Six thumping strokes across the bottom with a Duty cane did not alter this information, either. It was apparent the girl was telling the truth, and probably all the truth. Still, the Directress wanted to make sure. She had the girl set on the bar, and returned to her salon for a smoke.
This unpleasant and undignified instrument was, in truth, a bar of iron, some four foot long, serrated on its upper surface, and ranged on struts about this height from the floor. The girl bestrode it with her hands manacled behind her back.
Yes, it was a dreaded moment when a sinner had to get up, grim-faced, one leg on the stool provided and swing the other over, and lower herself gingerly, oh so gingerly, while the mistress plucked wide the cunny petals, making sure the rank iron, with its nasty indentations, sank fully into the veinous lining of sweet flesh.
“Whew! Au… oooooh!”
The bar was a feature of Prussian seminaries of that time but the one at Schloss Rutenberg had improvements-there were two parallel bars either side, lower down, making for a most penetrating spread of the victim's legs. And to the ankles of each of these small weights were attached.
“Please… Mistress… Fraulein… I didn't lend it to anyone else… aaaah… aieee, it's cutting me in two.”
Her head went back, tears smarted to her eyes. She felt she could not move a muscle, yet the inexorable iron was eating into her vitals.
“Hou… houah… I can't stand…”
“You'll sweat in earnest in a minute,” said Fraulein Katte, watching the grimacing.
“Phouuuu…”
She was given ten. At the end of which time, indeed, perspiration was streaming down her face and front. Her chest cringed, she tried to sway, only occasioning herself more pain, all the time pleading and begging. The Duty Mistress fetched her superior.
“Please… ach! Gott… ouuueee!”
Frau Grumkow watched the contortions with switch in hand.
“You're perfectly sure there's no one else involved?”
“Yes, yes, Frau Dir-r-rektrice,” wailed the girl with chattering teeth. “No… nooo one. I ner-know I've got to be whipped… I'll take my medicine, Ma'am, only please let me off this… fiendish… houw! it hurts so horribly… there was no one, no one else at all, I swear.”
As if touched by this emphatic declamation, the Directress gave a nod.
“All the same, I just have to make sure.”
“NEIN!” screamed the girl at the top of her lungs as she saw what was happening.
For Fraulein Katte had gone to the fire, where a flat-iron was heating. She returned with it, glowing.
“Nooooh! No! Please not that. Birch me… whip me… not…”
At another nod the mistress placed the face of the hot iron on one end of the bar, that behind the writhing girl. With her free left hand she held the rail, to test its rapidly increasing heat.
And then the culprit began to twist in earnest, for the bar was growing hellishly hot. Fraulein Katte only took away her tool, in fact, when its surface was hotter than she cared to feel.
“How! Ouw! Au-oh!” The cries became quite raucous as the girl strove to lift herself off that burning bar.
Finally, let down, she squirmed on the ground at their feet.
“Silly child,” said Frau Grumkow staring down at her with genuine affection, “you brought it on your own head. But I believe you. Both you and your masturbating amie Monika can look forward to a thorough birching after prayers on Sunday. Until when you will both be confined in Solitary. You will get ten before retiring tonight, and ten on rising tomorrow. After which all corporal correction will be remitted. Until Sunday.”
The good Directress wanted the tints of the lily to which to add her crimson, come Sunday; and she had to talk to Karl. He was pressing her for three mistresses to “service” his Grenadiers. Well Wedell would be good, and why not dear Ingeborg, with her now well-whipped admirer Daunitz? She would see, she would see.
Chapter Eight
“Do you think the Head'll order four? I do hope it's four.”
Ingeborg Untermacher lay back in the low leather chair in her private chambers and touched her auburn hair. She gave a surreptitious glance across at her friend, Maria Daunitz, equally casually seated opposite her. The morning Sunday service was over, conducted in chapel mostly out of the front of the Bible, the Head having read a stirring “lesson” all about Moses and Zipporah, and now all were awaiting convocation, by Matron's bell, in Great Hall for the birching. Marshalled by their Prefects, the girls had already assembled, including, in their class places, the two culprits, brought up from Solitary.
“I had a look at some of those birches, up in Matron's room,” said Maria Daunitz in an attempt at a casual tone. “That pickle's made them tough as hell. The buds at the tip are like stone. Not to mention how the twigs have swollen. I'd have thought fifty quite a task for anyone under a Senior.”
“Stuff and nonsense,” came back Ingeborg at once. “Admittedly that Monika's only a fifteen-year-old, but Barbara's well able to bear it. She's sixteen, rising seventeen, I think. Have you beaten her this half?”
“Haven't had that pleasure,” answered Maria laconically.
“Well, I have. I gave her eight with a classroom, and it was bliss. Although it doesn't look it in the tunic, her bottom's surprisingly full and sloping. Pear-shaped, you know, with a good fatty under-slung overhang. Full of nerve. Heavens, the birch is perfect for a pair like that. It isn't brutal, or bruising, really, it just keeps the sting going like fury, until, until…” Her voice tailed off, she felt absently for her switch.
Both mistresses were bandbox in their black leather, which had been shone to perfection for the ceremony.
“You can hardly wait for it, can you?” said Maria, looking steadily at her friend. “Frankly, no. Can you?”
“I don't know.”
“Oh come on, confess it, Mary. You're intrigued, and why shouldn't you be? It's a just punishment. You're excited, say it. You're probably just as squidgy inside as I am, and you'll probably come watching it, too. Do you still have your marks, by the way?”
“Yes.”
“Still hurt?”
“I feel them, yes.”
“May I see them again?”
“Jacqui really slogged into you, didn't she? It must have hurt like absolute murder.”
“I thought so,” said Maria Daunitz. “Yet it was justice.”
The younger mistress sat up. “Yet it wasn't, Inge. I never knew that bit of bone was a gode at all.”
Incredulous, Ingeborg stared at her friend- “You… never knew? You're serious, Mary? Do you mean it? Why then…”
But a clanging bell interrupted them. Both leapt to their feet and filed in orderly fashion along the corridor outside. Their high heels made aggressive click-clock on the flagged flooring.
At an intersection three other mistresses, equally impeccable in black with their switches swinging, fell into step with them-Christina Holz, the gym mistress Frau Dick, and Fraulein Marit, a lively brunette from near Gentin who was fanning her face with a brand new Strafzettel. She rubbed her behind expressively, saying, “I'm afraid this is going to hurt someone else rather more than me.” All five mistresses looked bright-eyed to the point of girlish mischievousness.
“Have you heard the rumor?” said Christina Holz, as they strode along.
“What?”
“That the Privy Councillor, Count von Rantzau, has decided that it'll be either us or Wolfenbuttel for the Princess Elizabeth, and that the decision may well be made as the result of a sort of duel between our two academies.”
“A duel… how?”
“What is it, Kit? Explain.”
