“There,” she said at last, stepping out of her knickers which made miserable wrinkles on a table, “Do they look bare enough for the whip like that? Do you think Wedell will bring me to my senses through my backside?” She thrust it out, warm and rosy.
“Is Wedell going to do it?”
Ingeborg Untermacher contemplated the lifted pan of skirt and the rump it revealed. Above the boot-tops, Maria showed a well-cheeked, close-set sit-upon, at the base of which curled back a tendril of dry dark hair. The elder mistress gave it an impish tug.
“Darling. Don't take it so hard.”
“Oh Inge!” She flung herself round, and into the other's arms. “I'm so frightened. Will it hurt dreadfully?”
“Dreadfully, I fear.”
“How many will it be, do you know?”
“From what you've told me… well, I don't truly know. I suspect it'll be the cane.” She paused a minute, and added, “An Army cane. Like they use at Duty Hour.”
“Oh of course,” Maria laughed sarcastically and not a little hysterically, “how would I feel it else? Do I look nice and penitent doubled, darling?”
So saying, and flipping her skirt over her back, she bent and touched her toes. Ingeborg contemplated the round and sturdy hips, diamonded with the well-haired fig of flesh at bisection of the thighs; she saw the unusually deeply dimpled anal bud, all a crinkled brown, and she wondered if now was the time to tell her charge certain other things…
“Don't be silly, Maria. Come over here and let me pour you out a glass of wine.”
But it was not to be. As the carafe tinkled, there came a knock at the door. Far sooner than expected. The Head worked fast.
“Already?” she moaned sickly.
“Herein!” called Ingeborg curtly and a maid came in, tall also and dressed in a short black satin costume with lawn apron spotless at her lap.
“Frau Direktrice…”
“I know, I know,” Maria said irritably, “she wants to see me. I seem to be rather popular in the East Wing tonight.” She tossed her head and tossed her skirt. “Te morituri…”
“I'll be here when you come back,” Inge whispered gently as Maria Daunitz followed the totally impassive maid.
She walked as she was supposed to walk, absolutely expressionless and in total silence, her shoulders back. She noted with a tremor, however, that these landings were empty, and that at each stair she passed stood another maid, face turned away, as sentinel. In short, the floor was “cleared” when a mistress was flogged. No one should see her going or coming. This time the maid led Maria up the usual steps to the Directress' wing, but instead of stopping at her door turned left along another corridor, neighboring. Here she halted at last, at another door, that of the Head's personal Chastisement Chamber. She dropped a curtsey and Maria remembered that she was supposed to have brought a coin; it was a custom to tip the maid taking you to correction a thaler at Rutenberg, it seemed.
“I'm sorry, Helen,” she said. “I forgot. I'll… I'll give it you after.”
“Oh, it doesn't matter, Miss. And if I may,” the girl gave a sweetly shy smile, “I'd like to hope it won't hurt too much.”
“I have an idea that it will though, don't you?” And chucking the girl under the chin she knocked.
There were three figures in this room which, like the Duty, was rectangular, barren, high-vaulted, but in this case brilliantly lit. Chandeliers hung overhead. Under one stood the Head, divested of her jacket, her frilled stock and gilet much in evidence. Beside her stood white-tunicked Wedell and in front of them both, with her back to the entrant, was big Else Gundling.
Maria curtseyed profoundly. “You sent for me, Frau Direktrice?”
“You stand accused of Loitering,” said the compact little woman to the Prefect. “Report of Fraulein Daunitz. Have you anything to say?”
“Nothing to say, Headmistress.”
“Do you wish to appeal?”
“No, Headmistress.”
“You know we require especial attention to rules on the part of our Praelictors?”
“Yes, Headmistress. I request permission to be punished for my great fault.”
Maria blinked. This was a different kettle of fish from the Junior. The broad-shouldered, broad-bottomed eighteen-year-old stood unflinchingly erect, head up. Only when she was told to make herself ready did she galvanize into action, stripping off her knickers and rolling her skirt high out of the way into her chain belt. She had long deep pear-curved arsecheeks, downy and unmarked.
“As this is a first offense I shall not strip you of your rank, Else. But you will do Duty Prefect for a week, write me out five hundred times, T must not loiter in passages,' and the next time you are found in the slightest fault I will see to it that you get three dozen, slowly, with the whalebone birch. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Frau Direktrice. Thank you.”
“Four strokes with the Sole.”
Maria had seen this implement, and saw it again now, reposing on a table to one side. She was surprised, however, at the sudden accession of wild, and most definite fear to the eyes of the girl as she went forward to where the Duty Mistress now pointed. Surely four was not too bad.
“Lie down on your back.”
On her back? What was this?
Her lips-yes-quite distinctly trembling, Else Gundling lifted her legs into an L of her body. Her ankles were subjected to stout straps, which were then shackled to a pulley Wedell had lowered from the ceiling. There was a squeak of a wheel and she was hoisted until she rested but on her shoulders; the pulleys were parted, as were her legs. By now she was looking ashen with fear. Her cunt was richly bushed with swarthy hair which streamed up her belly in a flat broad bar. The tackles were adjusted, the Duty Mistress pressing on the girl's hams to see that she was thoroughly held; then in a sudden athletic swing Wedell, grasping her victim's wrists, swung the girl's torso forward till her back arched. These wretched wrists were then likewise cuffed in leather and secured to the middle of a set of bars, evidently for the purpose. Maria breathed in deeply.
She faced the offender from the back. Else Gundling hung clear with widely parted legs, her upper body a bow attached to the bar in front. The oval purse of her pussy pouched downmost, its fat lips close. But the hair ran up the squeeze of bunched buttocks behind, the turgid flesh of whose inner sides were fully exposed, below-which was to say just above the closure of cunt.
A cold sweat started on Maria Daunitz' brow. Undulations in the tender flesh where thigh met hip showed her that Else was not indifferent to the enormity of her situation, either. Her slabby cheeks were ripe for whipping, were going to be whipped. Wedell pressed down on them again, creaking her pulleys, then went to get her instrument. This was the Sole.
It consisted in a wooden handle and a broad leather strap of some three feet in length. Not an implement to make an experienced eighteen-year-old pant and stretch in fear like this, surely. But it was curved at its conclusion and Maria Theresa knew why it glittered in spicules at its tip. The last third of the striking side had been sewn with minute needle-like nails. The way to strike with the Sole, Maria Theresa had been taught, was to draw or drag it in a currying motion across the flesh. Her tongue ran over her lips as Fraulein Wedell positioned herself with an attitude of relish some six feet back from the exact center of her victim's person.
“Slowly, Wedell.”
The Prefect began to tremor, her breath coming fast.
The mistress raised the tawse above her head with both hands and with both brought it down in a slapping crack that rang through the room like a pistol shot. She had chosen as target the inside of the left buttock and the pulpy flesh under and inside the thigh there. Else jerked like a fish, emitting a startled “Au je” and a fart. Then she twisted and panted with pain.
Clearly this had been considerable. The red weal that had been ripped into her was going dark at its rim, and already showing spicklets of rubby dew. It had cut close to her cunt but no more, yet such was her position terror of intimate violation arched her back, clenching. The second swiped across the right, and produced a collected
