The Prussian Girls (12 page)

“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.”

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 quarrel, in front of the pupils outside Hall. No matter that this had concerned whose right it was to punish an erring girl, the Head had heard them and had them into her Chastisement Room in front of all the others that evening. Maria Daunitz had been one of that solemn rank lined up to watch Luzie place eighteen aching strokes of her switch across Christina's full bottom the first night, and then receive the same herself from the other the next. Each chastisement was effected in total silence except for the hiss of the switch and gasps of the delinquent, over a period of some three minutes. And she had watched it with beating heart and brightened eye.

For it was a new Maria Daunitz who put on the chain of office over the white Duty costume that fateful day. She had by now been thoroughly initiated into the regimen of the Schloss. She had accepted her friend Inge's easy reasoning-if a girl had done wrong, and had to be whipped, why should not one get pleasure out of the infliction? The culprit was treated in a much more humane, interested and thoroughly personal manner as a consequence; it was not like being whipped on a barracks square by some brute of a Drillmaster.

Consequently she was smiling as she heard Recitation that cold November morning. She stood in the center of the Duty Room holding the text of Cicero handed her, while the anxious-faced Junior duly read off her lines. There were four to do so today. The first succeeded without an error, as did the second, but the third, when ushered in, a charming brunette called Elrich, stood plucking at her tunic, toes turned in, a very picture of apprehension.

“Commence,” said Maria, her nostrils widening at these symptoms. It was evident the girl hadn't learnt her lines, too well. Nor had she done so. Maria counted five errors. She snapped the book with a clip. Still smiling tenderly at the almost tearful Backfisch she asked, “Do you know how many mistakes you made, Elrich?”

“Ner-no, Fraulein.”

“Five.”

“Oooh.”

Maria unsnapped the eel-like switch from her belt.

“How many stripes does that make?”

“Fer-five,” blubbered the girl, “please. Miss.”

Not so bad as all that, surely? But Maria had developed a delightful way of administering these “hunting” strokes for failures in Recitation, one that had earned her rapid and total respect within the Institution's walls.

“You won't require your knickers for a moment, dear.”

Maria stood with legs astride, running the tough, oiled switch through her fingers. It was a lovely weapon, particularly since it ended in a short forked tail, like an adder's tongue, which the mistresses toughened in the faire of an evening when they had nothing else to do.

“Tuck up your skirt. Good. Now lie on your tummy and hold on to my ankles with your hands and don't let go. Now-part your legs wide.”

The recumbent girl was, in this position, vulnerability personified. She shot up a glance, imploring-“Please, Fraulein.”

“What is it?” asked Maria Daunitz, amused.

“Ooh… it stings so… like this… all the girls say they'd rather get it any other way. I c-cer-can't take it like this, I'm sure.”

“Is it the first time I've given you cuts in here?”

“Yer-yess, Mistress.”

“Well, if you don't take it, I shall have the pleasure of seeing you later on today, during Duty, and I assure you I will give you a caning to remember.”

In anguished apprehension the girl dropped her face to the ebon floor. Her hands clutched the lean, booted ankles as if for very life. Her legs widely parted as she lay face down on the floor, her short round bottoms were spread, waiting.

Maria did not wait long. She scalded the switch from well overhead, sending it singing down inside the right cheek; she did not strike with abnormal effort, but very judgingly, snapping her wrist to make the tail eat in with venom at the end of the stroke. She felt it drive and worm into the puppy-flesh close to the cunt.

“Hou-aaaaaah!” wailed the girl, jerking her legs together, and writhing. Her grip almost made Maria stumble. It had been a punishing cut, indeed.

“Not th-th-theeeeah! Pleeeease!”

“Open your legs. Come on. Four more.”

“Ooooh, how it hurts there.”

The second sliced in on the same side, but did not catch the inside quite so keenly. Nonetheless, the tail nipped into the sulcus like a veritable serpent. Then it was the turn of the left side. When these two had bitten home the girl was writhing and bucking like some animal in rut. Maria Daunitz couldn't help laughing at the sight. But to make the last cut really memorable she had to take good aim.

She was lucky, more than accurate. At a moment when the now sprawling girl drew up her right leg in her agony she brought down a singing stripe with all her weight. It ripped into the crease, as she had intended, there seemed an infinitesimal fraction of a pause, then the tails snapped audibly onto, indeed into, the puckered old lady's mouth of the anal hole. Elrich fairly screeched, jacking straight and rolling on the floor in a frenzy of pain, now doubling up her legs, now jerking them out, plucking with her fingers at that inconceivable increase of burn behind.

Maria Daunitz felt the lava rising to her loins. She knew the sight would be with her all day-the threshing limbs, the screwed-up face.

“Stop rolling about in that silly way and get up and put your things on,” she said. A minute later, watching the youngster draw up her knickers in a gingerly way, as if the very touch of stuff was unbearable on her wounds, she could not resist saying, “Bring you to your senses a bit?”

The girl nodded dumbly.

“The last one fetched you, eh?”

“Her-terrifically, Fraulein.”

“You'll remember it when you… go tomorrow, Elrich. Perhaps it'll make you learn your lines better. Now send in Kraus.”

Gulfrida Kraus marched in almost boldly. She was a chubby sixteen-year-old with a compact body, a stern little face with arched eyebrows, dark dewy eyes and a mutinous thrust of chin. In fact, Maria had frequently suspected the girl of rank rejection of the regime. Staring the Duty Mistress straight in the face, the girl handed out her textbook, and it was closed.

“It's no good, Fraulein, I haven't learnt it. I didn't have time.”

Maria frowned, bending her switch. “What's this, Gulfrida?”

“I couldn't… it wasn't…” Almost the girl said the word fair, but checked herself in time. “I had too much Prep, I didn't have time. I'll take my licking, Miss.”

“You know this means a Duty.”

“Yes,” came the answer, after a second.

“I shall use the very toughest cane. Unless,” she murmured, her breath coming more quickly, for these well-perched posteriors were singularly appetizing, “you care to settle it with me after gym at three. In my room.”

The girl conferred on her elder a cool and knowing look.

“Will it be… like you do it in here… I mean, with the switch… inside the…”

The words tailed off. Maria Daunitz frowned again. But this time she did so to hide a smile of triumph. This stocky little teener seemed actually to be opting for a Duty thrashing rather than her patented manner of giving the switch! At the same time one simply did not bargain with pupils, so she said curtly, “It will be eight with a classroom cane. Take it or leave it.”

“Very well, Miss. I'll report to you in your room. Thank you very much.” She curtseyed and left.

After breakfast there were the Dormitories to inspect. The Duty Mistress went round these with the Duty Maid of the day, who happened to be the sprightly Resi. Note was taken of any carelessly made bed, any untidy bedside lockers, and the culprit would rue the proverbial day. Too, if a Dorm was found delinquent more than once in a week, the Praelictor in charge might herself come in for some serious trouble. Thus were the girls kept under constant supervision-“on their toes,” as the healthy widow at their head liked to put it.”

This morning all was in apple-pie order and Maria could not find a fault. Only in Dormitory “D” did she pause, for in the bathing section a length of phallic-looking bone protruded slightly from a pipe by the tiling. She took it out, stared at it, and not knowing whether it was there for some purpose of plumbing duly replaced it. She would tell the Matron about it later. Finally, she sent Resi off with the Book, to replace it on the lectern, and herself made for Steinkopf's much dreaded abode.

A comical sight met her eyes.

Two quite big girls, bare but for their stockings, were having a double enema. Kneeling side by side on a wide wooden bench, they had their arms secured behind them in wrist and elbow cuffs, their heads right down and buttocks thrust up. Into the amber anus of the one on the left threaded a red rubber tube which ran from a canister set on a shelf above. A second tube, of quite astonishing length, was just being inserted into the entrails of the girl on the right by the black-robed Matron, as Maria walked in to pay her respects and report on her finding.

“This I want to watch,” she said with a creamy chuckle, as the lightly greased tube slid in, to the girl's gaspingly protested oooh's and aaah's. Every now and then the Matron turned the tap of the canister briefly, to ease in the passage.

“Two notoriously costive girls,” she announced in her usual surly tone, “I mean to teach them a lesson. This is their third high colonic. Three liters of hot soaped water and turpentine. They take it together and the one who holds it shorter time gets my martinet under her with a vengeance. She also has another dose, held up by a saddle strap with a nice big dildo attached to it. There… there you go, my monkeys, swallow it all every drop, there's no way you can't, so there.”

The tap was opened and soon the bent bottoms were rippling with quivers, quick muscular contractions as the fluid seeped into them. But Maria Daunitz had really to laugh when the girls stood up after it was over, and the tubes snaked out of their bottoms. Their expressions were so woeful, she had no idea an enema could be as corrective; moreover, their bellies were distended until they seemed pregnant, their arms still fastened behind them.

They were stood in a tiled bathroom, side by side, and in a second both were writhing. They were also sweating since the injection had been hot. Truly, she had seldom seen such miserable miens as the pair clenched their legs, or paced and bent, in their efforts to retain their respective doses. But she had work to do herself and couldn't wait any longer, dearly as she would have liked to see that curious raised commode, with the sharp spikes around the seat, in urgent use. She supposed that with arms behind like this a girl had to sit down hard on it. However.

Excusing herself to the implacable Steinkopf, watching grim-faced with a martinet in one hand, she was half out the dispensary when there came a wail, a girlish cry-“Oooouuu, I can't… it's coming down!” plus the sounds of a helpless, abandoned pattering of feet, then categoric noises, in particular a high-pitched pinging-and a scream!

Maria Daunitz went on her way. Steinkopf knew how to treat them, to be sure. In the excitement of the moment she quite forgot about her mission to tell Matron of the bone.

She did not forget her tryst that afternoon, however. Gulfrida Kraus came from her hour of gym, a brisk run outside in a troop presided over by a mistress on horseback, and clouds of steam in the bathroom, looking veritably good enough to eat. So Maria Daunitz thought, sitting spraddle-legged in her chair waiting for her with cane in hand-and the white Duty knickers removed. Yes, her sex was on display and she watched the Junior's eyes to see if they should be so impertinent as to slip to that dryly muffled tuft.

But they did not. Gulfrida's hair was wetly slicked back, her whole skin had a rosy look from its rubbing in the communal bath, and her sharp chin stuck up proudly, as though to say-I'm here, let's get it over with.

Maria dawdled. She had the girl wax the cane first, then clear the room for a good run. She then bent her over a table, arms stretched out in front, legs together. With knickers down and skirt up a soft, full buttock came on display, two ripe rounds relaxed from the exercise and pinkened from their hot tubbing. This flesh would cut well to the cane — and did, fruity weals slicing across in black bands at once.

The girl took it well. Maria had got to five strokes when the door opened and Ingeborg Untermacher strode in, a pile of books under one arm.

“I'm caning a Junior,” said Maria thickly.

“So I see. And caning her well, judging from those lines. I can't see the face but that posterior looks to me like Kraus's. Is that you feeling sorry for yourself, Gulfrida?”

“Ja, Fraulein,” came the muffled reply.

“Stinging a little?”

“Ja.”

“I thought as much.”

“She has three more,” said Maria. “You're certainly cutting low. Ouch! That hurt!”

When it was over, and the gasping girl had dressed herself and left, Maria stood panting by the window; she had to hold on to something and grasped its unappealing bars. They were cold. She was afire. The view over the gaffed walls of the Schloss was of the unending tedium of a now snow-clad plain. Suddenly she was aware of her friend behind her.