Meanwhile, the Duty Prefect, Anneliese Borcke, advanced to secure the culprit.
The Rutenberg block for birching was simple, but effective, and most girls seemed to find it salutorily ignominious. The girl knelt on a ledge of the black stone, as now, and had her knees strapped well apart. She then bent herself over it. The surfaces either side were inclined, so that the sufferer lay forward at an angle rather than completely vertical-this was found highly effective since the twigs could thus cut right under the seat; when the thighs were due for work, they were duly brought together. At the apex was a leather pad to which the waist was strapped, and to which was attached a perineal thong when necessary. Finally, the girl's arms were secured behind her with elbow-wrist cuffs which drew her shoulders fully back and meant that she fell wholly forward over the front side, her weight in that way being drawn forward so that she could really get no purchase with her knees, to move or flinch off her right side. And, alas, fidelity to historical fact make it incumbent to remark that Frau Grumkow had added a further refinement, since coming to the Schloss. This forward edge had been so serrated that it pinched and pricked the under-chest of the individual who lay on it. Consequently, a girl under birching tried to arch off this additional irritation, thus further cambering up her hips behind.
Barbara Mack's were thus on display. One might say that Prafekt Borcke left her “all buttocks.” The bottom was at its thickest at the lowest part, the gluteal zone firm and fatty. A bulbous if hairless mound thrust back, like a fist, between the spread legs, and a narrow saddle-strap spliced it painfully. Katte measured aim with her excruciatingly long and drippy verge, tough-budded at the tips. Then came the familiar, but ever thrilling high- pitched whine of air-zzzschlisk!
The five or six limbs snipped scorchingly into the meaty flesh low down. Their first smart made the girl gasp and jerk. The Duty Prefect called out a drawled, “One!” The birching had begun.
Fraulein Katte took her time, indeed, working to tenderize the most sensitive regions first. For it was essential to start a birching right. She cut upwards, fairly thrashing into the buttock cheeks which soon began to bound and writhe. The cane marks were quickly blent into the striations of the birch, as the mistress played cleverly upon this area. Until eleven Barbara Mack made no sound in the silence, however, and even her anguished “Oh!” of protest then seemed as much from the pain at her chest as she bumped down after the cut.
Katte changed the rod at thirteen and covered the buttocks with a network of purple with the last eleven.
“Vorst,” called the Directress, as the Prefect undid the stoic Barbara Mack. “Two dozen strokes.”
But Monika Vorst was in an agony of indecision. Her head hung, tears welled from her eyes; her hands twisted in front of her. For she had been unable to contain herself for fear and the titters of her nearest comrades were due to the little amber puddle that leaked at her feet. As Barbara Mack was helped off the block, her arms still bound behind her, Luzie Rombau strode forward angrily.
“What is this?” She took one look, then tugging the girl's ear bent her head down and rubbed her nose in the urine. Monika sobbed protestingly. The mistress stood up. “Filthy little thing. Get the rags from your knickers and wipe it up at once.” She called back to the dais-“Could not hold her water, Frau Direktrice.”
“Penalty for Incontinence?” snapped the Head.
“I should like to give her ten.”
“Then by all means do so. Hard.”
Monika suffered, touching her toes. Then she too took the first twenty-four of her count. Fraulein Marit was privileged to administer these across the tender white chubbies of the fifteen-year-old and elicited biting cries and yelps by the end.
Then it was the turn for Barbara's second installment, another two dozen. “Damn,” whispered Ingeborg Untermacher to Maria Daunitz on the platform as the Head chose Christina Holz for the task, “she's getting nice and tender on the right. I'd so like to have a fling.”
But Fraulein Holz hit from the other side, whipping the tips into the left buttock cheek. Then for her final dozen she had the thighs secured and lashed them pitilessly, at long intervals. The whole dozen probably took a good eight minutes, and drew pants and gasps from the now perspiring girl. When Barbara Mack was ushered back after it, her thighs brushing closely together, she was bleeding. The whole of the area from mid-buttock to upper- thigh had been skilfully welted and in parts appeared veritably raw. And she still had a dozen to come!
Monika Vorst took her final dozen somewhat better, but the agonizing cuts from the Headmistress's whalebone in conclusion quite undid her. At last it was nearly over. Barbara Mack had one more twelve to take, followed by the celebrated Master's stripes. Despite her reddened breasts and empurpled hips she walked calmly enough to the block, arms behind her, until the Head, now standing to one side with her waiting whalebone, called out to slumbrous-eyed Wedell, selected for this task-“And for the last six, whip in!”
Barbara Mack's knees struck the floor with a thud, and Maria Daunitz felt a reciprocal surge of lava in her loins.
“Please, Mistress, oh please,” implored the girl. “Anything but that. Give me another dozen, an' you must, but do not misuse me so. I cannot bear it… in between.”
“Come,” said Frau Grumkow ironically, “I thought you were made of sterner stuff. Pleas are a luxury we must deny ourselves at Schloss Rutenberg. Whip in for all twelve, Fraulein Wedell.”
“Very well, Head.”
Panic-stricken the girl looked around. But in a trice she was prepared as before, only with no confining saddle strap. In between her streaked cheeks a fully fleshed shaven mound stuck back, gashed central in some sort of unholy antiphony to the buttocks themselves. Its pungent sides looked unbearably sensitive-and Wedell stationed herself in front of the girl, at her head. She did so with a ferociously long and whippy birch.
“No, no, no, no-auoooh!”
“Hard, Wedell.”
The heartless twigs zisched in, eating into the inner left cheek and splaying enough to sting the cunt lips there. The girl howled. The second cut was down the right. After six like this Barbara Mack was a shuddering epitome of pain.
And it was now that the eyes wished to look away. For the last six were administered centrally, down the cleft itself. They were not correction, they were literal torture, as the tough buds welted into the spongy unprotected flesh of the shaven pubis. After three the lips split like an anguished plum and the red satin lining showed. The girl knew it, and screamed.
“Noaow! Not… theah… auuuuuuu!”
The Master's strokes were characteristically thorough. It was indeed a very solemn convocation that filed out of Great Hall that Sunday between the twin stools, on which stood two penitent girls, with bleeding bottoms, masturbating hopelessly at the orders of their implacable Directress.
Chapter Nine
They came for them in the dead of night.
The three mistresses had been sitting in silence in the anteroom near the entrance steps when the clatter of the carriage came up. The school had long gone to bed and since they had been told not to talk they did not talk. Only Ingeborg Untermacher leant once to squeeze Maria Daunitz's knee, as she perched nervously on a pouffe-“It's not so bad after the first one.” The force of the UNKNOWN held Maria in its thrall. All color had long since left her cheeks. Ulrika Wedell, meanwhile, was lugubriously inspecting the lacing on her glossy boots, turning her ankles this way and that.
The first thing they noticed when the Flugleman entered, saluting, was his gigantic height. He was, it was all too obvious, one of Friedrich Wilhelm's famous regiment of giants, the same that guarded the royal hunting lodge at Wusterhausen; some of these colossi were, it was said, as much as eight feet tall, to which the miter-shaped hats of the Grenadier Guards (to which they were affected) added at least another fifteen inches. It was also said that this vanity was costing the Emperor dear in prestige since, unable to recruit these mammoths from his own country in sufficient quantity, he was obtaining them from Poland, England, anywhere by barter-and now, so rumor had it, even by impressment. The three women, already curiously cowed, followed the back of this tight-fitting Prussian uniform out into the night and the waiting carriage there.
This was little more than an Army trap, without Postillion, and they sat edgily on the padded seat at the back
