We're watched all the time here. It's uncanny. She'd know.”
“What instrument am I to be flattered with?”
“The cane I've just used.”
“Oh naturally.” Tossing aside her leather skirt and half in tears already, she turned her proud and stalwart bottom-bared for the whip. “Come on, let's get it over with, then. Do your damnedest.”
Ingeborg advanced with a gloomy expression, flexing her stick. She stood in front of her friend, the gold letter on her breast catching the light.
“I'm actually going to enjoy this very much, Maria. I won't hide it from you. I've longed to thrash your behind from the first day I saw you.”
“Please,” said Maria in a new voice, her eyes dropping to the pitiless length of wood. “Don't draw it out.”
Ingeborg jounced the profile of her friend's rump with the swollen tip of her stick. “Why not? Don't you feel yourself living now? I'm going to give you as much pain as I possibly can, until, until you're reduced to a thing of pain… like that girl there.”
“How many?” said Maria curtly. Then wished she hadn't asked.
“Ten.”
“Ten! But that's… it's…”
“What you're going to get. Here. Stand over here. Can you put your palms on the ground?”
“You mean… bending over?” said Maria sickly. “I used to be able… but in these heels…”
With her legs together she bent like a hinge, doubling her bottoms and stretching their skin. Ingeborg stood well back and with a sudden thudding rush pranced on her fleshy prey-to cut.
Huhuwhu-the cane seemed to hew the air interminably until it completed, meatily-uiclk! Determined not to show a sign before her friend, Maria merely gasped, albeit driven off balance a moment.
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
