“You will receive ten strokes of the cane across your buttocks.”
Heavens, worse than she had thought. Maria tried to keep her face as expressionless as that of the hefty Wedell, as the latter took up the penal cane. Maria gulped. It was an aching, soulless length of round yellow willow, or ash, that the mistress was now rubbing with rosin at its gripping end, obviously capable of lashing agony. It was a thing of drill squares rather than girls” dormitories; its thumping whip would make a Westphalian plough pony dance. Ten strokes with… that?
But Wedell was walking, marching, and Maria knew she had to follow her, bottoms in apprehensive joggle, to one end of the room where sprawled a wooden trestle. The stretched trestle leaked straps like hungry tongues. Broadly spread, her legs were fastened to it at ankle and knee. There was a leather pad at the centre against whose slightly-stained side she rested her pubis, her arms being pulled forward to the lower struts and at the wrists; as the front section, or headpiece, was lower, she found herself bent positively forward, and very much on display behind.
This sensation of utter vulnerability was intensified as a wide belt was drawn tight and buckled over her own. And when a thin tough strap dangling from the pad between her legs was drawn up her furrow and the bisection of her buttocks, to be hauled tight to the back of that same belt behind her, Maria winced with an admixture of both pain and shame. She was beginning to feel utterly trussed and strapped, out of breath and red of face; it hardly helped her general sense of shame that, in this state, the involuntary tremblings of her body all seemed to communicate themselves to her lower person, now her highest! But Wedell had by no means finished. Things were not done by halves at Schloss Rutenberg. Maria had asked to be secured, and would be. From under her armpits two thin black straps bit into the cream of her shoulders, straining forward. Finally, a chain — a common curb or snaffle perhaps — was brought from behind her head through her mouth, and was fastened, after some oil had been smeared on the sides of her lips. She was bitted, no less! And in this process Maria heard a quick sympathetic whisper in her ear as Wedell leaned over her, fastening the chain — “Breathe deeply.” It was surely all she could do. Why, she could hardly twitch. She felt… all bottom.
“Proceed”, said the headmistress. “Begin with four a minute.”
A metronome was set going.
“Ja, Frau Direktrice.”
“Hau, was Du hauen kannst”, came the irrevocable order then.
Fräulein Wedell stood behind Maria, waving the long, heavy Rohrstock in her right hand. She laid its cold wood on the parted, plummy posteriors a second, drew back, and swung.
It was a long sweeping stroke that cut upwards into the fat and Maria had known nothing like its bite before. Allmächtiger Gott! It drove her slack cheeks upwards, branding a band of burning agony athwart them. Then suddenly the true flame of pain drove through her, taking the breath from her half-uttered gasp.
“One”, said the Frau Direktrice. “Schon gut.”
After three every pore of her person seemed possessed of pain and she bit feverishly on the chain between her teeth.
Hhuittt!
“Four!”
Not even halfway through.
“Oh … oh … auuuh.”
She stretched out, twisting up the trestle, her posteriors cringing like those of some well-whipped dog. The long penal cane was unspeakably painful, its tip digging into her right side unbearably. Five… six… seven… dear Christ in HEAVEN.
“Aaaah…”
Then something happened. In a cold tone the Headmistress was speaking.
“You”re letting her off too lightly, Wedell. If you don’t hit harder than this, I’ll have you put to the triangle. It’ll be twenty, in public.”
“Ja, Frau Direktrice. Entschuld.”
“These last cuts over two minutes.”
Maria listened to the metronome ticking. Her whipped seat was afire. No more, no more…
But the next belted into her with a shock that shook the trestle and a drenching streak of agony seemed to pass right through her. Her vision fogged.
“Much better. They should all have been like that.”
“Haaa-uuuuu…”
H-H-HWHTTT!
“Nine. That was too high. Take her at the top of the legs for the last.”
Shivering as if with the ague Maria Daunitz awaited the stroke, stretching forward and, in doing so, pulling up just that part the mistress had been told to flog. The big woman took a prancy pace and wrapped the length of the rod around the base of the wealed surfaces. Maria lunged with a grunting moan, her body spasmed in a cramp, then sheer pain seemed to flood through her from insteps to eyeballs. The last three stripes had been worse than the whole of the first seven.
Her legs were released first, and she jacked them back together, writhing. Ingeborg had instructed her in protocol. She was somehow or other supposed now to kneel and kiss the… the… and thank for punishment… with her hands by her sides… with her… but her hands had been released, her mouth, and her waist, and herself, and a voice was saying sternly, “Stand up at once. This is extremely poor comportment, Daunitz.”
Alas, it was. Pain suffused her from tip to toe, and she realized she was rolling on her back on the floor, with her knees drawn up to her chin, and her hands grabbing and rubbing the twin coals of her arse cheeks. Wedell was looking at her with some interest, from the distance of that endless cane, while the Head’s gaze had been converted to a winking glare by the insertion, in her right eye, of a monocle.
“Get up.”
“Yes … ohoooooaaaah … Frau Direktrice.”
“Pull yourself together and get up and thank for punishment. Cease this unnecessary exhibition at once.”
Maria forced herself to obey. She had to drag herself to her knees. Half-blind with pain she kissed the tip of the outstretched cane, mumbled the ritual words of thanks, resumed her discarded skirt, curtseyed stiffly to the Headmistress, then stood up to attention, trembling like a jelly all over.
“I had hoped you would do better than this, Daunitz. Do you feel well punished?”
“Th-th-thoroughly, Headmistress.” It was something she could gasp out with complete conviction. Her buttocks felt at this moment like so much molten lead. “Thank you”, she managed to get herself to add.
“You will not be let off so lightly next time. In fact, I shall recommend some training correction for you so that you do not behave like this again. Meanwhile, you bear Fräulein Wedell no grudge, I hope; she was merely doing her duty.”
“None”, she breathed in reply.
“Return to your quarters.”
