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.
“Nice and slow,” the Head was saying now. “Each stroke as hard as you possibly can, Bellais. I want this to be a lesson to all those here. Commence.”
A wet sponge trickled brine onto the quiveringly upturned cheeks and then, with a long preparatory whirr, the hard lash socked into their dripping surfaces-THWLUICK!
“Unnnngh!”
It was impossible. Maria tensened at the branding blow, held still a second, then jerked furiously in her bonds-causing a real squeak of protest through her gag as a brass stud bit her clit. Allmachtiger Gott, she thought with sudden sobbing despair, wie werde ich gehauen! It was worse than she had possibly expected.
“One,” said Frau Grumkow calmly.
But there was two… and three… and four… and five…
By which time she felt she had been boiled in oil.
There was a long pause at five and Maria realized she was gasping and whining through her gag, squirming and tossing her buttocks as much as the bonds, retightened, permitted. Ten more. She could not possibly endure ten more.
“Hit her higher up the arse, there's more flesh there, and the underside is already pretty blue,” came the expert advice from the side. “At this rate you can cover the whole bum.”
Jacqui Bellais did so. She punished pitilessly, her dream come true. Maria mashed herself on the flooring, farting and blowing in utter indignity, and the French mistress took her time, slapping the ferocious pizzle across the central purple of her main weal, one seeping a ruby dew at each indenting thwlack.
Somehow it was over. Somehow Maria Daunitz lay there, heard the ritual words from the Headmistress, felt the rank of mistress file by, each spitting on her buttocks before each left the room, and finally she was alone with her tormentress.
Jacqueline Bellais was taking off her knickers.
“Feel a little warmer now?” she asked ironically.
She undid wrist and waist straps and Maria knelt sickly up, head bowed, holding her buttocks. They were ribboned with weals as thick as findings. Never had she known such furious pain. But already the worst of it was leaving her.
“Like me to scrub some vinegar into them for you?”
Maria shook her head dully, her eyes on the discarded pizzle before her; its tip seemed ruby with her blood.
“I'm sorry if it hurt rather,” said Jacqueline Bellais, kirting up her skirt and approaching with a fat and thickly bushed cunt on display, “but I had to, you know.”
Maria nodded dumbly. She said: “It's… all right. You… it was your duty.”
“It was my pleasure,” corrected the other, straddle-legged before her. “I've been longing to flog you, Mary, since I first saw you at start of term. There's nothing unnatural about it. I'd expect the same from you.”
Her ankles still tethered wide, Maria knelt up wry-faced.
“Why does everyone seem to want to beat me, Jacqui?”
“Because you're so beatable, dear, I expect.”
“That was agony, absolute murder.”
“I'd have liked to have given you more.”
“It wasn't fair… for what I did. I never wanted to use that thing myself. Frankly, I didn't know what it was.”
“Tell that to the Head,” said the Frenchwoman with a chuckle. “Now then. You going to come back to my room with me?”
“I want to rinse out this caustic first. Honestly, it burns hellishly.”
“So will some pimentade if I decide to apply it to that flaming rump of yours, dearie.”
“Please, Jacqui, please.”
“What about the scum buss instead? Is it a deal?”
Maria looked up helplessly. “I couldn't stand anything more… please not the pimentade…” She kneaded her buttocks expressively. “Oooh, you cut me so on the right.”
“Very well then.” The sprightly mistress turned and parted her legs, hands on her knees. “Get going then.”
Maria looked at the firm trim can at the top of the tapering thighs before her; it had a few thin lines of the rod across it, too. The well-grooved cunt beneath looked curiously sensual, thick and hairy.
“I… I've never done this before, I'm afraid.”
“You can start now. Insert your tongue, and don't stop until you can taste shit.”
Miserably Maria approached her face to the wrinkled dimple. It looked clean and rosy, and was definitely perfumed. She stuck out her tongue and with a glare of concentration went about her task stoically. Jacqueline Bellais' right hand moved almost instantly.
“Christ, that's heaven! You don't know. Deeper than that or I'll ask to give you more. Christ, Mary, you don't know what you looked like being whipped. It was like cutting into… ooooah… butter and now, now, YEESSS!”
Barbara Mack “owned up” the following morning after breakfast. She did so a trifle the worse for wear since the entire “D” Dorm, highly alarmed at a communal birching, had taken wet towels in the bathroom that morning and, under the supervision of Prefect Seckendorff, whose bottom was a reverberating vision of mauve and beetroot, had flicked the Junior with their ends until she was thoroughly welted. Monika Vorst had confessed to having utilized the utensil also. The wet towels flacked slapping dark marks on the chubby white bodies, both of which danced most amusingly, to the delectation of the Dormitory. The girls owned up together.
Frau Grumkow let pretty blonde Monika go. She interrogated Barbara in company of the Duty Mistress, this day's being Fraulein Katte again. The girl was repeatedly asked where she had got it, and to whom she had lent it. She confessed completely. The thing had been given her by a “chum” in the vacation and, no, no one except her special comrade Monika Vorst had either seen or used it. She always hid it in the Dorm.
