The ailing soldier King of Prussia, rn his dying days wreaks vengeance for his disabilities on all who surround him. Hapless young girls are tortured and whipped into submitting to the Sapphic pleasures of the sadistic matrons of the terror filled Kurzwald prison. King Frederick's own 'interrogation' rooms echo with the wretching screams of victims, both guilty and innocent, at the very whim of his confidantes. Ingenious devices are employed to secure the prisoners for their pitiless punishment and sado-erotic fruition of the sentences.
CHAPTER ONE
It was a raw February morning in the year 1739, in the twenty-seventh year of the reign of Frederick William I, the soldier-king of Prussia. It was the bleak city of Potsdam, the capital of a Prussia that, under the regime of this avaricious militarist had grown to become a menace to all the crowned heads of Europe.
But if the seventeenth century in Europe was the century of the great French "Sun King" Louis XIV, the eighteenth century was equally the century of the rise of Prussia as a great power. Yet under Frederick William I, it had not yet attained its full zenith of ascendancy, though it was respected and feared.
But the story of the destiny of Prussia out of the most humble beginnings is also the story of the slow rise of the Hohenzollern family, which was to rule the kingdom of Prussia and which had its start in the most inconspicuous beginnings. It was a story of luck and violence, of bold claims and sudden betrayals.
And thanks to the rule of Frederick William I, Prussia could boast a strong, well-drilled army, even though many were mercenaries. Prussia was fated to become the mighty Germany of colonization and military coups a century later, and in those days the expression "Powerful as a Prussian Junker" would symbolize the arrogant, blue-blooded clique of military aristocracy whose leader would one day be Chancellor Bismarck.
And finally, after Germany's greatness in the nineteenth century, it would seem to have reached its ultimate potential in the twentieth, when Kaiser Wilhelm declared war on the Allies in 1914 and seemed for the first few months to be destined to conquer all of Europe.
But the Prussian star was dimming, and World War I plunged what had once been ancient and powerful Prussia and was now Germany into a catastrophic inflationary depression that was to pave the way for the Madman of Munich with his megalo-maniacal dreams of a Third Reich that would dominate the entire civilized world.
And perhaps it all began on this February day in the year of 1739, one year before Frederick William I's despised poet-philosopher-musician son should ascend the throne of Prussia to become known as Frederick the Great.
At fifty-one, Frederick William I was already suffering from the stomach disorder which was to end his life within a year and elevate his despised son to the throne of Prussia. His choleric temper and his brutality were feared throughout the land, even by the lowliest prostitutes who plied their ancient trade in the little houses at the end of Grun Linden Strassze. Short of stature, with thin lips, piercing eyes and a broad nose, his sparse gray hair concealed by a florid wig, the King of Prussia prided himself on his moral sanctity and his utter hatred for the frivolous, the carnal and the unconventional.
Only nine years ago, when his son had been a stripling of eighteen, Frederick William I had had the boy sent to prison and flogged, forced him to watch the execution of his best friends and for a terrible month, had even kept him under a suspended sentence of execution. He feared revolt and plotting and he had even believed that his young son, a dreamer and interested in the flute instead of in the bayonet and the soldier's drill, was conspiring with the Austrians to dethrone him.
Young Frederick had survived that wretched youth, and now he was a prince of the realm, but he still brooded over his father's contempt and hatred of him, often shown openly in the royal court.
And on this dreary February day, his father was once again to show him that though prince, he was not yet king nor ever would be so long as Frederick William I held the sceptre and sat upon the royal throne of Prussia ... The King of Prussia had given audience to petitioners, from widows begging for a few Schillings to buy food for their children, to doddering old veterans of long-forgotten military campaigns asking for pensions.
The court was cleared at last, and the short, pompous and vindictive monarch, who had been suffering from a touch of gout of late, uttered a weary sigh as his faithful valet Joseph Grundzing obsequiously removed the magnificent regal robe and placed it reverently in a nearby closet.
Frederick William stretched himself out upon a sofa, and the valet knelt to draw off the buckled shoes, making the monarch swear vilely as that shoe which was on his goutish foot seemed to pinch in the removal: "Schweinhund! Verdammte Dreck! Be careful, you clumsy idiot! Don't you know that's my bad foot?"
"A thousand pardons, Majesty," Joseph Grundzing propitiated. "May I bring Your Majesty a mug of hot wine and spices?"
"Do so at once, you know it is my custom after an audience with these commoners," the king testily growled. "And then give me my gazette."
He tolerated Joseph Grundzing's occasional laziness and even a bit of pilfering from the royal larder and wine cellar because the valet was also a clever spy and had contacts throughout the city of Potsdam.
He had but to ask of Joseph Grundzing for a report on this woman or that man, and within forty-eight hours there would be virtually a complete dossier. What concerned him now was what had concerned him for the past years: the conduct of his son, for he knew himself to be mortally ill and the thought that this namby pamby boy whom he had almost put to death might sit in his place and rule Prussia made him sweat with fear and have ghastly nightmares in which he saw his kingdom divided and Prussia no more.
The valet hurried to bring the silver mug of mulled wine and knelt before the couch to hand it up to the pudgy, spotted hands of his sovereign. The yellow-brownish marks on those hands were in reality the death warrant pronounced against the ruler of Prussia, though his doctors continued to bleed him by using leeches or their scalpels and spoke of such innocuous maladies as "vapors" and "rheum." The King of Prussia did not fear death, only its consequences in substituting his despised young son in his stead.
And though he and his royal consort, Wilhelmina, had not bedded together for nearly a score of years, there were still occasions when his faithful valet acted the role of panderer to bring, discreetly, to be sure, delightfully complaisant young ladies into the rear door of the palace at Potsdam to entertain Frederick William I.
"Now, my gazette, Joseph," he commanded in a querulous voice. "What of my son? Has he been behaving himself?"
"Thus far it seems so, Majesty," the valet hastened to reply. "Though I have noticed of late he has his carriage take him to a little street off Viertel Square. It is said that he visits with an elderly schoolteacher and listens to the reading of poetry."
"Pfui! That stupid, womanly lout!" Frederick William I growled. "Hasn't he got over that idiocy yet, Joseph? It almost cost him his head not long ago. And this is the man who is going to take over my mighty army when I am gone, is it?
"He will read poetry to them instead of having drills. And the damned Austrians under Maria Theresa, that scheming bitch who gets her husband to do whatever she wants simply by having her bed put on casters and rolled out of his room if he doesn't sign her decrees, will gobble up my poor Prussia!"
"He does show some manliness, though, Highness," the valet soothingly put in. For he was an opportunist, and he knew that his king was mortally ill and that if he seemed to hold the son in disregard, the latter might well end his valet's sinecure when he assumed the throne. "I know that it is not my lowly business to dare mention the affairs of a prince, Majesty-"
"Say your mind, Joseph, and do not mince words with me!" Frederick William I grumbled as he took a hearty swig from his mug.
"Well, then you will recall that Your Majesty once accused the young prince of caring more for his own kind than for the fair sex."
"So I did, and so it was true. Did I not have Captain Katte shot because certain information came to me that he and my son had some loathsome affection for each other? But what is on your mind, Joseph, what is really on it?"
"Why, sir, that this schoolteacher has a daughter who is quite attractive. And it is said that the Prince, your son, pays her court while he is reading his poetry before her father."
"An intrigue," Frederick William I chuckled, his lips tight and his face composed in a sanctimonious look. "And so this little slut of a schoolteacher's daughter aims high, does she?
"She wishes doubtless to ensnare my son into some disgusting liaison, so that she may be made a fine lady and perhaps even introduced at court. You will find out her name and you will describe her to me, Joseph.
"The young hussy may find herself sent to the Kurzwald Prison if she is not careful, and made to strip of a cold morning for the executioner's whip as she is lashed through the streets before she takes her new abode in a prison cell with bread and water and the matron's tawse to discipline her!"
"I shall make diligent inquiries, Majesty, be sure!" the valet murmured.
"Aught else?"
"Very little, Sire. There is news that a young princess from Silesia is traveling incognito through Potsdam."
"Now that is most interesting, Joseph! Silesia, once part of Poland, next became Germanized. Then, with the accession of the Hapsburgs on the Bohemian throne two centuries ago, it was allied with Austria. It has been my hope that one day Silesia will become part of Prussia. Yes, I must have news of this girl of royal blood. And I must find out why she comes to Potsdam and hides her rank from our royal court."
"I shall learn that for you also, Sire. But now would you not like some diversion?"
"You sly dog, what have you done without my knowledge now?" Frederick William I chuckled in rare good humor as he finished his mug of wine.
"There's a little seamstress, Majesty, who was sentenced to be whipped in the public square and sent to the prison for having uttered slander against Your Majesty. But as it chanced, I was in the magistrate's court but yesterday and, seeing how comely the wench is, asked if I might not converse with her:
"When I did so, I proposed to her that she retract her insults and save herself at least the prison, and she was most contrite, Majesty."
"How contrite?"
"Why, so much so," the valet leered, "that she besought me to use my good offices with Your Majesty to have you instead administer the thrashing and then to allow her with the gift of her body to show how abjectly she is truly devoted to your person."
The King of Prussia burst into salacious laughter. Moral judge though he had been of his own son's supposed iniquities, Frederick William I was often assailed by the grossest lusts. "Take me to this little harlot who would rather have her King thrash her than the executioner. Let her know before I enter that if she pleases me, I may spare her the term in prison, but that in any case she shall be soundly thrashed!"
CHAPTER TWO
In an antechamber just off the royal bedchamber, a young chestnut-haired woman of about twenty knelt with bowed head and hands clasped, sniffling audibly.
Her name was Elizabeth Luchtau, she was orphaned, and had toiled as a seamstress for coarse, tyrannical Frau Horthmeyer for the past four years.
This mean, despotic woman ran a brothel for which her dressmaking shop was an ingenious blind. She had sought to no purpose over the past few years to induce Elizabeth to exchange needle and thread for a fine shift in a little room where gentlemen would call and pay many Schillings for her favors, but the intrepid girl had indignantly refused.
Frau Horthmeyer had not pressed the matter, since she had Elizabeth bound in a kind of indenture till the girl's twenty-first year. But only last week, two of her regular sluts had fallen ill and the doctor had told her that she dared not reemploy their carnal services less they give the French pox to the prosperous gentlemen who might visit them.
Accordingly, the woman had insisted that Elizabeth Luchtau become a prostitute, and when the girl had angrily and tearfully refused, Frau Horthmeyer had provoked her into uttering a treasonable insult against no less a personage than the King of Prussia himself.
Then, vindictively, threatening two of her prostitutes with a severe thrashing if they did not testify against Elizabeth, she had the unfortunate virgin hauled off to the magistrate's court and there formally charged with treason. The result had been a sentence pronounced that had poor Elizabeth Luchtau in desperate anguish: a public flogging in the square and then three years in the grim Kurzwald Prison.
Joseph Grundzing, the King's faithful valet, had chanced to be in attendance at the court, and had persuaded the magistrate to release the girl to him. Some gold had changed hands, and so the lovely young seamstress was informed that she could be spared the prison and even the public flogging if she would make amends by yielding her virtue to her sovereign.
At first Elizabeth Luchtau had been horrified, since she had kept her virginity so earnestly against all the wiles of her cruel employer. But the thought of being stripped to the waist in the presence of the jeering spectators and flogged by the executioner, and then to spend three terrible years under the cruel vigilance of the matrons, many of whom were convent sisters trained in corporal discipline to wayward girls, was anathema to the gentle girl.
So tearfully she had agreed to retract the alleged "treasonable utterance" before the King himself, and now she awaited his entry into this secret chamber whose existence not even Queen Wilhelmina knew.
The door opened and she uttered a stifled cry of terror. But it was the valet, a finger held to his lips as he approached her. "I have interceded with the King, girl," he murmured. "He is disposed to hear your petition. However, you must submit yourself to the whip. How now, you little slut-isn't it better to feel the lash given you by your own sovereign than to be exposed to the hooting crowd out on the street where all will see your shame?"
"I-I am g-grateful, s-sir," Elizabeth Luchtau sobbed, "but I have always been a decent girl, and-and-"
"You stupid little slut," the valet sneered, "do you think your virginity is of such important? Be happy to yield it up, or suffer instead the public whipping and the prison to which the magistrate yesterday condemned you. You have your choice and you had best be quick. He will enter here in a few minutes. Well?"
Tearfully, the chestnut-haired beauty nodded.
"Good, you're showing sense! Now there's no time to lose, girl. Off with all your clothes except your drawers and camisole and your stockings. Those dirty, cheap shoes-here, give them to me, I'll burn them. Oh stop your snivelling. If you please him, he'll give you a gold piece and you can buy a fine gown and new shoes worthy of a fine lady!"
Under the valet's urging, Elizabeth Luchtau blushingly began to take off her dress and then her petticoats. Her lovely young body needed no corset, nor did she wear one.
When she was at last down to a cheap, coarse muslin camisole and gray knickers of the same material, as well as black lisle hose, she again began to weep and covered her face with her hands.
"Oh stop it!" the valet grumbled. "One would think you were being beheaded instead of being blessed with such good fortune! Tell yourself that few girls in Potsdam are given such an opportunity as to be punished and then fucked by the King of Prussia himself!
"There, let's have a look at you-well, you're Uto plump for my taste, but he'll no doubt find you a tasty morsel. Now down on your knees again and face that door there, he'll come through there! And mind you please him, girl, or I'll be taking you back before the magistrate!"
Joseph Grundzing then withdrew, shaking his fist at the weeping girl who bowed her head before the little door through which Frederick William I would soon enter. From his bedroom, this secret chamber was reached by a narrow closet which contained a false door (to throw Queen Wilhelmina off his scent in the event that she should try to enter the closet), but whose real door was in a section of wall so ingeniously camouflaged that only the foreknowledge of where a secret little panel should be pressed gave access to it.
Elizabeth Luchtau was a creamy-skinned, with a voluptuously ripe young body. She had magnificent titties, set high on her chest and close together, full and firm like young melons. From her supple waist there jutted equally appetizing round buttomcheeks and sumptuous young hips, and her thighs were sturdy and beautifully muscled. Her face was piquant, heart-shaped, with full sweet tremulous mouth, large, closely spaced and lustrous hazel eyes, and a dainty little snub nose.
As she waited, she began to tremble. She knew only vaguely how a man possessed a woman, for some of the seamstresses who were really prostitutes for her cruel mistress had slyly intimated to her how things went. But they in turn had been warned by Frau Horthmeyer "not to tell that stupid little bitch too much, or maybe she'll be scared when I finally make her take a room and earn her keep on her back!"
Then suddenly the door opened, and the squat, heavy figure of the king appeared on the threshold of narrow little door which entered the antechamber.
He was in his nightshift and slippers, and in his right hand was a leather tawse. Though soldiers in his arm., were made to run the gantlet and were given the stick, this instrument had just been introduced into his court by a minor diplomat from the English court who had brought with him his unruly sixteen-year-old niece.
When the King of Prussia had scolded the girl for her impudence at court, and suggested to her uncle that he thrash her bodily, the latter had chuckled and said, "Elspeth knows very well that directly after I leave you Your Majesty, she shall have the tawse on her bottom!"
And when the curious ruler had asked to know what a tawse was, the diplomat had sent his own servant to his chambers to procure it and to make a present of it to Frederick William I.
Made of solid brown leather and with an extra thickness to the handle in, it was about twenty-six inches in overall length, three inches wide, about a quarter of an inch thick, and the last four inches were cut into three finger-like strips.
Elizabeth Luchtau uttered a sobbing cry of terror and of awe combined as she recognized the heavy, squat and stern-faced personage of her ruler.
"So you're the little slut that insulted her king, are you?" he said in a hoarse, thick voice.
"Oh, Oh please, S-Sire, I truly didn't say it-it was Frau Horthmeyer and her girls who said I did! I'm only a poor little seamstress, Majesty, and I wouldn't dare to-to insult you!"
"Damme if I'm not inclined to believe you, girl." he approached slowly, dangling the tawse in his hand, his eyes studying her. The camisole, though coarse, was thin enough to shape out the round prominence of her bubbies, and his cruel nature was titillated by the piteously tearful and woebegone look on her lovely heart shaped face, as well as by the prayerful way she clasped her hands and held them up to him.
"Stand up and let's have a look at you, Elizabeth!" he ordered.
Timidly, trembling even more violently, the gii. obeyed. "Turn around," he growled, and when she had done so, he chuckled lewdly and applied the tawse lightly over the plump round globes of her behind, making her squeal with surprise rather than pain.
"That's a fine Arsch you've got my beauty! And I tell you that with such a nice white skin, the executioner's whip would leave very bad marks. You would have to show your Butzen naked to all the people, you know."
"Oh please-Pll do anything-I'm willing-only don't punish me for what I didn't do, M-Majesty," Elizabeth Luchtau sobbed.
"We'll see about that. Right now, take off that camisole and then the knickers. And then you're to bend over the bed with your nice fat backside towards me, hein?"
"Oh please-not-not all naked-I've ver been-no man-"
"You little Hure, I'm your King, not ein man!" he growled.
Bursting into tears, Elizabeth Luchtau slowly obeyed. The camisole fluttered to the floor, the knickers were tugged down, and as she stood in her stockings, she innocently clapped one hand over the thick dark bush of her cunt and tried to hide her panting big round breasts with the other arm.
"I gave you an order you little bitch! Bend over the bed!" he growled.
Elizabeth Luchtau's eyes were blinded with tears as she stumbled towards the huge, four-postered, canopied bed. Slowly she put her palms forward on the rich satin sheets, and bent her shoulders down towards them, so that her firm round titties dangled like ripe fruits ready for plucking, and her tensing bottomglobes twitchingly and palpitatingly offered themselves to the glittering eyes of Frederick William I.
"Your legs apart more than that, bitch," he snarled, flicking out the tawse lightly so that just the tips stung the edge of her right hip.
"Ohhh, please-please, M-Majesty, don't-don't wh-wh-whip me h-hard, I-I'll be good," the girl sobbed as she obeyed.
"And bend your face almost down to the sheets, too," he added as an afterthought, again flicking the edge of her hip with the cruel tips of the tawse.
With a whimpering little sob, the girl obeyed, and now her legs were straddled hugely, her bottom jutting out, in the most lascivious posture imaginable. He could see the soft pink lips of her cunt framed by the dark curls of her bush, and he licked his lips in cruel anticipation. "That's better," he growled. "Now I'm going to thrash you a little, and you'd best not yell too much, or you'll go out to the public square where you can do all the singing you like with no one to care, you understand me?"
"Why-yes, M-Majesty," the naked girl whimpered.
Standing in only her stockings, with her legs hugely spread, her bottom thrust out and her titties just brushing the satin sheets of that royal bed, the little seamstress waited for her punishment. It began as the king's arm flashed downward and the tawse clung over both huddling naked bottomcheeks with an angry Thwack!
"Ami, oh please, it hurts me! I'll do whatever you wish, but please don't wh-wh-whip me so hard, please!" she wailed as she turned her tear-stained face towards her sovereign. But even through her tears she could see the protuberance of the royal prick against his lace-embroidered nightshift, and she began to shudder and her teeth to chatter, for she at last realized that her virginity was doomed.
"If it hurts too much, if it warms that big fine white Arsch of yours, girl, stick your fist into your mouth and bite your knuckles," he told her as he applied a second crashing blow of the leather band over the base of her naked posterior.
And then slowly, while :. writhed, danced from foot to foot, screamed nd pleaded brokenly with him to spare her, avowing that she would do whatever he wished if only he would spare her that dreadful whip, the King of Prussia, like a common executioner, slavering, his eyes glittering with lust, sent the tawse smacking viciously against her thighs and bottom until at last poor Elizabeth Luchtau crumpled to the floor, rolling onto her side and, holding up her hands in prayer, whimpered, "Take me, do what you will, M-Majesty, I can't bear it any longer-I'm your slave-but have mercy, only have mercy for the love of heaven!"
"Get up on that bed and open those legs for me, then!" he panted. To quicken her, he raised the tawse again and brought it down over her bare side, and the frantic naked young seamstress scrambled to her feet and fairly flung herself upon the royal bed. A bed, to be sure, which Frederick William Fs queen had never seen or lain in!
He tore off his nightshirt and was naked, his body flaccid, his skin mottled with the disease which would kill him within a year. But his prick was still formidable, and the girl quailed from it as he mounted the bed and crawled to her, hoarsely panting, licking his lips in anticipation of the feast of virginal white flesh surrendered to him.
And Elizabeth Luchtau, one arm covering her eyes, tears streaming down her cheeks, uttered a shriek as she felt him burst her maiden seal and profane her young virginity. Then, her bottom scorching her from the thrashing, she abandoned herself submissively to the will of the King of Prussia.
CHAPTER THREE
A carriage drew up in front of a modest little inn, and as the fat coachman bawled out the news that here were guests of quality, a young stable boy ran up to take the reins while an older youth, who fancied himself a great Casanova with the ladies because only two nights ago he had lost his male virginity and been seduced by the blowsy barmaid Betsy, hurried to open the door of the carriage and to help down two attractive young women.
One of these was black-haired, with supple figure hidden by the voluminous folds and pleats and flounces of a rather sober brown cloth gown, with buckled shoes and cotton hose, a fashion which was frowned upon in austere Prussia as being the mark of a lady of easy virtue. She wore a brown bonnet with a dark veil, and carried a heavy reticule. During the journey from Silesia, she had amused herself by knitting a sweater for her favorite fox terrier, whom she called "Puppchen." Her name was Estanzia Carola Lienz, but in Silesia she was addressed as "Your Highness," for she was a princess of the royal house of Lienz, and her Uncle Anion sat on the throne as King of Silesia, given this almost meaningless mark of royal favor by the ambitious Empress of Austria Maria Theresa.
For Silesia was indeed an Austrian province, but the wily Empress knew politics better than most men, She was well aware that the Silesians looked back to their ancient Czech lineage and were justly proud of it. To have overthrown the monarchy would thus have been a grievous blunder which might have made the Silesian noblemen arm against her as their common foe. And since she had aspirations that involved even Prussia-indeed, all of Europe was within her scheming!-it mattered little to her that Silesia should have a king, particularly when he sat on his throne through her dispensation and indulgence.
The lovely Princess Estanzia had, a week ago, been given the curt order to submit herself for a royal alliance with Johann, Duke of Platz, an insipid youth of twenty in whose dissipated veins there ran the blood of nobility traced back as far-though of course not without some illegitimate strain-to the Hapsburgs and even the vaunted Hohenzollerns. It was Maria Theresa's wish that the vivacious, intrepid and somewhat unconventional young princess be united with one of the chief Austrian noble families as a further grip on her Silesian territory. If, for example, young Frederick of Prussia should know about the girl, she told her ministers, he might wish to marry her himself. She had no wish for an alliance with Prussia-not of that kind.
But Estanzia Carola Lienz, though only twenty-one, thought herself already a woman capable of determining her own destiny. She despised Duke Johann; and her pretty maid, who was accompanying her on this flight into the shelter of Prussia where she was certain that Maria Theresa and her own uncle would not think to search, had often told her that the young nobleman was notorious for his cruelty and debauchery. Estanzia Carola Lienz would not have married him if only for one episode which her pretty maid Gilda had acquainted her with: in a fit of temper, piqued because a handsome tavern wench refused to bed with him, he had taken his riding crop and whipped the wench's dog to death. And since the black-haired young princess adored dogs, she swore to Gilda Dvornak that she would sooner die than marry such a degenerate brute.
Accordingly, she had waited until her portly uncle had taken his customary midday nap to pack a single bag with only the barest necessities, and, enlisting the services of her faithful Gilda, had sneaked out of the back of the palace, bribed a loyal young footman (who would have given his life for just a smile from her red lips) to order a carriage, and sworn him to secrecy as to her destination. Since she had not told him, moreover, he could not betray her. Nor would he have done so under any circumstances.
It had been a long and arduous journey, for the coachman had sought to avoid the main highways where Silesian patrols or border guards might halt the flight of his young mistress and her devoted attendant. The weather had been miserable, and they had lost two days when a blinding snowfall had forced them to take refuge in a wretched little hovel just on the Prussian border. But now they were at Potsdam, and Estanzia Carola Lienz reveled in her newly acquired freedom.
The veil could not quite hide the exquisite oval casting of her aristocratic face, the dainty aquiline nose with its thin, flaring sensuous wings, the ripe firm generous mouth and the determined little chin. Her dark-brown eyes were large and closely-spaced, and it was easy to see why the valiant young footman would willingly have sold his soul to the devil in hell for just a smiling glance from them. Virgin though she was, Estanzia Carola Lienz was innately passionate, vivacious, and audacious, and one had only to say "No" to her to rouse her immediate defiance. Her parents had died several years ago, so that her uncle was not only her ruler but also her guardian. And since his own wife had died only a fortnight ago from an embolism doubtless brought about by overeating, the bereavement had actually aided the young princess' plans for escaping an unwanted marriage.
Gilda Dvornak was nineteen, with auburn hair, a ripe body, round sweet face with flashing gray-green eyes and a dainty Grecian nose. She was not of noble blood, and usually ladies-in-waiting and maids to royalty were drawn only from the aristocracy and the nobility. However, her father had been a captain of mercenaries who had distinguished himself in the service of King Anton. As a mark of royal favor, therefore, his only daughter Gilda had been appointed as personal maid to the spirited young princess.
"Welcome, ladies, to the Mackholm," the officious footman declared, with what passed for a courtly bow. Estanzia Carola lienz glanced nervously at her lovely auburn-haired companion. This greeting was inauspicious. She was traveling incognito. Though she used her rightful name, "lienz" was supposedly not known to the Prussian court. Moreover, she had thought of shortening it to Linz, as a further deterrent to being recognized.
"Thank you," she replied in flawless German, for as a young girl she had been well instructed in the court languages of Europe, including French, and Spanish, as well as Italian. "My sister and I are in need of rooms. Can your master put us up?"
"To be sure, and if you will but follow me, I myself will announce you. What a fine carriage! Do you come from afar? I am Willi Murcht, at your services, gnadiges Frauleinen!"
"That's most kind of you. We-we've come from Vienna," Estanzia Carola lied, eyeing Gilda and making an imperceptible nod of her head to let her young maid know that this would be their story.
"From so far!" Willi Murcht repeated wonderingly. "To this dreary town of Potsdam-well, you've your own reasons, doubtless! Do but follow me! Ours is a modest and humble inn, but there is good food and beer and the rooms are comfortable."
As he went to open the door of the inn, he glanced covertly at the veiled young woman's ankles, but her long full pleated skirts denied him much of a glimpse except what he had already seen when he had handed her down from the carriage, that flash of white hose which for an instant had told him that the calves of this exquisite morsel of femininity were almost those of a dancer in their lithe suppleness. Not that Willi Murcht would have appreciated such a regalia of feminine beauty as Estanzia Carola Lienz truly possessed; he was still fancying himself as a masterful lover blessed by the goddess Venus herself, and all because he had tumbled the fat blonde Betsy who had had scores of better lovers before him, and would have scores more long after.
The nearly bald, stocky landlord of the Mackholm, an apron about his paunchy middle, was in the tavern room scolding plump Betsy for not having thoroughly soaped and dried the mugs and the wine glasses. She in turn had berated him for his stupidity, avowing that soap was not proper for vessels in which spirits were served, for they would alter the taste. He had countered by calling her a stupid slut who existed here only in his charity and reminded her that she had best think more of making the beds of his guests than tumbling herself in them with those whose purses were fat as she was.
She was in a corner sulking now, wiping her eyes with her dirty apron and giving him resentful glances, as Willi Murcht ostentatiously ushered in the young princess and her maid.
"My master, the finest innkeeper in all Potsdam, Herr Schnurr," he beamed.
"Get back to your duties, you lout!" was his employer's surly greeting. Then, fawning upon the two attractive young women, he came forward and bobbed his head: "And how may I serve your ladyships?"
"You do us too much kindness, Herr Schnurr," Estanzia Carola Lienz said in her clear sweet voice. "We are not of the nobility, but rather two seamstresses from Vienna who, having inherited a goodly sum of gold from our doting grandmother, have come to Potsdam to seek our fortune. I can sew ruffles and laces in the French as well as the Austrian manner, and my sister Gilda can design pretty hats for the fine ladies."
"You will starve to death in Potsdam," Hans Schnurr glumly retorted. "The frivolities of other lands are frowned upon by our good King Frederick William. But that is your affair. You wish lodging and food, I take it? That is arranged. And you say you have gold.
That is even better. If you plan to stay long, ladies, doubtless I can make some arrangement most satisfactory to you both. But I myself will take you to your rooms."
"We need only one between us, Heir Schnurr," the young princess smilingly interposed. "And since our journey has been wearisome, we shall doubtless nap until it is time for supper. You will be so good as to knock on our door so that we may descend to eat."
"But for such fine ladies of quality and with so much gold," the portly landlord grinned, "there is no need to mingle with the common folk. I myself will bring a tray of supper to you, and doubtless you ladies would wish wine. A good bottle of Nierstein or a fine Moselle and perhaps a baked rabbit, and my wife will make you a trifle for dessert."
"At that rate, we shall spend all our gold quickly," Gilda giggled, and the princess gave her a merry, approving look.
"Oh come, ladies, my fare is good but it is not overly priced. You will find no better accommodations for the money in all of Potsdam, I warrant you. But now to your room. I shall give you the very best in my inn, on the second floor and at the back, where you will not be disturbed by the noises of the street."
A few moments later, the two young women were alone and removing their outer garments, laughing merrily as they exchanged confidences about the long journey. For them it was a gay adventure, a lark, but they could not know that they had left the frying pan only to fall into the fire!
CHAPTER FOUR
It was a week after the incognito disappearance of the young princess from Silesia and the weather was even more gray and desolate than ever. The snowstorm of the night before had clogged both roads to Potsdam and Konigsburg.
Meanwhile, the King of Silesia, Anton Lienz, having been informed that his young niece had vanished without information, had already sent cavalry and transports to the Silesian border, but to no avail. Duke Johann of Platz, the dissipated young nobleman to whom Estanzia had been betrothed, had an audience with the king and insolently intimated that he questioned the motives for this sudden delay. The men had parted inimically and Anton had promised himself that he alone would administer the first corporal punishment the princess's young royal bottom had ever known, once she was found and brought back where she belonged.
In the Murzwald Prison today, the head matron, Frau Klara Diepold, was receiving from her toadying assistant, Hertha Mulder, the roster of the "new fish"-or, more formally, prisoners just consigned to this dingy old brick building. There were five new prisoners whose sentences had been confirmed by the magistrate and whom the bailiff had just brought, this very morning, to the entry gate of the formidable old bastion.
Among them was the weeping young seamstress, Elizabeth Luchtau, twenty years old, chestnut-haired, whose mistress had treacherously denounced her for treason, and who had thereupon submitted herself, body and soul, to the King of Prussia himself, in theingenuous hope that her prison sentence and flogging would therefore be dismissed. What was her horror now, this afternoon, after she had bartered her honor in the hope of safety, to find the guards summarily knocking at the door of the little room in the palace to which she had been assigned, then to be confronted by two helmeted halberdiers with the curt announcement that she was to be taken to Kurzwald Prison.
"But-but I don't understand! Didn't the King-didn't the magistrate-oh dear God, it cannot be possible!" she had groaned, her eyes incredulous and full of tears.
The guard smirked. "Well, you see, you little bitch, Queen Wilhelmina summoned His Majesty to herself last night and told him she suspected he was concealing those little sluts of his in the palace. So, for your own good, my girl, I will escort you to the prison. But have no fear, His Majesty has not forgotten how tender you were. In a little while there will be a Utile house and a little money, and you will again have the favor of His Majesty."
This news, however, did little to ease the agonized mind of the young seamstress. The cruel Fraulein Hertha Mulder had gloatingly related to her many tales of the most lurid and horrendous goings-on at the old prison to which prisoners were subjected, and she entered in fear and trembling. So, weepingly entreating the guard to remind His Majesty of his pledge and humbly agreeing to this swift and unexpected disposition of her person, the young girl had been brought here, along with four other sentenced female convicts, to be lined up in the office of Frau Diepold.
The superintendent of the Kurzwald Prison was a buxom, unattractive woman of forty-seven, with stiff gray hair and the suspicion of a moustache on her upper lip and a sneering face which had, on sight, struck terror into the neophytes who faced her for the first time. Beside her stood the lean, bony and gossipy Hertha Mulder, who ostentatiously jangled the huge metal key ring on which were arrayed the keys to the individual cells which these new prisoners would soon be assigned to occupy for the duration of their sentences and over whom she had full charge. Before this confrontation, she and her superior had enjoyed a detailed discussion of the charms and personalities of the likeliest victims consigned to their less-than-tender care. For both these women were notorious Lesbian sadists and woe betide any beauty who was ill-fated enough to draw their attention to her. Even if her conduct in prison were flawless, she would not escape their tyrannical lust-demands, and if, like many a hapless, decent girl sent to prison out of some mischance, she was brave enough to resist these carnal incursions on her rights as a prisoner, she would find herself sent to a rat-infested subterranean dungeon with a crust of bread and a pannikin of water as her daily fare and where she would lie until she was ready to tell one of the wardresses she was ready to capitulate.
"Attention, you sluts!" Hertha Mulder snapped as she scowled at the five young women. Then, with a gloating smile, she turned to her superior and read off the list.
"Elizabeth Luchtau, to be imprisoned at will, with privileges."
A thin smile wreathed Frau Diepold's Tips. "Well, you must be some nobleman's doxy, to be so fortunate! But mind you, you'll do the chores like any other prisoner, or you'll have my wardresses to deal with!"
"Johanna Kleist, age twenty-three, two years for theft," the assistant declaimed.
The chief matron's steely gray eyes contemplated the last-named woman and found her appetizing indeed. Johanna Kleist was black-haired, with a handsome, sullen face and insolent eyes, but with a truly magnificent figure ill-concealed by her tattered, dirtied woolen dress. She had been seized in a tavern, denounced by a wealthy old merchant who had accused her of pilfering his purse. Actually, the charge had been retaliatory, because he had attempted to buy Johanna's favors and had failed. Trumped-up though the charge was, the merchant had enough influence to make it stick and now Johanna was in Kurzwald.
"A thief, hein!" the chief matron drawled. "We have work for thieving hands here. Hertha, put her down in the laundry and we'll see whether we can keep those fingers busy enough with lye and soap to keep them out of gentlemen's purses."
"Very good, Frau Diepold. Next, Margit Birnbaum, nineteen, five years for attempted poisoning."
The young convict thus designated burst out passionately: "It's not true, it's a lie-"
"Silence, you filthy slut! I have no use for murderesses here. The charge says you tried to put arsenic in your lover's food."
"It was only henbane, and I did it to scare him because he was going to leave me after promising to marry me, and I was going to have his child."
"You're lying bitch! I can see a long education for you, my girl," the chief matron sneered. "Hertha, put them both down for the Weldome-this one and Kleist along with her. Tomorrow night, you bitches, you won't have occasion to complain of neglect or the cold of February. Your Arsches will be burning, I promise you that. Next?"
"Magdalen Preuss, thirty, three years as an incorrigible Hure."
The woman was of medium height, with thick brown hair coiled in a coronet braid atop her head, a handsome face that had been embittered by the years, confirmed by the cynical stare of the lacklustre eyes.
"Put her down for the Weldome, as well. We have no use for filthy whores here. Also, Hertha, we will put her tonight in an isolation cell and fumigate the bitch. Next?"
"The last one, Frau Diepold. Jenska Kravitz, twenty-five, three years for smuggling."
Frau Diepold considered the ripely endowed figure of the convict now before her.
"You are from Silesia, aren't you, bitch?"
The young woman hung her head and her lips trembled with fear, for her companions on the way to prison had well indoctrinated her with the horrors of Kurzwald, and what she had seen thus far convinced her the tales had been true.
"You'll speak when you're spoken to, bitch!" she was admonished.
"Y-yes, matron," she faltered.
"You look to me like a gypsy, one of those roving bands of tinsmiths and baby-stealers. You'll smuggle nothing out of Kurzwald. You'll work in the kitchen. We have a fat cook there, and she'll swat you with her ladle when you're out of line. And, of course, put her down for the Welcome," the matron pronounced, and turned to her assistant. "Is that all? If it is, take them away and see they're taken care of properly."
Hertha Mulder was ready. "Forward, march!" she barked. "No whispering! Keep in single file!"
The new day had begun for the "new fish" of Kurzwald Prison.
CHAPTER FIVE
It was Friday afternoon of that same week, and the winter seemed determined to proclaim its reign as being even more powerful than that of Frederick William I over all Prussia. Ferocious, raw winds, piling snowdrifts hither and yon along the roads, had virtually blocked all of Potsdam, so that no one could leave anymore readily than visitors might enter. And within the terrible, gloomy walls of Kurzwald Prison, the malignancy of human nature seemed to seek to rival that of the savage elements. For on this afternoon, Chief Matron Klara Diepold and her arch-conspiratress aide, Hertha Mulder were to preside over the customary "Welcome" given all new prisoners.
Years ago, the King of Prussia, in founding Kurzwald, had ordained that all females consigned to its fortress-like confines know the humiliation of the lash, to acquaint them better with the rigorous morality and the strict justice of the Kingdom of Prussia. This custom had never faltered, and under the regime of the Lesbian sadist who had the office of head matron, it had become a sadistic as well as sensual ceremonial, destined to impress the younger, less tractable females so that they would understand that when Klara Diepold and Hertha Mulder summoned them to their bed chambers, the slightest hesitation or sign of refusal would mean a Friday afternoon stretched out upon the whipping bench, the flogging ladder or bound over the fustigation stool.
All that was spared at these unfortunates condemned to the "Welcome" (unlike that German prison of the early nineteenth century of which Reinhardt writes in his famous "Lennchen in Zuchthaus") was the presence of a male warder. Several years ago, the cunning chief matron had persuaded Frederick William I that she and her wardresses and particularly her efficient assistant Hertha Mulder could quell all female convicts within the confines of the prison better than any male guards. They would also, she pointed out to this sanctimoniously moral monarch, eliminate opportunity for any of the sexual depravities which, as it was well known, male guards often practiced with helpless females in the prisons of other countries. And since Frederick William I prided himself on his continence and strict adherence to convention (though of course he did not consider such episodes as he had had with poor Elizabth Luchtau as needful to count in his balance scale), he had readily concurred. Moreover, the absence of male guards would save a handsome stipend from his treasury, and he had long been known as a most parsimonious king among Europe's mighty rullers.
The "Welcome" was generally administered on the upraised dais of the huge refectory of the prison, where the inmates ate their meager rations of potato soup, black bread and, on rare' occasions, a bit of fish or soup meat. There were rows and rows of benches and tables, and here all the prisoners were assembled to witness the ceremony as a kind of object lesson which would instill fear in their hearts and a respect for the prison discipline. It was an occasion over which the sadistic chief matron and her principal aide particularly delectated, for it gave them the opportunity to have the handsomest of the female prisoners stripped for the flogging, to observe the latter's reactions under the whip and also to make their own designations for the clandestine erotic assignations to which ultimately all these prisoners-if they were prepossessing enough to attract the greedy eyes of these two sadistic women-must acquiesce.
On more private sessions, such as if one of the wardresses reported a prisoner as a trouble maker and the latter was sent directly to the office of the chief matron or her assistant for an interview, these two powerful dominatresses of Kurzwald Prison themselves applied the lash. They much preferred this, because very often a sentence could be suspended when the unfortunate victim, her buttocks burning from the tawse or the birch, implored pardon and avowed herself ready to do anything in the world to stop the resumption of the flogging. They might then propose to her the odious and lascivious alternative of yielding herself to their Lesbian will. But for this afternoon and for all such Friday-afternoon "Welcomes," the prison refectory was invariably the locale for these public punishments. And neither the chief matron nor her assistant then wielded the lash; that function was reserved for Brigetta Liebwerds, a handsome thirty-five-year-old, russet-haired trusty. This handsome creature had been sentenced to Kurzwald for life a decade ago when she had been found guilty of smothering her own newly born baby, the illegitimate offspring of a dissipated young roue who happened to be the son of an important nobleman attached to the cabinet of Frederick William I. It had been the father's intervention that had saved Brigetta's comely neck from the headsman's axe, for he had privately believed that his son had been entirely to blame. Brigetta had, needless to say, incurred the favor of both Hertha Mulder and Klara Diepold from the very outset of her prison incarceration, and because of this was delegated the important role of prison flogger. She also understood that through her skill, she might bring the most rebellious of newcomers to terms with these two Sapphic sadists and thus gain greater favor.
Accordingly, she stood on the edge of the dais, with the chief matron and her assistant seated in heavy straightbacked chairs against the wall, wearing the customary gray woolen prison dress but with her sleeves rolled up to display powerfully muscled, creamy-skinned arms. As the wardresses obliged the other inmates to file silently into the refectory and take their places at the benches so that they might face the scene of punishment, Brigetta turned to her two tyrannical mistresses and, quickly walking back to their chairs, whispered, "Whom do you most wish to be obedient, gnadige Frau Diepold?"
"That little poisoner's not a bad bit," the head matron muttered. "But I'd be sure there wasn't anything lying round she could get her hands on when we're together. She's a tasty wench. Mind you stretch out her thrashing. And that flaxen-haired smuggler, the Kravitz bitch, interests me. As for the whore Preuss, lay it on soundly even to the blow. And finally that Kleist bitch would make a good bedwarmer, once she gets that sullen look off her face. Let the birch blister that firm Arsch of hers!"
"Very good, gnadige Frau Diepold," the russet-haired trustee deferentially inclined her head. "Have you any preference as to the order in which they shall be thrashed?"
"Indeed I do. Always save the best for last, that's my motto. We'll have the young poisoner to finish up with. She's a fine pale-skinned slut, and the tawse should mark her up nicely-but don't draw blood, it may leave marks. Just warm her nicely. Then let's see, we'll have the thief first, and then the whore, then that smuggler from Silesia, and then of course our little poisoner. That should give you a good amount of exercise, Liebwerda. And I count on our imagination to provide Hertha and me with sufficient diverions for this dreary afternoon," the head matron concluded, leaning back in her chair with a satisfied smirk at her fawning assistant.
In the center of the dais, right after the midday meal had been served to all the prisoners, the wardresses had placed the apparatuses of punishment in readiness. Devotees of the lash as were both Klara Diepold and Hertha Mulder, they ideally preferred variety in the method and the posture of the victims to go under the whip. Thus today the prisoners stared apprehensively at a long low wooden bench at each end of which were buckling straps with another at the middle of the bench should it be desired to fetter the prisoner's waist; an upright whipping post with crossarm and two heavy, buckling leather cuffs set into the ends of the arms; and finally a broad and solid flogging stool, with a padded leather top and seats of buckling straps to secure the victim's wrists and ankles as well as the waist, again if this should be desired.
Often, if the subject to be flogged was particularly attractive, the chief matron and her assistant preferred a relative amount of freedom to be granted the body so that they might better savor the frantic contortions and wrigglings of the hips and loins and back as the birch or cane or tawse delivered its ferocious kisses to the naked flesh. While generally the magistrate's orders on all sentences remitting female prisoners to Kurzwald specified that the "upper discipline" should be applied within the first week of admission to the prison, these two sadistic harpies had altered it to suit their own lascivious whims, so that invariably a "Welcome" was given to them on the naked bottom and thighs. There was hardly any court of appeal from this arbitrary alteration; any prisoner who even attempted it, moreover, would be certain of immediate and terrible reprisal.
A few years ago, one rather gently bred young woman who had been sentenced to Kurzwald for being found in possession of counterfeit coins-an accusation of which she was subsequently cleared and fully pardoned-had been dragged to the whipping bench, and her prison dress rucked up, her drawers dragged down, at which she had cried out indignantly that the magistrate had sentenced her only to be punished on the upper part of her body. For her pains, she was not only flogged almost to the blood with a heavy tawse, but that very night was taken into the private quarters of the chief matron where, strung up by the thumbs and with her legs drawn hugely apart by means of cords tying her big toes to rings set in the floor, received thirty strokes with the birch on the insides of her thighs and well between them till she at last yielded herself to the vicious dominatress's sapphic lusts.
Two wardresses gripped the wrists of each of the four "new fish" about to be "Welcomed" into their infamous new home. Lovely Elizabeth Luchtau, who had been spared this ignominious public fustigation, was there to watch at the order of the head matron, and two stocky, glowering wardresses held her by the wrists between them, muttering to her that she must not dare to take her eyes off what was to follow if she did not wish a private interview with Frau Diepold.
And now, in a death-like silence which had fallen over the huge room, Hertha Mulder rose and in her shrill, piping voice, called out, "Attention, all prisoners, to Welcome! You may begin, Liebwerda!"
CHAPTER SIX
The russet-haired trusty stared coldly at the four women held between the wardresses, and then in an insolent voice, she called out, "Kleist to the stool for the birch!"
Johanna Kleist's oval-shaped, delicately-boned, sensual face paled, and her dark blue eyes widened with apprehension as the two heavyset women on either side of her tightened their grip on her wrists and elbows and forced her forward to the whipping stool. In a trice she was doubled over it, and while one woman buckled the strap around her waist, the other fastened the straps at her wrists and ankles. This done, the first wardress hoisted the woolen skirt and sleazy cotton petticoat which was the costume worn by every prisoner here during the winter, rolled the garments high on the victim's back to prevent their descending before the punishment was finished, and yanked down the gray cotton drawers to her knees, exposing a tawny-sheened, ample, beautifully contoured behind with a dramatically broad shadowy groove at the center which instinctively tightened at this outrage to modesty before the gaze of the attentive, silent prisoners.
The handsome trusty bent to a small bcuch beside the whipping stool on which were a small black leather tawse, a flexible rattan cane, and a freshly cut birch rod comprising about nine switches on which twigs and buds still showed, bound at the end with a cotton rag as a practical handle.
Brandishing this in her fist, she swished it in the air ferociously several times, a maneuver impressive enough to draw stifled gasps from the assemblage. Satisfied with the heft and grip of the rod, she then moved to the left of the whipping stool and took he: stand behind it, at the culprit's left. Johanna couldn't see what was to befall her, but nonetheless struggled to turn her pale, contorted face around to observe, a fruitless and pathetic gesture. With a mocking smirk, the trusty lowered the rod slowly, pressing it against the quaking, upturned naked contours in a kind of mock testing, measuring where the first blow would fall most effectively. Johanna shuddered and turned her face toward the stool, as if hoping to hide from the knowledge of her fate. Instinctively she tried to tighten all her muscles in a futile defense.
From their vantage post on the huge straight-backed chairs, the head matron and her assistant leaned forward, their eyes glittering with anticipation. Brigetta Liebwerda regarded her superiors respectfully and intently, to show them that she was awaiting the signal to begin. It was Frau Diepold who gave it, with an abrupt gesture of her right hand. The rod slowly rose, poised, and its imminent descent was announced by a chorus of fearful, half-suppressed gasps from the fascinated spectatresses, all of whom themselves had, during their very first week of imprisonment, endured this self-same ignominious shame, humiliation and suffering.
Then with-a SWSSHWHACKKKl the flexible withs whistled down to spread fantail over the quivering hillocks of Johanna's naked seat. The woman started convulsively, lifted her head and opened her eyes to stare at the two dominatresses. Her eyes were humid with the suspicion of tears and suffering, and the beginning of a groan escaped her as she fought the impulse to cry out for mercy where none would be found.
"She's got a more delicate skin there than I'd have believed, Frau Diepold," Hertha Mulder eagerly whispered to her superior. "And do look how that nice plump Arsch of hers jumps when the rod bites into it! I do hope Liebwerda won't spoil her too much."
"So she's the one you want for your bed tonight, hein, Hertha?" the chief matron slyly teased. "You're welcome to her, and you may tell our expert whipper not to spoil that big backside too much for you. But judging from the way she's starting with that Kleist bitch, I fear she may have the same designs on that thieving tramp herself, so the two of you had best settle it between yourselves. As for me, I'll be content to wait for the poisoner."
During this discussion, six strokes of the whip had alternately flattened across each of Johanna Kleist's quaking, spacious hips. They left vivid striata to betoken the stern kisses of the rod on tender female flesh, and each succeeded in drawing a stifled sobbing groan from the culprit, who jerked fruitlessly at her bonds at wrists and ankles and twisted her body to no avail.
Hertha Mulder lifted her hand and made a sign to the whipper, and the woman nodded, comprehending. The art of fustigation throughout Europe at this epoch was a spectacle which drew wealthy debauchees and the nobility to observe as a kind of sport. For them-and often they paid a handsome gratuity to the whipper for his or her skill the most delicious aspect of such a public flogging was in compelling the victim to perform involuntarily a lascivious choreography of weaving, contracting, spreading bottomcheeks, to hear the screams and cries and appeals for mercy, to see the frantic apprehension of the culprit exhibited before the next excoriating stroke. There were times, to be sure, when because of the nature of the victim's crime, the spectators lusted for a kind of moral vengeance as well, and in such cases they preferred to see the victim flogged to the very blood. But this afternoon, except for the unfortunate prostitute, Magdalen Preuss, the candidates for the "Welcome" would endure primarily a licentious though painful thrashing which, however, would not permanently mar the beauty of their naked bottoms.
Brigetta Liebwerda paused a moment to contemplate her handiwork. Then, while the black-haired victim tried to turn herself on the heavy stool and lessen the tension of her body, Brigetta quickly lifted the birch and brought it down suddenly in two more strokes on the lower summits of the woman's naked body. Johanna Kleist burst into tears and twisted and wriggled frantically, desperately, for like most women undergoing fustigation, the lower parts of her bottom were more sensitive than the summits. The flexible withes bent at the experienced twist of Brigetta's sturdy wrist to reach and sting the more cruelly, searching out the tenderest spots.
The powers of a matron and her assistant in this prison to dictate the duration and circumstances of a "Welcome" were virtually limitless. In theory a prison doctor should have been on hand to gauge the resistance of each victim; but this amenity was dispensed with here. The punishment was dictated sheerly by whim. If the matron thought the sufferer could endure more, or had not shown sufficient repentance or still seemed defiant, she could order another dozen or a half dozen more cuts, and specify the regions to which they were to be applied.
There was a long pause now while the russet-haired trusty stepped back to study the naked behind of her victim, to shake out the rod and make sure it was as fresh and flexible as at the outset. Johanna Kleist took advantage of this momentary reprieve to try to ease her tortured body and to diminish the jut of her hindquarters by stiffening her muscles. But in the midst of heringenuous maneuvering, the trusty raised the whip and swept it down wickedly, straight into the shadowy, humid groove, stinging into the perineum and even into the furtively concealed rosebud of the anus. A shriek was torn from the sufferer's gaping mouth as Johanna Kleist tore at her bonds and, raising her head, her eyes blind with tears of pain, shouted at the women in the straight-backed chairs: " Ahhrrrghrrr-ahhhohh, mercy-mercy!" she screamed.
But this perfidious cut had been the trusty's own idea, to prove that she was capable of drawing an appeal for mercy and that the whipping she was dealing out was truly effective. Thus satisfied, she applied several strokes crosswise on the livid striata already imprinted into the shuddering flesh of the bottomsummits. These strokes also drew cries, but none so long, none so agonized as the earlier great burst of agony. Yet, judging from the tears pouring down the contorted face, the heaving titties and the restless flexions and squirmings of her thighs sheathed in the coarse black cotton hose, it was evident that Johanna Kleist was in real pain.
Once again there was a pause while the trusty shook out the birch, turning to consider the awed and staring prisoners for whom the "Welcome" was always such an admirable lesson in prison discipline, and then she turned back to her victim. With four or five lighter strokes she "touched up" the tawwnysheened, opulent but solid and resilient bare bottomcheeks at the as yet unmarked point where buttock met thigh, and Johanna Kleist groaned and sobbed and began humbly to entreat pardon as might a child. The two women on the chairs were breathless with excitement. For them, the titillation of a whipping was most acute when a victim such as the one before them cast aside all dignity and stoicism and sorted to pleas and promises, as might a young child. Once more the matron made a gesture to the whipper that Johanna Kleist was not to be spoiled too much.
Nor was she. After a few strokes made lightly, without that twist of the wrist which had drawn blood between the interstices of the previous cuts, Brigetta liebwerda had completed the first of the four "Welcomes" scheduled for infliction on this somber February afternoon.
CHAPTER SEVEN
When the birching had ended, the hysterical, almost fainting black-haired culprit was helped up by two wardresses from the whipping stool and, at Hertha Mulder's sign, taken to her own personal quarters. There, Johanna Kleist would have her lividly striped bottom rubbed with a soothing ointment, given a mug of strong wine, and ordered to prepare herself to be totally submissive unless she wished a swift return to the lash. One of the wardresses bent over and muttered into her ear while the other energetically rubbed in the salve as the groaning brunette squirmed and writhed, "You're in luck, you thieving bitch! Hertha herself has taken a fancy to you. So do whatever she tells you to, and maybe you'll get off with light work like sewing. Make any fuss, and tomorrow at supper time, you'll be put on the triangle and given the bull's pizzle to the blood, understand?"
By that warning, the sullen-faced brunette prisoner understood only too well what was wanted of her: neither virgin nor virtuous, she comprehended that the assistant matron offered her the chance of being a favorite, a prison "pet," which would lighten the duress of her two years here in grim and cheerless Kurzwald. So she nodded, gratefully accepted the wine, and groaned with less anguish as the other woman's fingers continued to massage in the ointment which began to diminish the fiery torment in her plump naked bottom....
Lovely young chestnut-haired Elizabeth Luchtau was trembling violently, her head bowed, and the two wardresses who gripped her by wrists and elbows sniggered at her squeamishness: "You're lucky, you pretty bitch, that you aren't due for Welcome today. But then, a pretty doxy like you has got somebody important to beg off that plump Arsch of yours. Just the same you're going to watch how we give rod discipline to the sluts sent to us to look after, and it's a good lesson for you to remember, Luchtau! Liebwerda has a strong arm and, you'll see, even though she has to polish off four bitches, she'll still be fresh as a daisy by the time she's finished!"
The young woman's lips moved in silent prayer, for at least if she was remitted to this gloomy, dreadful place, she was being spared at the martyrdom and the public ignominy of this ferocious chastisement. But now already the matron and her assistant were waiting for the next victim, and Frau Diepold nodded.
The russet-haired trustee cast aside the frayed birch which had dealt such burning punishment to Johanna Kleist's voluptuous posterior, and called out, "Preuss, to the whipping post for Welcome!"
The dark-brown haired thirty-year-old prostitute uttered a cry of terror and tried to struggle with the two stocky women who held her tightly: "Oh no-bitte, nicht das! Have mercy, I've done nothing, I'm a poor girl who's had to earn her living as best she could-oh don't whip me for it-Himmel, hilfe mich!"
"Amen to that, you filthy Dime!" Frau Diepold snapped. "Get her ready at once and let's have no more of this nonsense!"
The two wardresses, angered at their superior's disparaging comment, brutally forced Magdalen Preuss up to the dais, twisting her arm, one of them bringing up her bony knee against the handsome prostitute's bottom to urge her forward. Swiftly they fixed her wrists into the heavy cuffs at each end of the crossarm, and then both wardresses squatted down, caught up the coarse woolen skirt and the petticoat, rolled them up to the moaning victim's armpits. One of them then took a piece of cord and wound it tightly round the uprucked garments and knotted it, so that they would not fall back down. The other, meanwhile swiftly yanked down the coarse drawers, exposing an upstandingly rounded, rather deeply cleft bottom whose pale milky skin was exceptionally attractive and indeed an admirable challenge to the prison whipper.
Despite her age of thirty, Magdalen Preuss's bare bottom was indeed firm and without flaw or sag, a delectable target for the lash which was to be applied to the very blood. This meant that the trustee had full leeway in determining what implement should be used so long as the desired result was achieved. All the same, Hertha Mulder greedily stared at the victim's exposed bottom and upper thighs, for there was no doubt that the prostitute was comely enough to inspire her own perverse Lesbian lusts. On the other hand, the knowledge of this victim's profession militated against Hertha Mulder's selecting such a bed partner out of the danger of infection. And so vindictively, because she knew she would be denied such carnal pleasures, she was all the more eager to see the unfortunate woman viciously thrashed and martyrized.
"Mind you lay them on with a will, Leibwerda," she called. "Stretch it out and make her hop and dance. She loves to waggle that big fat Arsch of hers so much, only this time she won't be earning any Schillings from fancy gentlemen, but giving us a free show!"
Magdalen Preuss's face was broadly rounded but quite winsome, with a deeply cleft chin, a fine straight nose, a somewhat over generous, ripe mouth, and her titties were high-perched, closely spaced melon-like gourds, but still quite appreciably firm and tempting. She had begun to sweat with fear, and her armpits already showed this through the coarse woolen dress, while she twisted her face feverishly back over her left shoulder to see what the russet-haired trusty was preparing for her defenseless, naked behind. Brigetta Liebwerda had decided to begin with the tawse, a black, polished leather strap with a tapered four-inch doubly thick handle, some twenty-seven inches in length and the last five inches sliced into five narrow strips each about a quarter of an inch thick to impart a vicious sting. The broad band of the tawse itself produced a scorching heat, but when the flagellatress was dextrous, as the trusty was, the "fingers" at the end could be utilized to impart a snapping, biting punishment that intensified the victim's suffering.
Lifting the tawse in the air and shaking it out, then giving her wrist a vigorous jerk so that the vicious-looking "fingers" snapped with a sonorous crack in the air, Brigetta Liebwerda moved over to the left of the terrified prostitute, and planted herself solidly at the latter's left. Half-turned towards the captive, she drew the tawse back and awaited the signal from the chief matron, while poor Magdalen Preuss feverishly cried out, "Oh no! Nicht das! Oh, bitte, nicht Die Peitschel Ich hab gamichts tun! Ohh, have mercy on me, I don't deserve it, the Good Lord Himself knows that!"
"You blasphemous trull," the chief matron hissed, "hold your tongue or I will have you gagged! An extra half-dozen, Liebwerda, for this bitch's insolence!"
The unhappy woman did not have the presence of mind nor perhaps the education to tell the sadistic Frau Diepold that many centuries before, a gentle Galilean carpenter's son had pardoned a woman named Mary Magdalen and had said, "Let him who is among you without fault cast the first stone." Even if she had been able to draw upon such a parable, it would only have cost her further suffering, for such was the heartlessness shown all those consigned to Prussia's chief prison for convicted females.
The two sadistic dominatresses were impatient to see their victim writhe and suffer under the tawse, and they both made a swift sign to the russet-haired trusty. Drawing back the implement, Brigetta Liebwerda stepped forward and swept it solidly from right to left across the very plumpest sectors of the pale white bottomglobes, the five tapering "fingers" of the leather tawse whisking round her haunch. There was an ominous crack of leather against naked female flesh, and instantly Magdalen Preuss lunged against the whipping post, her head tilting up, her eyes huge and glazed with suffering now that she had tasted the very first kiss of the lash. An angry, bright red band marked the imprint of that stroke, and the cheeks of her behind tightened and yawned convulsively. Her cry was piercing, at first perhaps more from fear than pain. But the trusty, almost in the same movement, delivered a backhanded cut which brought the leather band from left to right and exactly over the first imprint, intensifying the vivid red streak which testified to the heat and the bruising of the tender flesh. And this time Magdalen Preuss emitted a woeful shriek: "Ach, Gott im Himmel, it hurts, it hurts me!"
"No, it's true, you filthy Dime, that you're not here to enjoy fucking with your gentleman friends and to receive silver and gold for wriggling that fat Arsch of yours," the chief matron jeered. "But don't raise your voice yet, Liebwerda hasn't even begun to warm up. And you've a good thrashing in store for you, be certain of that!"
Basking in her superiors' favor, the trusty made a slight curtsy towards the straight backed chairs at the back of the dais, and then moved a little to the left, studying the already vividly marked naked behind and thighs offered for her fustigatory attentions. Whimpering, her eyes blurred with great tears, the handsome prostitute again turned her face back over her shoulder to beseech her executioner for mercy. By that same moment the tawse rose again and slashed out, crashing viciously against the lower summits. And with almost the same motion, once again the backhanded stroke was delivered from left to right and over the previous mark, causing intolerable suffering. Like one demented, Magdalen Preuss yanked at her wrist cuffs, turned her face from side to side, arched and twisted and ground her loins against the vertical post, her hips lunging and twisting violently as her hoarse cries of agony, wordless this time, burst out in the refectory. Many of the prisoners shuddered and looked away, but others watched with a kind of avid and even gloating joy, remembering their own terrible initiation here. It was a kind of solace for them, therefore, at the expense of this unfortunate woman who had pleased so many men and who had been incarcerated simply because one of her own customers, dissatisfied because of his impotence rather than over her skill, had denounced her to the police.
Having thus established the cruel pattern by which the flogging was to progress, the trusty lowered the tawse and gave poor Magdalen Preuss a moment's rest to exhale her sobs, to turn her tear blinded, dilated eyes towards the two heartless, black-gowned women who alone could decide her destiny at Kurzwald. And then again the tawse cracked wickedly against her shuddering naked bottom, striking both globes across the base and once again in almost the same movement, returning but from the opposite direction in the backhanded stroke which emphasized the atrocious, chalorous torture of the biting tawse against such tender womanflesh. Piercing cries attested to the suffering of the victim, who actually began to dance from foot to foot, her big breasts jiggling, and loins grinding against the upright post, while her fingernails clawed the wood of crosspiece.
Warming to her task, Brigetta Liebwerda now began to apply the strokes about twenty seconds apart, but these from right to left in a solid, sweeping blow across both globes which began at the tops of Magdalen Preuss's hips and relentlessly and progressively descended to the base-of her behind. A dozen such angrily resounding "Thwackkks!" left the once pale-milky flesh angrily swollen everywhere, and the victim, maddened by her suffering, lunged and kicked, jumped from foot to foot, tilted back her head and, her mouth gaping, vented shriek upon shriek, interspersed with babblingly hysterical words for mercy.
Now, perspriring and breathless, the trusty paused and lowered her instrument of torture, for the bottom was furiously marked. Though the sentence had been to whip to the blood, she well understood that her two superiors lusted for a prolongation of the ordeal, and that the victim must be made to remain conscious for as long as possible so that the full measure of her agony could be evidenced.
And so it was that Brigetta Liebwerda resumed the flogging on the prostitute's thighs, on the shapely upper columns, after first yanking down the coarse hose to the middle of the woman's calves. She taunted the weeping, writhing and groaning Magdalen Preuss with whispered threats: "Ah, so it's getting hot for you, is it, you bawd? I'll make you hotter still, never you fear! First I'm going to give you some nice red stockings on those fat legs of yours, and then we'll go back to that big fart Arsch and let the blood out the way the physicians do when you're suffering from a choler. You won't be able to lie on your back tonight and sleep at all, bitch!"
Another dozen lashes were distributed over the prostitute's thighs, and seemed to pain her even more than those previously administered. Her caperings, her squirmings and wrigglings, her despairing shrieks, drew taunting laughter and whispered comparisons from the watching inmates, who perhaps themselves had been as agonized and as unheroic when their time had come to taste the whip of "Welcome," but thus now could boast of how stoic and courageous they had been as compared with this whining creature.
There ensued another pause, and Magdalen Preuss seemed to slump, supported by the heavy wrist cuffs which forced her arms extended in cross to the whipping post. The contractions and spasmings of her livid buttocks were uncontrollable, and they exposed the dark fleece of thick pubic hair and sometimes too the puckering, rosy fissure of the asshole. Brigetta Liebwerda drew a long breath, and then slowly raised the tawse again, But this time she flicked it downwards, so that only the tips of the "fingers" at the end of this fiendishly versatile whipping instrument attacked and nipped the already sensitized and inflamed flesh of the bottom, this time striking the slope of the woman's left hip. An even more piercing and prolonged cry was torn from the sufferer: "Eeeyeowwarrrhhhowww!!! Nicht mehr, im Gottes Namen!"
"A great deal more, you fat doxy," the russet-haired trusty taunted as again she made the tips of the leather band dance down and flick the top of the other hip. Remorselessly she continued thus, visiting the entire bottom with those infernally burning flicks. The very ends of the five "fingers" snapped sonorously against the livid flesh, and Magdalen Preuss seemed to leap, to lunge and twist, to weave her hips frenziedly, while her head flung back, then forward, turned restlessly from side to side, her mouth agape, her throat sore from the hoarse, wild, plaintive shrieks and yells torn from her by this unspeakable torment.
Then, as a variation to delight her two sadistic superiors, the trusty lowered the tawse to the floor and leaped it upward, flicking her wrist at the last possible moment so that the tips at the end of this leather band would dart into the shadowy crevice which led to the asshole and to the cunt, and then the cries were truly deafening, then Magdalen Preuss seemed to do a ludicrous and salacious dance which made her bottom jiggle, her bubbies jounce and sway, while she ground herself against the post as if she were actually in the act of copulation with one of her customers.
Soon she was almost fainting from the pain, as she hung listlessly from the cuffs. But a bucket of brine flung over her bottom and thighs by one of the wardresses revived her, while the trusty exchanged the tawse for the whippy rattan cane which was to conclude this "Welcome."
With a dozen slowly applied cuts, she at last drew blood, but not until Magdalen Preuss had imploringly called upon all the saints in heaven, promised the most abject and obedient behavior in the prison, sworn she was innocent of any crime, and begged mercy in the name of humanity. These supplications, needless to say, were ignored, save in that they delighted the cruel matron and her assistant because of the hysterical and almost demented agony which they evidenced.
And then at last she slumped at the post, only to be revived again by the salt brine that bit into her bloody wounds, while two wardresses unstrapped the cuffs from her wrists and dragged her out to the infirmary.
Two more awaited the "Welcome," and Elizabeth Luchtau was praying that somehow a just Providence would look down upon this merciless inferno created by evil man and grant justice to innocent unfortunate like herself and the luckless prostitute-whom she might well have become had her cruel employer had her way.
CHAPTER EIGHT
After Magdalen Preuss had been dragged off, sagging and swooning, by the wardresses who would take her to the infirmary and thence to the isolation cell after she had been throughly deloused and fumigated, the russet-haired trust took a well-earned pause to consult with the head matron and her assistant as to the procedure to be employed for the final two floggings of this merciless "Welcome" to Kurzwald Prison. Aware of their Lesbian tastes, Brigetta Liebwerda wished to make no mistake, since her preferential position in the prison depended on her ability to curry favor with the two most powerful women guiding its destinies.
"Well done thus far, Liebwerda," Frau Diepold smilingly approved. "You gave that dirty whore exactly what was coming to her. But now this blonde smuggler and of course our charming little red-haired poisoner ought to be dealt with somewhat differently, you understand."
"Of course, gnadige Frau Diepold," Brigetta Liebwerda respectfully inclined her head.
"I don't want either of them marked up too badly, you understand. Let the poisoner have the tawse just sufficiently to warm her pretty white bottom and make her more docile for tonight. As to the smuggler, she has a broader Arsch, and I leave it to you to decide whether you wish to apply to tawse, the birch or the cane. But let them both understand that if they are humble and submit courageously it will be something in their favor. You know what to do, Liebwerda."
"Grateful thanks for your confidence, gnadige Frau Diepold. I'll begin with the smuggler then now, and save the red-haired poisoner for the finish."
"Excellent."
All through this discussion, the assembled prisoners watched, some with terror, others with indifference, and still others with a kind of greedy impatience because they observed in the suffering of these newcomers a kind of compensation for what they themselves had endured upon their entry into this wretched institution. The wardresses supervising them allowed them to converse in low tones, for the chief matron herself had long ago indicated that at the spectacle of the "Welcome," it was very good for the morale of every female convict to be impressed by what was taking place and to exchange her opinions with her neighbor.
Poor Elizabeth Luchtau was almost fainting and she remained standing between the two wardresses who held her tightly. Their whispered, obscene remarks during the previous two floggings had sickened her, revealing such a heartless and vicious cruelty that the innocent young woman prayed almost for death to release her from imprisonment in such a place. Moreover, the deepest shame filled her, to think that she had yielded her cherished maidenhead to the King of Prussia himself in the illusory hope of being spared just such incarceration and such ignominy.
Now the handsome trusty stepped down off the dais and contemplated the two terrified young women who stood between their wardresses, the coppery-haired nineteen-year-old poisoner, and the flaxen-haired, ripe-bodied smuggler, both of whom were obviously to win the sexual favor of their cruel superiors this very night. Brigetta Liebwerda's eyes considered Elizabeth Luchtau for a moment, and the chestnut-haired seamstress quailed and turned pale, thinking that perhaps in spite of all that had been told her, she would still have to face this horrifying and shameful ordeal of a public thrashing. But the trusty now ordered in a clear voice which showed not the slightest fatigue or lack of interest in her tasks this afternoon, "Kravitz to the bench for Welcome!"
"Ach, Gott hilfe mich!" the attractive young woman groaned aloud as the two sturdy wardresses, tightening their grip on her arms, forced her forward towards the whipping bench and made her lie flat upon it and extend her arms. The fettering had been suggested by none other than Frau Diepold herself in her own sadistic interests of watching a victim under the lash execute all the possible maneuvers to free herself from the burning torment, maneuvers which would accentuate all the luscious naked charms so vulnerably offered up to the tawse or the birch or the cane. Consequently, each of these buckling straps at the head of the bench was fixed at its one end to the base of the leg of the apparatus. When the heavy strap was looped round a victim's wrist and then buckled, it might be shortened or left relatively long as desired. In neither case could the prisoner tug her wrists loose from the thick leather and the heavy metal buckle which vised against her tender flesh. The same was true for the ankles, so that each buckling strap stemming from the lower legs of the whipping bench could be adjusted to allow the prisoner's legs to be spread-eagled and even sometimes to overlap the edges of the bench itself with her feet on the floor to distend the cheeks of her behind and make that most intimate area of all accessible to the stinging twigs of the flexible birch or to the tips at the ends of the "fingers" of a tawse.
Or again, her legs might be drawn well together in a kind of modest presentation, yet allowing her sufficient scope to kick and shift them as the burning heat of the thrashing was augmented. Finally, there was a waist-strap, but this could be dispensed with if the chief matron and her lubriciously cruel assistant desired the ultimate freedom for the body of their victim, allowing her thus to arch up and almost leap up from the bench under a particularly stinging cut. Thus the spectacle was not only for the prisoners; it was for the lascivious delight of these two merciless and unscrupulous women who ruled the prison and from whose edicts no appeal was ever possible.
And aside from the chief matron, the two wardresses pulled off Jenska Kravitz's dress entirely, and then removed her petticoat, while she lay sobbing softly after they had pinioned her arms and legs to allow her maximum freedom. She was thus presented in a gray, sleazy camisole, drawers, and the coarse black stockings and shoes of the customary prison attire. The shoes were also removed as a kind of finesse, for it displeased the ecstatic senses of Frau Diepold to see an attractive female who was certain to provide rare sport under the lash kick about her lovely legs and visually mar them by wearing the ugly, heavy and clumsy footgear which were customary in that era. And finally, at her sign, one of the wardresses bent over the sobbing woman and yanked down the drawers to the middle of her thighs, exposing a superbly ample and quite resilient bottom, the cheeks rather broad and divided by a gradually widening shadowy cleft which, just as the chief matron had guessed, would allow complete access not only to the birch or the tips of the tawse, but also to her own avid gaze when the unfortunate woman, under the atrociously painful and expertly inflicted lashing, should jerk and swerve and arch herself in her desperate attempts to escape the excoriating strokes.
Jenska Kravitz lifted her tearstained face towards the two straightbacked chairs in which the black-gowned dominatresses sat, in a last pitiful appeal. Her face was rounded, with a high forehead, rather thick brows, hazel eyes, a straight nose but with very delicate wings, and a small yet quite ripe mouth. Her skin was a fresh pink-and-white carnation, and the trusty contemplated that magnificent naked bottom with admiration, for it would challenge all her artistry. However, Jenska Kravitz was not to be inhumanly martyrized this afternoon, and so the whipper approached the head of the bench, ostensibly to make certain that the wardresses had secured the victim properly for the flogging. Actually, she wished to converse with the helpless prisoner and to intimate to her how best to endure this "Welcome."
"Attention, Kravitz," she squatted down and tested the tightness of the buckled strap around the flaxen-haired victim's left wrist. "If you're smart, girl, you won't wind up too badly. Matron's got her eye on you, understand me? You're a handsome bitch, and she'd like you to share her quarters tonight. I'm going to have to thrash you pretty well, you see, but if you're a good docile bitch, I won't mark you too badly. You know what I'm talking about?"
Jenska Kravitz's face turned scarlet. Indeed she did understand. Whenever a woman was brought into a magistrate's court in the city of Potsdam and there was a likelihood that she would be sent to Kurzwald, the jail matrons would always taunt her about what kind of life she might expect in that grim fortress of a prison. And they would tell her that if she were especially attractive, she could be made a trusty-that is, if she pleased Frau Diepold or Fraulein Mulder in bed.
"J-jja, ich verstehe," she falteringly whispered.
"That's being smart, Kravitz! All right, I'm going to thrash your big Arsch now. You may cry all you like. Indeed, I'd appreciate it if you would, so that Matron knows I'm not being too gentle on you, understand me? And she'd like to see you wriggle all you want to under the cuts, just to make sure you're as tasty a morsel as she thinks you are. Now get ready!"
The prisoner managed to nod, then closed her eyes and shivered. She tensed herself, and the chief matron leaned forward, supporting her chin in her palm, her interest at once aroused as she divined that this "new fish" was willing to submit to her vicious Sapphic reign in return for the concessions of relative mercy, more food rations and perhaps less of a life that would be nothing short of hell if by any chance the flaxen-haired smuggler had indignantly refused to submit her person.
She made another sign, and the trusty, at once understanding, went back to the outstretched victim and rolled up her camisole to the armpits. This was so that Jenska Kravitz's naked titties might be seen when, under the expected burning of the whip, she would arch and twist and try to raise herself from the bench of torment. She gasped and shivered when Brigetta touched her, but she submissively lay still until the camisole had been rolled up into place and exposed the rather heavy but nonetheless delectably contoured, closely spaced round titties with their narrow brownish-coral aureolae and their pert, soft pink nipplebuds.
Thus to all intents and purposes, she was exposed naked, with the exception of the rucked-down drawers and the black stockings. In any ordinary women's prison, such denudal would indicate that the culprit had been sentenced to a very severe thrashing to the very blood; here at Kurzwald, even the inmates understood that this newcomer was willing to trade, as they might put it "her kootzele to save her Arsch" (or, translated, "she would give up her cunt to save her ass").
Brigetta Liebwerda had decided to begin with the tawse, laid on just enough to smart and to discolor the fine pink-and-white skin of that magnificent naked bottom devoted to her expert fustigatory attentions. She would then conclude with about half a dozen good swishing cuts of the birch,-and finish off with three rather stinging cuts from the rattan cane. Judging by the way she had thrashed the unfortunate prostitute, one would believe this program in store for Jenska Kravitz equally formidable; the difference would be in the trustee's cunning knowledge of how to make the tawse sound with an angry clack as it smacked down on that big bottom but without tearing the skin or bruising the tender flesh too cruelly. Oh to be sure, Jenska Kravitz would have a burning backside tonight when she would be summoned into the chamber of Hertha Mulder (for of course she still believed that it was the head matron herself who had designs upon her), but she would nonetheless be still strong enough to give good account of herself in the Lesbian bed of submission to which she would be coerced. And if she did not seem grateful enough for this mark of favor, a threat of returning her to the whipping bench the following Friday "Welcome" time would certainly suffice to quicken the wriggling of her bottom, the grinding of her cunt, the delving of her tongue and the amorous caressing of her fingers to even the critical and demanding Hertha Mulder could have no possible complaint.
Choosing the tawse, swishing it in the air and walking over to the left of the bench, Brigetta Liebwerda began the flogging with a swift vertical cut which exactly bisected the carnation-skinned left bottomcheek. It smacked noisily enough to draw a gasp from the assembled prisoners, and it was painful enough, also, to make Jenska Kravitz lift her face, her eyes widening in anguish, and to emit a panting, groaning "Ahh-oh!" More to the purpose, however, it compelled her to start convulsively on the whipping bench, her hips jerking slightly upwards, and her arms also dragging on the buckled straps which tenaciously snared her rather graceful wrists.
Satisfied that the attractive smuggler knew what was expected of her, Brigetta Liebwerda continued the thrashing. The strokes fell at regular intervals of about twenty seconds apart, the first dozen lashes all falling vertically, six to each buttock, and imparting bright crimson bands over the perching, shrinking, shuddering naked flesh. Each lash drew a cry, and by the sixth, Jenska Kravitz had begun to sob and to turn her face restlessly this way and that, as well as to kick her feet as much as the straps allowed. At the very last of these vertical lashes, she lifted up her shoulders sufficiently to show the magnificent gourds of her bare bubbies, and the brooding eyes of both the chief matron and her toadying assistant glittered with anticipatory lust.
Brigetta now paused to wipe the sweat off her forehead with a swipe of her left arm, and then moved round the whipping bench, once again as if to assure herself that the buckling straps held the victim properly in place. Once again she squatted down to test the left wrist buckle and muttered, "You're doing very well, Kiavitz. Keep it up. Try to lift your Arsch a little more every time. Besides, I'm going to make it hotter for you directly. And yell a lot. She likes that. Beg for mercy, promise to be a good bitch, say you'll do your time here and give no trouble, even call on your mother if you like-that'll make her nice and tender towards you tonight. Now get ready. And one thing more-when I finish with the tawse, you're to get half a dozen with the birch and then three swats with the cane. But I won't break the skin, I promise. And they'll put on some nice salve to take the burning down before you're taken to see Matron tonight, versteheT'
"J-jja ... aber, bitte, macht das sclinell!" the flaxen-haired smuggler gasped, her voice choking with her sobs. "It burns me so already, oh please make it quick!"
"Quick as I can, bitch, but don't blame me that you're here, you know. Maybe if you'd peddled your Arsch to some fine rich gentlemen instead of trying to smuggle contraband goods over the border, I wouldn't be dusting you off now and getting that haily little kootzele of yours ready for Matron, nicht wahr!" the trusty whispered back with a derisive little chuckle.
Then again she resumed her place behind the shuddering, squirming culprit. Slowly her arms rose, and now the tawse came down with a sonorous crash straight across the tops of both bare hips. Jenska Kravitz flung back her head and uttered a piercing "Arrowwwouu! Mutter, hilfe micht!" As she kicked first one foot and then the other, yanked at her wrists, and arched her shoulders up to show again the magnificent rounds of her panting titties. Hardly had she fallen back on the bench wehre she lay quivering, tears running down her cheeks, than the trusty applied the tawse again, once again with the same horizontal pattern which this previous lash had announced, about an inch below the place already streaked. The once pink-and-white-sheened bottom was now furiously and lasciviously marked. And the heat of those vertical strokes, together with these first to horizontal ones, made the bottomglobes quake and contract, yawn and shudder in the involuntary choreography which so delighted the sadistic matron and her aide as well as the trusty herself.
Pausing a moment to let Jenska Kravitz exhale her sobs and groans and to wriggle restlessly on the whipping bench, Brigetta Liebwerda now eyed the two matrons seated at the back of the dais and observed their communal nods of satisfaction as to her procedure. The victim was also cooperating properly, so there was no need to be especially vindictive. Nonetheless, the pattern of laying stripes vertically over that plump, shuddering bottom and then applying the leather band crosswise was certain to produce intolerable heat and suffering. Moreover, the supplimentary addition of the six cuts with the birch and three with the cane would make the smuggler's ordeal a really severe one. However, long practice at this cruel sport had convinced both the chief matron and her aide that a female convict who was thoroughly whipped was all the more amenable in bed.
However, out of grudging respect for the victim's relative stillicism, the trusty now whispered, "I'm going to start up again, get ready!" and thereby enabled Jenska Kravitz to stiffen herself and to try to contract her bottomcheeks in a defense against the growing conflagration smoldering in her quivering naked behind.
The tawse whirled high in the air, then descended abruptly, smacking loudly as it applied with full force across both summits. The finger-like tips of the leather band had thus far not been used, but the shocking and bruising impact of the band itself sufficed to engender intense pain, particularly when so vigorously repeated and in such a pattern. Under that lash, the smuggler arched up her hips, dragged at her wristbonds, and lifted her face to emit a piercing "Owwohh, Mutterlein, hilfe Ihrer Jenska! Oh, how it burn me, how it burn me!"
Her knees seemed to clatter against the low wide whipping bench, and she turned her face back over her shoulder, the eyes drenched with tears, the lips trembling, as if to appeal to the handsome executioner herself. But already Brigetta liebwerda was lifting the tawse and then bringing it down emphatically, to cling to the lividly streaked bare bottomglobes about two inches below the mark left by the preceding stroke. This time, in her suffering, Jenska Kravitz rolled from side to side, lifted up her head and shoulders and again exposed the panting gourds of her sumptuous titties,then fell back, squirming restlessly as great tears rivuleted down her cheeks.
The tawse continued it heinous work, each time falling horizontally till it had reached the tops of the young woman's thighs. Her cries were shriller now, and her sobs and more intermittent, racking her body. Again the trusty paused and this time to approach the bench and herself tugged down the coarse black stockings to handsomely rounded calves, the dimpled knees, the sturdy yet quite femininely rounded thighs, and virtually all of her admirably carnation-skinned body was naked now, with the camisole still tucked up against her armpits. To see the twisted down-rucked drawers clinging around the middle of her thighs was a nuance which heightened the lust of the two sadistic matrons who ruled this institution for helpless female prisoners.
Now, by way of variation and to draw new reactions from the sufferer, Brigetta Liebwerda brought the tawse down two or three times over the naked calves and lower thighs, and the alteration hardly seemed less painful to the unfortunate woman. She jerked her hips convulsively, kicked up first one foot and then the other, dragged at her wrists, again tried to raise her shoulders as high as she could and thereby exposed her titties to the glittering eyes of the two warped and sadistic directresses who would rule her sould as they meant to rule her enticing body. Her cries were hysterical, interspersed with babbled plaints and prolonged sobs. Now the trusty returned to the violently striped, inflamed naked posterior as she brought the tawse crashing down over the base of both nether globes, and then added one straight across the summits which drew, prolonged screams and desolate sobbing from the almost naked smuggler. One could see the extreme contrast of the finely grained skin and the bright, angry red splotches left by the tawse on her calves and thighs, and they seemed more salacious by their violent contrast then did the already piteously inflamed behind.
Briegetta Liebwerda put the tawse back in place and now selected a fresh birch which one of the wardresses had brought during the commencement of this "Welcome." It was slender, comprising only about half a dozen switches, much longer than the one which had been used on Magdalen Preuss, and it was obviously much more flexible, as the trusty demonstrated by grasping it by its cloth handle and swishing it about several times as she again took her stance behind the bench and to the left of the sobbing young woman.
Then, slowly lowering the supple bundle of withes till they pressed down firmly across the upper summits of Jenska Kravitz's naked, inflamed bottom, she let the victim know what was to follow. With a choking sob, the flaxen-haired smuggler sucked in her breath and tensed herself, digging her fingernails into the hard wood of the bench. The birch rose, was suspended in the air, then whistled down to spread the switches fantail across the lower curves of both naked posterior globes. The sting, coming as it did upon the inflammation left by repeated blows of the tawse, inflicted a searing, almost unspeakable pain. Jenska Kravitz flung back her head, her eyes rolling to the whites, her mouth gaping in a hoarse, hysterical shout of "Aiii-eeyeowwouu! Herr Gott, bitte hilfe mich! Ich kann nicht das haben, bitte nicht!!" (Oh, dear Lord God, help me now! Oh, please, I can't bear anymore!)
At the same time, her body violently lunged and twisted, and she seemed to toss her naked, welted and striped bottom into the air so that for an exquisite instant, both the chief matron and her assistant saw the dark trinagular patch of pussy hair at the apex of hlf well rounded thighs. Then she fell back, her knees clattering on the bench, restlessly turning her face this way and that while the tears streamed down her face.
"How cooperative that bitch is, hein, Hertha?" the cheif matron whispered to her aide. "She'll keep your bed warm tonight, I promise you that. And she's not a bad piece at that. I may even have her myself when I've tired of that little red-haired slut who tried to poison her lover and then has such high and mighty airs about being innocent."
During this monolouge, the trusty had applied the second cut of the birch, this one straight over the tops of the naked hips, and once again a violent shudder wrenched Jenska Kravit's lower body on the whipping bench. Once again her mouth gaped in a hoarse shout of pain, and she tugged frantically at her strapped wrists and ankles, lifting up her shoulders and once again exposing the opulent globes of her panting titties. The third lash caught her just as she was about to flatten herself on the bench again, whisking the supple switches over the lower curves of the summits, and once again, as if galvanized by electricity, her blazing hips lunged in the air and then swirved from side to side, so that once again the impudent and lascivious vista of her pussyhair was fully displayed.
The final cuts were applied vertically, first over the left cheek and then over the right, and Jenska Kravitz shrieked and tugged frantically again, tears running down her face as she turned back to implore the whipper for mercy. But already Brigetta Liebwerda had cast aside the birch in favor of the whippy rattan, for the final three strokes of Jenska Kravitz's "Welcome."
"Oh have pity, oh not anymore, surely? Oh Liever Gott, Ich will sterben, oh have pity, have pity! Mother, I'll be good, I won't ever do anything bad again, only please help me, Lieber Mutterlein!"
She thus provided the two tyrannical dominatresses with all the aural nuances which gratified them as well as thfe visual, and had already assured herself a kind of indulgant favor in their eyes. Nonetheless, the trusty prolonged this finale to the very last possible moment, wanting to draw out for her two superiors every drop of salacious enjoyment, knowing that she herself held her post because of that very ability. With pauses of as much as a minute between each of the three strokes.the cane was at last administered, diagonally from left to right, first over the top of the left hip and down over the inner upper edge of the right buttock; then, a few inches down, and finally the tip of the rattan biting home over the base of the left buttock and the rest of the cane stinging the plump carnation-satiny right thigh. At each cut, Jenska Kravitz's tethered body leaped and twisted, fighting the bonds, and howls of anguish reverberated through the refectory. Then she fell back shuddering on the bench, and burst into a crisis of hysterical sobs. At a sign from the head matron, two wardresses hurried forward to free her and to carry her off, lolling between them, to the infirmary.
And now it was at last the turn of the entrancingly attractive nineteen-year-old Margit Birnaum, who had been sentenced to the tawse and was to be flogged over the whipping stool. It was she most of all for whom Frau Diepold lusted. And as Grigetta liebwerda took a cup of wine from one of the wardresses by way of refreshment and reviving her flagging strength which had been well expended during these first three whippings, Frau Diepold's somber eyes fixed on the exquisite, pale and terrified face of the young prisoner with almost fanatical anticipation.
CHAPTER NINE
For at last it was the turn of the red-haired poisoner Margit Birnbaum, whose delicious body and sweetly mournful face the Lesbian passions of the chief matron had sabested. Once again the russet-haired trusty conferred with Frau Diepold, to make certain that she perfectly understood the wishes of her superior. Then, coming forward, she called out, "Birnbaum to the stool, for the tawse!"
The two wardresses who held Margit Birnbaum chuckled as they pushed her forward. "Say your prayers, you little poisoner," one of them sneered. "If I were Liebwerda right now, you'd have the skin of your Arsch torn off and the blood dripping to your heels! What a fine lady you pretend to be, trying to kill a decent man! They let you off too lightly, but right now at least you'll have a taste of what life here in Kurzwald is like!"
Margit Birnbaum had closed "her eyes and was very pale, not resisting the wardressed. But when they arrived at the whipping stool and prepared to bend her over it, the trusty made a sign to them so that they moved her round in such a way that, this time, her bottom would be turned exactly towards the directress of the prison.
A murmur ran through the assembled prisoners, for many of them understood exactly why this alteration in the positioning of a "Welcome" victim was being taken. Yes, many of them in that refectory had first been whipped just so before everyone else, and then taken at night to the quarters of Frau Diepold, there to submit themselves to all her ignoble lusts. And it was a mark of special interest when, just as now, a prisoner about to receive "Welcome" on her bare behind would have to turn it towards the evil woman, rather than towards her companions in misery.
The wardress who had jeered at the red-haired young woman now whispered, as she dragged Margit's wrists down to the base of the legs and made them fast with the buckling straps, "yes you're in rare luck, you dirty murdering little bitch you! Frau Diepold herself wants to have a look at your white Arsch. Do you know what that means, girl? She's got the hots for you. Now if you want to get off easily here, and I'm doing you a real favor by telling you so and I'll expect my own reward later, you'll just be as nice and obliging as you can be when she calls you to her rooms tonight, understand me?"
"N-no-I don't-what are you saying-oh, Gott, give me strength to bear my punishment-oh it is unjust!" the coppery-haired young woman moaned as she felt her ankles now being strapped by the other wardress.
Then she uttered a sobbing cry as both the women tugged up the woolen dress and petticoat, lowered her drawers just below the cheeks of her behind.
But Frau Diepold, leaning forward with her eyes glittering, made another impatient sign. Understanding it, one of the wardresses ripped the drawers entirely off and exposed the magnificent pale white-skinned and rosy-tlecked bottom of Margit Birnbaum.
Margit Birnbaum at nineteen was really exquisite, and a stifled gasp of lascivious admiration from the chief matron when her drawers had been ripped off paid tribute to the young woman's loveliness. At nineteen, she already knew the heartrending pangs of life's drama, betrayed by a man who had glibly promised to marry her after seducing her when he had found that she was an orphan under the guardianship of an elderly, kindly old man with whom he did some business.
He indeed had got her pregnant, and she had delivered her baby in a prison cell while awaiting her trial, which had dispatched her here to Kruzwald. The child had been taken from her, and it would go to a foster home and she would never see it again.
An now she must spend five terrible years in this gloomy, infamous prison, her delicate beauty making her at once the object of all the most hideous sexual depravities not only from the chief matron and her assistant, or from the trusty herself (for Brigetta Iiebwarda was as impassioned a Lesbian as either of her two superiors), but from her own companions who would force her in the dead of night to yield to them on pain of scarring her permanently or of thrashing her cruelly or torturing her.
That was why she wept hopelessly as she felt herself stripped and ready to endure a whipping which was as unjust as all the rest that had happened to her, knowing herself to be impoverished and humble, perhaps even a bastard, with no recourse of appeal.
The cheap black stockings set off the marvelous pallor of her naked thighs and behind. About five feet five inches in height, Margit Birnbaum possessed a beautiful, ripely curved ovalshaped bottom, the crease of which sinuously expanded as it reached the base of those two resilient, saucily elastic and jutting globes.
Thus it gave access at once to the silky dark-red ringlets of pussycurls which framed the dainty pink lips of her cunthole.
And it was this vista of femininity on which the glittering eyes of the chief matron now fixed unwaveringly, and her bosom rose and fell with emotional excitement as she impatiently awaited the contortions of that magnificent behind under the leather tawse, knowing that in her struggles, the beautiful young poisoner would be sure to execute the most lubricious movements to emphasize that most tempting and secret spot of her delectable young body.
Her thighs were slender and long, delightfully formed, and her calves were provocatively high set. Altogether she was a veritable treasure of femininity, and it was easy to see why her ruthless seducer had lusted for her and determined to have her at all costs, caring nothing of what might befall her when he had had his fill of her.
Brigetta Lilbwerda had been promised the smuggler, Jenska Kravitz, for tonight in her own quarters just off the refectory, and Hertha Mulder had agreed to take Johanna Kleist, the thief. So now, as the trusty came forward to the stool, with the tawse in her right hand, she licked her lips, anticipating her clandestine pleasures tonight and also imagining what even greater joys the chief matron would have with this lovely red-haired bitch whose bottom she was about to dust off right now.
Nevertheless, she had her orders. She therefore moved to the head of the stool and squatted down, under the pretext of making certain that Margit's wrists were properly and tightly strapped and the buckles not likely to slip. "Listen, Birnbaum," she hastily whispered, "Frau Diepold orders me to tell you that you're not going to be scorched alive, not if you're smart. She's going to have you called to her rooms tonight, understand me? She wants to see all of you, after having had a look at that sweet little white Arsch of yours right now. And if you're a very good girl and treat her nicely, you won't get along so badly here. Now do you understand me?"
Margit Birnbaum had had only one encounter with the warped desires of her own sex. At the orphanage, when she was sixteen, the wife of the superintendent had once called her late in the evening to run an errand to the kitchen. Margit had been wearing her nightgown, ready for bed, and the fat, gray-haired woman had stared at her covetously, and promised her a sweetmeat if she would stay a little bit and chat a little bit after the errand had been run.
Drawing the trembling, frightened girl down beside her on the couch, the superintendent's wife begun to fondle Margit's saucy, widely spaced, uptilting round titties, and the girl had gently and shamefacedly protested, till at last the woman had kissed her hard on the mouth. With a cry of disgust, Margit Birnbaum had sprung to her feet and begged to be allowed to go back to bed.
The wife of the superintendent had stared cruelly at her and then laughed mirthlessly, "Yes, go to bed by all means, you stupid little slut! I'm going to tell my husband tomorrow that you've been impertinent to me. You'll be thrashed as you deserve. When all I wanted was to cuddle a little bit with you, you dirty little vixen!" And, sure enough, the next afternoon, the superintendent had had her name called and she had had to come out there on the platform before the entire orphanage, and he had bent her across his knee as he posed his left foot on a stool, while one of the wardresses hoisted up her skirt and little petticoat, tugged down her drawers, and then she had sobbed and bitten her lips nearly to the blood as he had whipped her with a short leather strap.
Yes, Margot Birnbaum knew what the whip meant and she knew also in a sickening flash of intuition what it was that the chief matron of the Kruzwald prison desired of her.
Her very gorge rose as she panted back, "Oh no! I won't-I'm not that sort-whip me and have done with it, but I won't do such a filthy thing!"
"Be careful what you say, you little poisoner, you slut!" the trusty hissed. "I can take the skin off your Arsch with this tawse. You see the little strips at the end, girl? A little flick of my wrist, and you'll feel as if hot lye had been dipped onto your bare skin. Take my advice, she's not so bad, just close your eyes and do what you're told. You'll get better food and you'll be treated right."
"No! I won't! I may be here a prisoner, unjustly, but no one has any right to do that to me!" Margit Birnbaum's voice rose in a sobbing cry.
The glittering eyes of the chief matron narrowed, and her face flushed with rage. She comprehended exactly the meaning of this outburst and her lips tightened sadistically.
The trusty glanced back at her, shrugging, as if to explain that it wasn't her fault. Frau Diepold made another sign and shook her head. No, the bitch wasn't to be whipped to the blood, though she certainly deserved it. But tonight, when she was led in and told what she was to do, if she still refused, then there were lots of lovely things to be done with a pretty bitch like this!
"Suit yourself," Birgetta Liebwarda rasped as she rose to her feet. "Well, get your Arsch ready then. I'm going to start working on it right away. And you'd better sing a different tune tonight, that's my last piece of advise to you, girl!"
Moving behind the trembling young redhead, flicking out the fingers of the tawse, Birgetta Liebwarda planted her feet solidly on the dais, raised the implement into the air and, after hovering it a moment to add to the suspense to the victim as well as the spectatresses, brought it down with a wicked crack across the outer slipe of Margit Birnbaum's satiny left hip.
A stifled moan of agony was heard, the beautiful young redhead lifted her mournful face towards the assembled prisoners: her eyes were wide and glazed with tears already, and her delicate nostrils flared and shrank.
Her face was oval, a kind of cameo, with a wistful quality that made her all the more appealing. The high forehead, the delicately thin brows spoke almost of an aristocratic breeding, despite her unknown birth.
Even as she drew a long breath and readied herself, the tawse was falling again with a sinister Thwack, stripping the other hipslope with even greater vigor. However, Birgetta Liebwerda was careful not to use the savage tips of the instrument, for she had been ordered by this signal from her superior not to draw blood to mar that exquisite bottom too much.
Slowly the whipping proceeded. Margit Birnbaum ground her teeth together, but she could not hold back the low groans and sobbing gasps which the vigorous impact of leather on her naked, sensitive behind induced. Nor could she control the spasmodic tremorings that ran along her legs and bottom, made her hips swerve and jerk when the leather band flattened over her hindquarters.
Nor could she stop the convulsive workings of her slim little fingers, the piteous of her tearstained, contorted face as she stared sightlessly through all those tears out at the refectory and the silent prisoners who watched-this time with more compassion, perhaps, than for the three proceeding victims.
Still, she was able to endure fourteen strokes of the tawse without a real outcry. Perhaps the trusty was angered by this stoicism from one so young and gentle. At any rate, lowering the tawse to the floor, she sent the fifteenth lash whistling upwards, and the tips of the tawse bit right into the pink cunthole of the unfortunate young woman.
The stool creaked with Margit Birnbaum's frenzied wrigglings and twistings, and a hoarse shriek of intolerable suffering was torn from her panting lips: "Aaahheeeeiouuuuarhhh! Ohhhh-not-th-the-there, for the love of heaven, oh not there!"
Satisfied that she had at last conquered this obdurate young victim, Birgetta Liebwarda resumed the thrashing. She did not again strike between the girl's shaking thighs.
She laid on the broad band of the tawse, however, with implacable vigor, so that virtually every inch of that lovely white-and-rosy-flecked behind blazed with the heat of the punishment.
And every time the lash fell with its angry thwack across Margit Birnbaum's naked posterior, the unfortunate girl cried out hysterically, dragging at her bonds, her eyes blinded by hot tears which trickled ceaselessly down her contorted face.
At the thirtieth blow, the chief matron made a sign, and the trusty nodded, lowered the tawse and stepped down off the dais. Two wardresses hurried forward to unstrap the nearly fainting, shuddering victim and to cany her off between them.
Hertha Mulder rose now, and in her raspy voice addressed the silent spectatresses: "You have seen," she intoned, "how we deal with newcomers here at Kurzwald. It is done so tha each one of you as you begin your term with us, understands that she is likely to be punished for disobedience, mutiny, insolence and many other faults whfch the wardresses will explain to you. Keep your mouths shut, do what you are told, work hard at your tasks, and you may leave Kurzwald with only the 'Welcome' to remind you of what punishment can be. like. Make trouble, dare to criticize the good food and the care you receive here, and you will wish you had never been born. That's all. Wardresses, march them back to their cells."
The "Welcome" was over. But the true, the sinister, the vile welcome was about to begin this night of infamous nights in Kruzwald.
The prison was dark, the gas lamps had been turned out at nine. And through the cells there were moan in gs and whisperings. In some of them, there was the sucking sound of moist kisses and the whimpering sighs of women who, deserted by their men and condemned to isolation here, sought what little solace they could find.
In the sparcely furnished room of the trusty, the flaxen-haired smuggler, Jenska Kravitz was hangdoggedly removing he. coarse linen nightgown. All prisoners at night, immediately after the evening meal, were ordered to change into their nightgowns. It had been reasoned by the cagey Frau Diebold that when women wear very little, they are not in any condition to organize a mutiny, for even if they should manage to escape, they would be apprehended at once.
And in this cold February night air, such exposure might well prove fatal, to say nothing of the merciless reprisals that would follow any such attempt at flight!
"We'll get along fine, Jenska," Brigetta Liebwerda was already naked, moving towards the trembling young woman. "You just be nice to me, see? You're really lucky to have me instead of bony old Hertha. Beside, her body stinks. Now I use soap, and I'm not so bad to look at, ftew?"
Jenska Kravitz shook her head, her cheeks crimson as she let the nightgown fall to the floor. Brigetta Liebwards stared greedily at the thick dark blonde patch of pussyhair which marked the plump Venus-mound. "Now don't make too much noise," she cautioned, or we might both be in for it. Does your sweet Arsch hurt too much?"
The salves and hot towls, followed by cold ones, had made the marks of Jenska Kravitz's thrashing fade quite noticeably. Nonetheless and understandably, her bottom was atrociously tender. But, to show her good will, she shook her head, continued to stare down at the floor as the naked russet-haired trusty came up and squeezed her titties, and pressed her cheek against them, and purred, "You've got such a lovely skin and you smell good, too. Jennie girl, I want you to lick me betwen my legs first. Get down on your knees and do it. I'll be nice to you, if you're nice to me, you'll see."
So saying, she sat down on the edge of her cot and spread her legs, and Jenska Kravitz, her face scarlet with humiliation and shame, docilely crawled between them, put her face on the insides of the trusty's thighs, and put her lips against the extremely thick pussycurls of the woman who had flogged her so vigorously this afternoon.
"Mmmmmm, that's lovely! Oh you do it so nicely! And don't forget to use your tongue-put it well inside, oh yes, Ach Gott. I like that best of all-do you find a little button there? Oh yes, that's the most exciting-rub it good-oh you sweet bitch, Jennie, we're going to be such good friends, I just know we are-oh darling, give it to me hard, hard, make me come, I want to come-Ahhhhh!"
* * *
Johanna Kleist stood shamefacedly, her head drooping, beside the low wooden trundle-bed in the dark corner of Hertha Mulder's room. It was down the hall from the obviously larger and more elaborate quarters of Frau Diepold, and it was with shock and chargrin that the handsome black-haired convicted thief had found herself escorted here by the wardresses out of her cell instead of to the quarters of the matron.
She was stark naked, except for her stockings and a pair of old felt slippers which the grinning, bony assistant matron had handed her and told her to put on instead of the ugly shoes which every female prisoner at Kurzwald was obliged to wear.
"I know what you're thinking, Kleist," Hertha Mulder stood only in her coarse linen shift, her hair tumbled, her eyes glittering with malicious lust. Her body was hairy and scrawny under the shift.
There was also a rancid odor from her armpits, for she rarely bathed. Indeed, she was wont to say that her favorite bath was the "tongues of these nasty little bitches who want to polish me off to make sure I don't have them polished off on their Arsches on Fridays."
But by sheer force of authority and her status in this terrible, pitiless institution, she could compel the most delicate and sensitive of females to gamahuch her, or even, when she felt viciously cruel enough, to open the cheeks of her behind and lick her asshole.
Indeed, if the lovely red-haired young poisoner had fallen to her lot tonight, she had had in mind exactly that; no more degrading act could establish the difference between the exalted status of a prison matron and the lowliness and insecurity of a common convict.
"Yes, Kleist, I can read your mind clear as a book," she went on, taking a sip from a mug of mulled wine. "You were thinking while you were getting your Arsch dusted off by liebwerda that Frau Diepold herself had got all excited over that nice soft skin of yours and that big bottom and those fine thighs and titties. You were congratulating yourself already. You thought you were going to become a trusty at once, just like the bitch who made your Arsch smart. Here now, turn around and stoop over a little so I can get a good look at it. Does it still hurt?"
"A-a little, Fraulein Mulder," the black-haired woman disconsolately admitted. She stooped towards the bed, her hands on the middle of her thighs, a slow burning blush spreading over her cheeks.
The bony assistant matron moved closer, put her left hand on Johanna Kleist's spine and began to caress the naked, flinching bottomcheeks with her other hand.
The birch had left myriad stirations, many of them deep and purplish now. The healing salves had done their work, so the original soreness was gone now. Nonetheless, it was quite obvious that the prisoner would not sit in comfort for several days. Even stooping forward as she did now, she was seen to grimace as the assistant Matron's harsh palm rasped over the twitching summits and the base of her naked posterior.
"So it's me you'll have to put with instead, Kleist," Hertha Mulder went on, licking her lips with anticipation. The marvelously smooth and soft tawn skin, the sight of those lovely titties dangling now and the glimpse of very thick black pussyhair which she could see through the slightly spread thighs in this bent-over pose excited her.
"But if you're nice and do exactly what I tell you to, maybe I can make you a trusty like Liebwerda. The first month, you understand, I can't show you too much preference. That's against the rules, and besides, it creates bad will among the other prisoners. Maybe sometimes in public I'll have to slap your face or bawl you out. I might even, just to make sure that nobody suspects that we're lovers, have to have you dusted off some Friday-Oh, don't worry about it, Kleist, it won't be for at least two weeks, and by then that big sweet Arsch of yours won't hardly show a mark from today's welcome. Now then, you know what's what, you're not exactly stupid. Are you going to behave yourself and show me as much obedience as you would have done with Matron herself?"
"Ja, Fraulein Mulder," the black-haired woman murmured dully, closing her eyes and shivering as Hertha Mulder's palm continued its lingering palpation of her bare behind.
Over the entire surface of both cheeks it moved now, and then suddenly, with a bony forefinger, the assistant matron was tracing the ambery-shadowy groove. It was broad, giving access to both Johanna Kleist's cunthole and ass, and suddenly the prisoner uttered a gasp and straightened, as she felt the sharp, dirty fingernail of her tormentress prod the sensitive rosette of her still sensitive bumhole.
"Well, I must say," the assistant matron whined, "you're not getting off to a good start. Over you go, and stick that Arsch out more. Spread your legs a little and put your hands on your knees and bend way down until your face is on the sheets of my bed. That's better. Mmmmmm, what a lovely, juicy, big Arsch you do have, Kleist! I'll tell you a little secret, I was going to pick that little smuggler Kravit-yes, I was-but then Brigetta begged so and said that she hadn't had first pick the last five or six time, and I felt sort of generous. I told myself I'd put up with you. But now that I've got you here, you lovely bitch, I actually think you're going to be much nicer to me than Kravitz would have been. Over you go-that's a good bitch!"
Her voice became a sensual croon of lascivious anticipation as her forefinger once again prodded the handsome brunette woman's bottomhole, then slipped delicately inside and wriggled around. Poor Johanna Kleist compressed her mouth, screwing her eyes shut, in a desperate attempt to remain oblivious to this indecent and not particularly pleasant palpation.
The tightening of her bottom caused the heat of her thrashing to be revived most uncomfortably, and her nostrils began to flare and to shrink erratically.
"Now you can turn around, dear," the assistant matron purred. "Oh, you've got lovely Butzen, you do have! I just know it's going to be wonderful going to sleep on them tonight, just like two big rubber cushions, nicht wahrt"
"I-I'm glad you like them, Fraulein Mulder," Johanna Kleist hoarsely stammered, her face aflame as she now faced the lecherous, scrawny woman who was the arbiter of her particular destiny here in this abominable prison.
"Oh I do, I do! But now, like a good, well-trained bitch, get down on your knees and kiss my feet. Use your tongue between the toes. I want you to be really humble, Kleist, and stick that Arsch up so I can look at it while I'm enjoying myself," was the next degrading order.
Conquering her revulsion, because the tenderness of her well-birched behind reminded her only too well of the risks she ran in showing the slightest reluctance or abhorrence, the black-haired woman slowly knelt down, bowed her head and, her hands grasping Hertha Mulder's bony bare ankles, pressed her lips slowly against the dirty, malodorous feet and toes. Then, as the matron insistently reminded her of what else she wanted, Johanna Kleist protruded her tongue and forced herself by sheer dint of will to lick.
Hertha Mulder's face was flushed, her eyes glittering, and her scrawny titties rose and fell violently in her emotional turmois. She liked to pretend she was the equal of Frau Diepold, although of course she knew she wasn't. It was only at moments like this, alone in her own quarters, where she felt the powers of life and death. And when a bitch was as attractive as this one, this naked thief, then her ego expanded and she felt young and powerful and strong and unconquerable again.
"That's lovely," she huskily commended the groveling naked woman. "Now I'm going to give you a real treat. Take off my shift, and then I want you to fondle me and kiss me all over. Then I want you to beg me to go to bed with you, Kleist, do you hear?"
She caught up the hems of the shift and slowly lifted it. But she couldn't keep the revulsion out of her eyes when she stared at the lean belly, the thick, straggly and dank bush of the assistant matron's pubic hair, the bony thighs, pitted here and there with old smallpox scars. And then the paps, dangling and flaccid, widely spaced, with dark-brownish nipples like two squeezed out old rubber sacks, told her only too miserably what efforts of will she needs must take tonight to preserve her already well-birched bottom tonight from a new flogging which would be absolutely anathema to endure.
"Well, what are you waiting for, Kleist?" the assistant matron snapped, scowling down at the naked captive. "Go ahead! Show me how much you like me. Show me how much you want to be my sweetheart. You know, I've got a good thick strap here under the mattress, and if you're not nice to me, I can have the wardresses in here to hold you down while I warm up some hot rod soup that Liebwerda dished out for you this afternoon."
It needed only this reminder to force the naked woman into complete compliance, abject as it was servile, though she could not help blushing at the idea of how low she had to sink to preserve her very skin.
Her hands gingerly applied to the flat, pockmarked buttocks of the assistant matron, and her lips began to brush Hertha Mulder's bony knees, lean, hairy thighs, until finally she approached that dense, rank-smelling bush over the cunt.
Here she hesitated an imperceptible moment and Hertha Mulder's face twisted in a kind of malovent fury. Both her hands thrust into Johanna Heist's hair, entangling and twisting it, as she savagely forced the woman's face against her cunt hole.
"No, it's not perfumed, and it doesn't have ribbons on it! But you're going to make me come all the same, you dirty, thieving bitch! Get busy and gamahuch me! I'll strap your Arsch off you-yes, and your big Butzen too, if you don't please me, just you remember that, Kleist!"
With a whimper of dying shame, closing her eyes and trying her best to remain impervious to the scent which wafted from that unwashed membrane, Johanna Kleist pressed her mouth against the tangled curls of the ugly pubic bush.
But a yank at her hair gave her to understand that it was her tongue was what the assistant matron most desired, and that too was provided, shudder and tremble though she did as she tasted the rancid niche of her terrible superior's twat.
Hertha Mulder began to whinny and neigh like a mare in rut, trembling and moaning, her fingers feverishly yanking at the disheveled black hair of her unfortunate, groveling victim. "Oh, that's so good, so very good, Kleist, deeper, much deeper, there, on the button, now rub it around-ahhh-rnrnmm-that's lovely! Just you keep that up till I tell you to stop or I'll yank your hair out by the roots-ohhh ahhhh-Mmmmm-Aiiii-I'm coming-now mind you, you big fat sow-gobble up every drop of my cream-there-oh Gott in HimmeV. Now!"
Her body threshed about, her head lolled, as, her eyes closing, a twisted leer distorted her thin mouth. The unfortunate Johanna Kleist was forced to lap up all the rancid, oozing pussycream which came out so copiously from this vicious, unattractive despot who ruled with the lash and with the ever-present threat of fear, all the comely convicts consigned to the grim fortress of Kruzwald.
* * *
The two wardresses who had brought Margit Birnbaum to the private quarters of the chief matron nudged each other as they walked down the corridor whence they had come. "That little red-haired spitfire is a stupid bitch" the fat, hulking older wardress muttered with a shrug. "Imagine telling us Matron hasn't got any right to have anything to do with her!"
Jawoh!" the other woman, with shifty, watery blue eyes, short and squat, with thick gray hair, cackled. "But I feel sorry for the poor little bitch. She's already had her Arsch scalded for her, and she's going to have the skin of it flayed off if she keeps up that kind of talk with Frau Diepold."
The attractive, copperyhaired young woman stood stiffly, arms at her sides, clad only in a coarse linen shift and slippers. The rest of the prisoners were sleeping, for it was well past the lights-out time at Kruzwald.
But Frau Diepold had applied perfume to her buxom body, combed her stiff gray hair and quickly taken a razor to the moustache on her upper lip.
She wore a frilly cotton wrapper, with a ludicrous red ribbon bow tied at the bodice. It could not embellish the shapelessness of her big, flabby body, nor belie her absolutely untempting figure of plump waist and massive haunches, short round thighs and knotty, varicose-veined calves.
She was barefooted, and she sat on the edge of her wide bed, with finely embroidered sheets, as befitted the chief matron of such an important institution under the auspices of the King himself. Her eyes blazed with lust as they swept the quivering body before her. Margit Birnbaum kept her head held high, her cheeks flaming, as she stared back at the cruel, steely-gray eyed head of Kurzwald Prison.
"Here now, Margit girl," the woman spoke with a false joviality, "take that mug of wine and have a good swig. You poor chit, I've no doubt your sweet little Arsch nicht wahr, Lieblingl I told them to use a special salve so you wouldn't smart too much tonight. Is it better any?"
"I am fine, thank you, Frau Diepold," the young woman murmured, her eyes never leaving the cruel, insolent face which struck such terror into all the inmates of the prison. "But I want to know why I am here. Have I done anything wrong? I was told that as a prisoner I might go to bed-"
"Oh come now, don't be such a babe in the woods, Margit girl," Frau Diepold sniggered with a sly wink. She rose, lifting the heavy porcelain mug out to the red-haired victim. "Take a good drink of it, girl. It'll cheer you up. I know how you must feel. Your very first day here, to have to be tied down and show your pretty Arsch to everybody. And I know that Liebwerda lays it on hard. But then she has to, you know. We mustn't show favoritism here, you know. That's why I myself wanted to talk to you tonight. To make you feel at home here. Yes, I know, it's not really like home, but it would be so much nicer for you if you're sensible. Do you understand me?"
Margit Birnbaum stiffened and her lips began to tremble. Her voice faltered a little, but there was no mistaking its meaning or intent. "I understand only that I'm a prisoner here, that you are the head matron and that I must obey you in everything concerning prison rules. That's why I don't understand why I am here now, when I am tired and when I still hurt from that unjust flogging. I ask permission to go back to my cell so I may sleep. I wish to be assigned work, so I won't be idle."
"I wonder if some jailhouse bitch of a lawyer has been talking to you, Margit." The head matron's tone was still deceptively tender, like the smile of a tiger about to pounce on helpless prey.
"You really don't mean such a thing. I understand. It's been a terrible day for you and, just between us girls, listen now, I don't really think you wanted to kill that bastard who got you knocked up. But I'm not the judge, you see. If you're a good girl and you do your work and you mind what I tell you to, Margit girl, maybe I can get you paroled. We have a library here and I'll put you in charge of it-yes, that's it. I can see that you have spirit and that you speak very well, like a lady. Yes, that's a very good idea. Now you just do what I tell you to-"
"And what am I to do now, here, Frau Diepold?" the red-haired young woman interrupted.
The head matron caught her breath at this audacity. Her eyes blazed and narrowed for a moment and a wolfish smile appeared on her cruel lips. But then once again the false mask of benevolence slipped into place, and in a syrupy tone she wheedled, "I'm not going to remember what you just said, Margit. Naturally you're upset. I would be too, if I had to taste the tawse from Liebwerda. But you were very brave, I'll give you that. I really didn't think you would be, you look so delicate. Here, sit down beside me on the bed. And do drink this wine. It's the best we can get here, and it's warm and it's got spices."
"I don't want it, thank you. Please, may I go back to my cell?"
"You will go back when I say so and not a moment before, do you understand? I am getting a little tired of your attitude, Margit. I'm trying to be nice to you."
"I don't want you to be nice to me, I want you to respect my rights as a prisoner."
"Your rights as a prisoner? Herr Gott, you really overstep yourself, you know! I would laugh, if it were not that I do think you're beginning to mean this malicious nonsense you're spouting."
"I do mean it. I was in love with a man-or I thought I was-but my body is my property and I will give it to whomever I choose."
A red glow of anger burned in the shallow cheeks of Frau Klara Diepold. Then her breath hissed through her compressed lips, as she spat, "Take off that shift, get down on your knees, put your head to the floor and tell me you're going to be a good little bitch. Do it this minute, or, der Teufel take me, I'll call Liebwerda back here to take the skin off your pretty Arsch!"
"Then I will complain to the magistrate, I know that it is is customary to whip a prisoner the first week she is sentenced here, but I have done nothing to deserve another. I have my rights, I insist upon them."
"You do indeed? I'll give you rights, Birnbaum!"
In rage the chief matron strode to the door of her quarters, opened the door and bawled out, "Eigenthaller, Persity, to me!"
The two wardresses who had brought Margit Birnbaum to the quarters of the head matron had stationed themselves at the end of the corridor, and now they hurried back to her, having anticipated just such a happenstance. When they arrived, the chief matron, livid with fury, pointed to the trembling, coppery-haired young woman and snarled, "I want that bitch in the iron corset, at once! Go get it, Eigenthaller."
"Zu befehl, Frau Diepold," the fat older wardress fawningly exclaimed. She hurried out of the room while the other wardress swiftly seized Margit Birnbaum's wrists and dragged them behind her back and gripped them with her left hand, while with her right hand she expertly wrenched the coarse shift off the red-haired girl's body.
The chief matron gasped with lustful admiration at the sight of Margit's heaving, widely spaced, uptilting bubbies with their dainty pink nipples centered in wide darker-coral aureolae, at the wide shallow dimple of her bellybutton, at the thick, dark-red silky curls framing her cunthole, and at the flexing, exquisitely rounded thighs, whose exquisite epidermis was that of a true redhead, a pale cream mixed with myriad rosy flecks.
"Let me go! You've no right to do this! I shall complain to the magistrate! I'm not guilty of what they sentenced me, and I'm certainly not sentenced to this abuse!" the young woman shrilly exclaimed.
The fat wardress now entered with the terrible "iron corset," a device which the matron herself had helped to design. It was a kind of cuirass, like armorplate, made of wrought iron, and it fitted the average female from the middle of her titties to the loins.
It was opened by a spring lock on one side, and the inner surface was lined with tiny metal brads and whorls which, when the device was' locked over a naked female body, impressed viciously into the tender naked flesh of the captive.
A further refinement of cruelty was in the narrow black doubled leather strap which gussetted the victim between her thighs. For in its middle was a wooden phallus, studded with little prongs all over the shaft and embellished at the tip of the simulated glans with three little hook-like prongs made of iron.
When Margit Birnbaum saw this hideous apparatus, she uttered a shriek and tried to break away from the fat wardress. The latter simply wrenched her wrists upward on the slim, deeply hollowed naked back of the unfortunate young woman and brought Margit Birnbaum shrieking to her knees in pain, turning her head desperately from side to side.
"Be quick about it, Persitz, Eigenthaller!" the chief matron snapped, as she now doffed her wrapper and stood in all her unprepossessing nakedness, with her thick, matted black bush completely concealing the plump and rather flaccid lips of her cunt, the hair thickly sprinkled with gray.
The two wardresses dragged the unfortunate naked girl over to the bed and flung her down on her belly. While the older wardress sat upon the girl's shoulders, Marta Persitz hastened to apply the opened corset over the girl's body, and the chief matron herself aided in this sadistic task.
Once it was pressed against the naked back of the victim, both the chief matron and the other wardress rolled the girl over, while Elizabeth Eigenthaller swiftly bounded up from her perch and herself took a hand in the business.
Wild shrieks of pain attested to Margit Birnbaum's unspeakable suffering as the corset was locked around her body, the whorls and brads in the inner lining biting into her titties, belly and back and upper bottomcheeks.
Then, rolled onto her back, she again was pinioned by the fat wardress who sat down with all her weight on the girl's upper chest, while Frau Diepold and the other wardress pulled the narrow black leather strap between Margit Birnbaum's frantically kicking legs.
The wardress held one end of the strap while the cruel chief matron took the thick wooden dildo and jammed it viciously between the tender lips of Margit Birnbaum's soft cunthole. pressing her palm against the leather band to keep the hideous dildo well in place while the other wardress buckled the leather strap on the other side.
Then all three women moved back from the bed and studied the agonized young victim. Margit Birnbaum put her palms down on the bed and arched up her bottom, her eyes mad with unspeakable despair and agony, her mouth gaping in shriek upon shriek of frenzy.
Her slippers fell off as her bare feet threshed the bed, and she tried to twist from side to side, only succeeding in working the wooden dildo deeper and deeper into her martyred young cunthole.
"You see what your sharp tongue has brought you, bitch?" the chief matron sneered, bending down over the girl's congested, tear-stained face. "I'm going to leave you here for an hour. You can scream all you like, because no one else will hear you. And when I come back, Birnbaum, you'd better be ready to get down and lick the floor at my feet and apologize for being such a stupid, ungrateful little whore, otherwise we'll find something else to help your fine intelligence along.
"Come along, girls, let's inspect the kitchen and see if Cook hasn't left some little tidbit for us, like a bone full of marrow or a choice bit of fat from the pork!"
She donned her wrapper, thrust her feet into her buckled slippers, and simperingly marched between the fawning wardresses out of her quarters, slamming the door and leaving the frantic, agonized young sufferer alone on the bed. They had taken one last precaution: Margit Birnbaum's hands had been tied behind her back with a rawhide thong.
She could not therefore extricate the piercing, rasping wooden dildo from the tenderest nook in her tortured young body ... An hour later, exactly to the moment, Frau Diepold returned, with a smug, contented look, her face flushed. She had had recourse to the gin bottle in the kitchen, while she and the wardresses regaled one another with tales of the court, the most scandalous and filthy gossip imaginable.
Margit Birnbaum was nearly fainting, but exhausted. Her body dripped sweat, and her haggard, contorted face was twisted to one side.
Her palms were pressed down against the bed, her heels arched against the sheets to uplift her body all she could, since direct contact only seemed to exacerbate the whipping she had had this afternoon as well as to shift the hideous prober deeper into her tender young cunt-sheath.
"Well now, darling, are you ready to apologize to your dear Mutterlein!" the chief matron purred as she bent down to stare greedily into the girl's tortured face. "That's what you must think of me as, you know, dear, just as your mother. Would you like that thing taken off?"
"Ach, mein G-G-Gott ... y-yes ... ich wunche Sterben," Margit moaned.
"You poor darling, of course you're not going to die, and there's no need to wish for such a terrible thing. This is just a little punishment for a naughty baby. Here, I'll take it out of you. I know you don't like men anyway, after that swine of a boyfriend of yours knocked you up and promised to marry you. Tsk, tsk, you're bleeding a little. But it's your own fault, you know-I warned you."
Swiftly the head matron disengaged the ugly shaft which the black leather strap had forced into poor Margit Birnbaum's cunthole. Then swiftly she unlocked the clasp at one side of the corset and swung the upper piece as far away from the tortured, naked body as she could. She grimaced with distaste to see the ugly gouges and the drops of blood which the whorls and brads had inflicted on those luscious titties, that sweet belly, the abdomen.
"Roll yourself out on your tummy, dear. I'll put some salve on you myself," she said with mock tenderness. She hastened to her commode and there brought out a bottle of a strong-smelling brown, viscous liquid. Uncorking it, she filled her palms with it and began to rub the stuff into the girl's back and bottom, while Margit Birnbaum lay gasping and sobbing, almost inert and almost fainting.
Wincing and groaning, the unfortunate naked young woman gradually felt the soothing effects of the medicated compound. Frau Diepold dipped a finger into the bottle and coated the bleeding, chafed lips of Margit Birnbaum's cunt, then worked it inside very delicately. Frantic little moans and gurgling gasps began, then gradually quieted. There was a considerable amount of laudanum in the potion, and it had the marvelous quality of palliating the girl's hurts.
"There now, isn't that better?"
"Y-yes, Frau D-Diepold," Margit Birnbaum faintly panted.
"Now here's some wine, and you drink it down, do you hear me? Your mother is going to take good care of her naughty baby, you'll see. Sit up a bit. Here, I'll put my arms around your shoulders. What lovely titties you have, you little darling. You're going to be good now, aren't you? Here, drink your wine slowly."
She had again removed her wrapper and was naked, and she sat down beside the swaying, half-fainting victim, an arm around Margit Birnbaum's shoulders as she lifted the cup of mulled wine to those trembling lips. Her eyes devoured the shuddering nakedness, the marvelous titties and belly, because in her eyes that marred beauty was still more desirable.
The girl docilely sipped some of the wine, her eyes downcast, her body shaken by an uncontrollable fit of trembling.
"Now then, you're going to be good, I just know you are. So I won't ask too much this first night. Here now, you watch and look at me," Frau Diepold panted. She flung herself on the bed, spreading her knees widely, then drawing them up to her flaccid breasts. "You stretch yourself out on your tummy, darling, and come lick your Mutterlein. You know where. Right on the kootzele. You will do it until I come. I know you will, because you don't want to go back to the iron corset all night long and have a good thrashing tomorrow morning with the birch rod, do you, darling?"
A tortured shudder seized that tender young body. "Oh no!" Margit Birnbaum gasped, her eyes enormous, with almost a look of madness in them. She forced herself to lie down on her belly and crawled toward that gaping slit, and humbly she began to gamahuch the chief matron of Kurzwald Prison.
CHAPTER TEN
A week after Estanzia Carola Lienz had arrived in Potsdam with her maid Gilda Dvornak and found quarters in the Mackholm Inn, the son of Frederick Wilhelm I dismounted from his carriage before a little house in Vertel Square and, glancing quickly around, buttoning his great-coat against the harsh gusts of the chilly February wind, walked down a narrow little street which intersected with the square and, stopping before the door of a little house whose chimney was valiantly blowing forth clouds of smoke as it sought to warm the chilly winds of this mid-morning, rapped on it with the head of his oaken stick.
A plump, plain-faced maid opened, gasped, then bowed low. "No need for that, Dolly," the brownhaired, tall, sober-faced caller gently remarked. "Is your mistress in?"
"Indeed, Sire-"
"You will not use that name here, Dolly. I am not yet king. My father still sits upon the Prussian throne," Frederick declared. Unbuttoning his greatcoat and taking off his cocked hat, he handed them to the flustered girl, who promptly hastened away, while he paced the floor of the little sitting room, frowning and lost in thought.
This was the son of the choleric and parsimonious King of Prussia, the same youth who had very nearly been put to death for treason against the throne, who had watched his best friend executed in the courtyard from the bars of his prison cell. Father and son had become reasonably reconciled, but he knew well that his father's valet, Joseph Grundzing, lost no opportunity to put spies upon his track.
It was because of this that he had come this morning to tell the lovely, gentle, black-haired daughter of old Professor Hortzkopf that it might be as well for them to have no more meetings for the next several weeks.
For he well knew his father's implacable hatred for him, and also the old man's fear that, now that he was ill, this same offspring whom he had very nearly sent to an ignominious and shameful death, would ascend the throne and, overnight, destroy all the military advances which he had made during his reign.
What his father did not, could not, know was that Prince Frederick had in mind even more glorious ambitions for the kingdom of Prussia. Indeed, he deplored his father's use of mercenaries; he promised himself that when he ascended the throne, the pay of the soldiers would be raised and every effort would be made to enlist more young men into a mighty army that would make Prussia invulnerable against the wily Maria Theresa.
To this end, he intended also diplomatic liaisons, and particularly with Silesia. Anton Lienz, who now reigned with the illustrious title of king over that province which was now annexed to the Austrian power of the greedily ambitious empress, was a pompous, rather ineffectual little man who had really no stomach for the business of ruling a people.
And to become the ally of Silesia would be the first step in wresting away a part of the dominating power which the Empress had amassed through her years of cunning and her intimidation by means of her well-paid, loyal armies.
"But how can your father listen to such idle gossip, Frederick?"
The young prince uttered a bitter little laugh. "He is willing to believe the worst of me, almost from birth, it would seem. You know how my friend Katte was put to death before my eyes, and I was told even then that I should follow him before the firing squad. My father fears me because he believes that I would destroy Prussia since I turned to music and poetry and philosophy instead of to war. But I am a soldier in my blood, and Katte was a magnificent officer whom Prussia could ill afford to lose. I will avenge his death, Gerda, never fear. When I become king-if I become king-my father's spirit will rest quietly in the grave once he sees that I will not weaken this nation to the Austrian yoke. But that is enough of such gloomy talk. What did your father say of my little ode?"
The lovely young woman's face brightened again as she began to talk, animatedly, while the young prince studied her bewitching face, perhaps with ah inward sigh that he was not free like other men to pursue the doctrines of his heart, for Gerda Hortzkopf, at twenty-two, five feet six and a half inches in height, slender and ethereal, was gracious, witty, compassionate by nature.
The mere thought that his father's valet could suspect her of either a political or an amorous intrigue enraged the young prince. But he knew only too well his father's vicious cruelty, and he knew also that if Frederick Wilhelm I should take it into his head to single out Gerda Hortzkopf and her father for disgrace and punishment, he would not be able to lift so much as a ringer to stay the king's alleged justice.
She wore a simple muslin frock, with full bodice, flowing skirt, long to the ankles. Yet even though it might be shapeless, it did not quite conceal the willowy beauty of her body, nor could the plain, chaste bodice entirely dissemble the highperched, widely spaced, pear-shapted titties which, in her animated speech and eager mood, rose and fell quickly against the modest camisole beneath that frock.
Her black hair was piled high on her head, to make her look more mature, but her face was heartshaped, with dimpled and rounded cheeks and adorably sweet, full and almost wistful mouth, a straight little nose, and a tiny beauty spot high on her right cheekbone.
Her delicate skin was the color of clotted cream, wonderfully satiny. Indeed, the young prince desired her, but he well knew that he must remain continent so long as his father lived and so long as the malicious Joseph Grundzing had his father's confidence and trust.
At last their pleasant conversation came to an end, and the tall, handsome prince rose and kissed the girl's hand. "I take my leave of you now, Gerda," he said bravely. "Do tell your father how grateful I am for his criticism. The meter is halting-yes, much like my own plans for the future. I think poetry reflects the mood of a man, as it does his dreams. One day, perhaps, my future will be less bleak and the skies now drably looking down on Potsdam will be clear. I shall not forget you, Gerda. If it is at all possible, we may meet again, but as I have said, it will be wisest for me to bid you now a most cordial and respectful Auf Weidersehen."
* * *
Estanzia Carola Lienz had inscribed "Linz" on the registry book of the Mackholm, and had instructed her maid to write hers as "Dornat," in the event that her uncle should send emissaries to trace her flight and perhaps come at last to Potsdam.
Meanwhile, she had been composing a most difficult letter to her royal uncle, respectfully pointing out to him that while she was most deeply and humbly grateful for his concern and solicitude as her guardian and only living kin, she could not find it within herself to be obedient to his wish to marry, particularly when it concerned the profligate Duke Johann of Platz.
If, she declared, he insisted on such a marriage, she then would beg his leave to forsake her rank and to live either as a commoner with.the divine choice of deciding her own destiny and happiness or, if he should feel her attitude demanded punishment, she would submit herself to the Mother Superior of the Convent of St. Jerome, there to become a novitiate and to renounce all worldly aspirations. On this she counted as a last trump, for Anton Lienz was devoutly religious, and thus, if he persisted in seeking a union between her and her detested noble suitor, her seeking sanctuary in the church would be grudgingly respected.
Lovely Gilda had wrung her hands and wept when she heard this letter read to her. "Oh no, my Princess," she had wailed. "It's unthinkable that such a lovely girl as you should be locked up in a dreary convent! Why, they'll give you bread and water, they'll even scourge you!"
"Gilda, my dear friend, I think I would rather take a daily scourging than have to go to bed with that young brute!" Estanzia Carola Lienz had merrily retorted, and her maid had gasped, then blushed at this candid reference to the carnal aspect of such a union.
The two young women had passed themselves off as sisters. Yet Hans Schnurr, the widowed, stocky, ill-tempered landlord of the Mackholm, had thought it strange that they had sought no employment here in Potsdam after having told him they had come as seamstresses from Vienna to live in the Prussian capital and earn their livelihood. They did not go out, most of the time they had their meals sent to their rooms, and they acted more like grand ladies than seamstresses.
Two years before, his inn had been closed for a week by royal edict because a comely prostitute had come there on an assignation with an elderly burger who had taken Herr Schnurr's most expensive room, ordered the most lavish meals and wines. Unhappily, the old burger had been far too sanguine in his hopes of proving his potency, though he had eaten enough for three men and drunk enough for at least two.
As a consequence, the chit had jeered at his inability to tumble her, and the irate old man had angrily denounced her for a thieving bawd. They had come to blows, and in the heat of the fracas, the old burger had had a heart attack and died.
Sucli misadventures had to be reported instantly to the police, and when the landlord had summoned them, a report had gone at once to the palace at Potsdam. Back had come word that the Mackholm should be shuttered tor seven days and seven nights while an investigation should be made of the landlord's culpability in the matter.
Eventually, to be sure, the good name of the inn had been cleared and the Mackholm Inn reopened. Yet Hans Schnurr had not forgotten, and being a sanctimonious prig (even though he was dallying with the blowsy wench Betsy), had no wish to have a recurrence of this royal mark of disfavor.
That was why he had begun to express himself openly-which he rarely did-to Willi Murcht, the obsequious young footman who was still priding himself on his amatory skills for having fucked blonde Betsy without his master's knowledge.
Indeed, Hans Schnurr had gone so far as to draw a mug of ale for the lanky, blond-haired young rogue whose hawk-like nose, thin mouth and rather large eyes gave him a kind of bird-like expression.
'Have you seen much c those two fine ladies who are favoring us with their patronage, Willi?" Hans asked as he shoved the mug of ale towards the twenty-four-year-old footman.
"Thanks, Herr Schnurr, and to your good health!" Willi beamed as he took a hearty swig of the brew and set the pewter mug down on the counter with a clatter. "That I haven't, though I've kept an eye out for them both. They've paid their reckoning, though, haven't they, Master?"
"Aye, that they have. And with minted silver from Silesia. It's a good currency, because that crafty Maria Theresa stands behind it. Austrian gold is better than Prussian, because our good king, may the heavens grant him long years, is stingy with it and doesn't let much be shown around Potsdam," the landlord lamented. Then, coming around the counter and taking Willi by the lapels of his footman's coat, he muttered, "But doesn't it strike you as strange, Willi, that these fine ladies never go out, that they don't look for work here when they pretend to be seamstresses from Vienna? What would they be doing with Silesian silver? I'd give much to know."
"Perhaps they're doxies, Master," the footman eagerly suggested with a glint in his eyes.
"I had thought of that myself. Still and all there's been no fine nobleman calling at the inn. Nor have I any wish to have His Majesty set the seal upon my doors as was done-you know what I mean, Willi. So keep a sharp eye on those wenches."
"Master, I've an idea."
"Out with it."
"What if I were to, shall we say, hint to Herr Luftwagge that there are two sweet young pigeons here for the plucking and that they are ladies of quality?"
"That old fool!" the landlord contemptuously sniffed. "Still, he is always looking to tumble a wench, even if he can't do it. But he pays well and he keeps his mouth shut, which is more than I can say of that damned old fool who chose to have a heart attack in my best room. Go ahead, Willi, and if they should not turn out to be doxies, we have but to apologize. And if they turn out to be seamstresses, they cannot object if a fine gentleman favors them with his attentions, and will pay many thalers for the privilege of stripping them down to the buff and pushing them down onto a featherbed, eh, Willi?"
They laughed uproariously, and Hans Schnurr, expandingly generous, himself poured out another mug of ale for the footman. Thus unwittingly, the prying curiosity of a landlord and the smirkingly self-esteemed amatory prowess of a footman combined to bring about an incident that might well have caused international repercussions.
Joseph Grundzing paced the floor in a little salon in the east wing of the palace of Frederick Wilhelm I until he heard a knock at the door and opened it with a muttered imprecation. Opening it, he beheld a little man, masked, in a cloak.
"Well now, Mross, you're late enough in reporting to me! Let's hope it's worth my while and yours as well, for the fee I pay you," he grumbled.
"Wait a bit till I get my breath, Your Excellency. If these February winds do not try to tear a man's throat out," the little man complained, and then had a fit of coughing. At last, having regained his composure, he doffed the mask to reveal his wizened face, a bulbous and fiery red nose which bespoke a fondness for tippling.
Ingratiatingly bowing to the valet, he at once plunged into his recital: "I did follow the prince as you bade me, Your Excellency. He stopped his carriage in the square and dismissed it, then he walked to that little street which we know of. He was in there a full hour."
"Excellent! And you learned the name of the girl and her father?"
"The same as we suspected, Excellency. The girl is Gerda Hortkopf, and her father is the Professor Ludwig Hortkopf who teaches Latin, mathematics and literature at the Collegium Magistrassze."
"You have done well, Mross. Here are some more Schillings for you. Go drink the health of His Majesty and of mine. I think it is time this fatuous wench who dares distract the conscience of a royal prince be given a lesson in the difference in station between that exalted personage and a commoner. I know that His Majesty will have her taught a lesson she will not soon forget."
The little man put on his cloak and bowed and scraped himself out of the salon, and the malicious valet chuckled to himself. He had seen Gerda Hortkopf and coveted her for himself.
But once this fine little jade had herself stripped to the waist on a cold morning in the public square and was whipped around it by the public executioner, she would need comforting and warmth. And then, exposed like any trull to the jeers of the populace, she would surely cast herself into the arms of the first sympathetic gentleman who offered to console her for her pain and shame.
Frederick Wilhelm I was suffering this day from the gout, as well as from the other indispositions which were soon to terminate his life.
Lying on a couch, his foot swathed in bandages and propped up on a brocaded cushion, his face was livid as the valet recounted the news the little spy had brought. "So this doxy thinks she can outwit her king does she? I'll have her flogged at the carttail! I'll have her paraded around the public streets with the marks of the lash on that soft skin of hers to teach other folks what it means to come between a prince and his duty! And as for that bastard of a son of mine, he's to be kept to his quarters for a month, do you hear, Grunding? I don't care what notions you have to trump up, even if you have to station guards in front of his rooms; he'll stay In the palace and mind his own affairs for a change. Now go and have it done! Have Magistrate Neurdmann prepare the warrant and have the girl seized and quartered in the local jail. Tomorrow morning at ten, she will have to expose her fine young Butzen for the executioner's lash and the admiring eyes of the common folk. Perhaps it will remind her that she should not dare attempt to lure a prince of the blood to the bed of a trull!"
* * *
Gerda Hortzkopf had not expected her father home so soon and she was startled at his rude knock upon the door. Wonderingly, she opened it, only to draw back with a cry of surprised alarm when she saw two halberdiers stand before her.
"You are the woman known as Gerda Hortzkopf, Fraulein!" one of them demanded.
"I am she. But I don't understand-"
"There's no need for you to, woman," the other halberdier rudely interrupted. "You're under arrest by the order of His Majesty himself. Get a cloak or whatever else you need and come with us this minute. You're to be lodged in the Wolffstunn Jail. And let's hope for your sake, woman, that tomorrow brings the sun and greater warmth than now, or you'll be chilled to the marrow. Though, of course, it will only be for a little time until the executioner really warms you, ech, Fritz?"
With this, he poked his fellow soldier in the ribs, and the other guffawed.
"But-but I don't understand. Why am I being arrested? What have I done?"
"We're only soldiers doing our duty, woman. Come along quickly, and no more talk! We've the warrant, and it's signed by Frederick Wilhelm himself. Here it is!" The older halberdier drew forth a paper and showed it to the horrified young brunette.
The plain-faced little maid, hearing the altercation, had hurried into the parlor. Gerda Hortzkopf turned to her. "Fetch my cloak, Dolly, dear, and don't let my father worry. This is all a dreadful mistake. Don't tell him I'm going to jail-tell him that-tell him-"
"Tell him, you bitch, that the prince has sent for her to fuck all night long!" the older halberdier obscenely broke in, and then slapped his thigh with coarse merriment.
The little maid, beginning to snivel, hurried back with Gerda's cloak, and it was Gerda who had to kiss her and console her, until at last the two guards angrily commanded her to follow them into a waiting carriage. Then the door was banged to, the coachman jerked at the reins, the horses neighed and started down the snow-covered street towards the Wolffstunn Jail.
It was the beginning of the martyrdom of an innocent virgin, and it was more than that, if truth be known.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Gerda Hortzkopf crouched in the corner of the dank, windowless cell of the Wolffstunn jail, her shoulders convulsively heaving as she covered her face with her hands and strove to muffle her desperate sobs. She had been given only gruel and black bread for her supper, and no one in the jail, not even the turnkey, had deigned to tell her why she was being held here or what she had done to deserve this nightmarish experience.
Now, as the hour struck nine, a sadistically smiling, tall, flaxenhaired matron and a doctor entered, and the latter in a dry, impersonal voice had just told her, "You are to undress so that I may make a physical examination of you, Fraulein." And when she had shrunk back against the wall of her narrow cell, her eyes enormous, gasping, "But why? What have I done? What is to happen to me? Won't anyone tell me before I go mad?" the matron had burst into jarring laughter and pitilessly replied: "Isn't she the little innocent, Dr. Resing? As if she doesn't know that she's to be whipped round the public square on the morrow." Then, glaring at the shrinking, trembling girl, she had added, "Yes, you little Dimel You're to be thrashed. Do you understand at last? And that's why the physician is here to make certain you have the stamina to take the whip on your bare back and shoulders, for the weather's cold."
"Wh-whipped-before the people-Hen Gott, but it cannot be-I have done nothing in my life to deserve such punishment!" Gerda Hortzkopf exclaimed.
"His Majesty thinks otherwise. Strip, bitch!" the matron had snapped. "If I have to do it myself for you, you'll get a taste of the strap when the doctor goes. Now make haste."
And that was why, after having removed her dress, her petticoats and corsets, reduced to camisole and drawers and her long cotton hose and dainty pumps, Gerda Hortzkopf had begun to shudder as if with fever and had begun to weep hysterically in a last hope that perhaps this nightmare would end and the normal reality of her unruffled life be restored to her.
"I've other fish to fry!" the doctor snapped. "Matron, get the rest of her things off, even if you have to use force."
"Oh no! No one is to touch me! I'll do it myself!" Gerda Hortzkopf cried as the matron advanced in greedy anticipation. Then, with a supreme effort, she lofted the camisole and let it flutter to the floor, then rucked down the drawers and let them festoon her ankles, and once again covered her face with her trembling hands as she stood naked in her hose, garters and pumps.
The creamy beauty of her body was magnificent. Even the coarse matron had to admire those proud pear-shapted titties, the delicate shaping of the belly with its wide sweet navelniche, and the crisp black triangle of pussyhair which marked her virgin core, with those long and gracefully lissome thighs contrastingly sheathed in white, which was not, however, so white as the rich warmth of her naked flesh.
"All right, you're not posing for His Highness now, you slut," the matron scolded, wanting to reassert her authority before the physician. "Come over here now so Dr. Reising can examine you. Or do you want me to come get you? I vow, if that happens, you'll have some stripes to warm you when you go out there in the cold of a morning, and they'll be laid on well tonight so they'll linger!"
The weeping young woman moved listlessly forward, and even the fat little doctor could not conceal his lustful admiration of that lovely, naked body. There was only a stool and a rude cot in the cell, and he gestured her to the bed, compelling her to sit first while he took his stethescope and listened to the strong beat of her young heart and then thumped her back and shoulders, while Gerda Hortzkopf shuddered as wave on wave of revulsion went through her. To be brought out into the public square, stripped to the waist, flogged by the common executioner like an ordinary felon or prostitute for theft and lechery, with her neighbors watching, and perhaps her father, too! Despite her plea to have the little maid lie to her father, she knew in her heart that he must suspect the very worst. And he would blame dear Frederick, that loyal and gentle person, who would not let this happen if he knew. It was the malevolence of the King himself, Gerda Hortzkopf understood, striking out at her, the innocent victim, only because she had touched the fringe of his son's life. And yet that thought was not enough to console her for the hideous fate she must suffer on the morrow.
"Now then, bitch, lie on your back-that should be easy enough for you to do-" the matron jeered, "and lift your legs up."
"Oh Heavens give me strength," Gerda Hortzkopf murmured dully to herself as she obeyed. Her beautiful long legs rose in the air, as she twisted her face away and sobbed. But the matron, standing behind her, reached out and gripped the hollows of those stockinged knees and drew the girl's knees back against her titties, thus arching up and spreading the cheeks of that enticing, upstandingly rounded, resilient ivory bottom and distending the trough of the ambery-shadowy groove between those globes, as well as the pink lips of the tender young cunt, framed by the crisp silky black curls of her pubis.
"Now hold yourself still so Doctor can see if you're sick with the Viennese pox!" the matron hissed.
"Ohh! You've no right to say such a detestable thing!" Gerda Hortzkopf hysterically cried out. "I'm a decent girl-no man has ever had me!"
"No mere man, I'll be bound. But then the Prince of Prussia is no ordinary man," jeered the matron as she dug the girl's legs pitilessly against those sweet, panting titties and poor Gerda winced and groaned in pain. Already the doctor's pudgy fingers were touching the most intimate parts of her being, never before exhibited to anyone. The salacity and the ignominy of her pose made her sob aloud as he methodically continued, donning a glove and probing her asshole till she moaned and sobbed anew. And then the inspection of the vulva and the vaginal sheath, while a cold metal dilator was thrust down till it would go no further.
"She's telling the truth," the fat little doctor squinted, then eyed the matron suspiciously. "This one's a virgin."
"Come now, doctor, you're just making a joke, aren't you?" the matron sneered. "She has all the earmarks of a harlot to me, and that's why I can hardly wait to watch her get the lash!"
"But it's true, Frau Bielmann! She has her hymen intact. No man has ploughed her, and I will tell His Majesty himself that not even the Prince could have done so, unless he be able to perform a miracle, which I much doubt, for all that he is royal!"
The matron disgustedly flung the girl's legs down on the cot and walked to the door of the cell. "So the little bitch just cuddles and kisses, and lets His Highness touch her here and there, like a school-girl. I can't say I've much stomach for that either, and I'd almost wish she were at least an honest bawd. But bawd or virgin, she is still for the lash in the morning. You can put back on your clothes, girl, and take what little warmth from them you can. It'll be a chill morning till Herr Ganz begins to warm your back and shoulders. If I'd my way, Doctor, I'd have this piece peeled down bare as a worm so that the whip could decorate that fine haughty Arsch of hers, I would indeed."
The cell door clanged on the weeping, shamed and naked young woman. One arm over her face, she began to pray. But the man who could have saved her, and would have done even at the cost of embattlement with his own father, was now in his own suite in the palace, and armed guards were stationed at each exit door. Nor had he been told what degradation was to be exacted from this gentle girl whom he had so generously befriended, so innocently, simply because the King of Prussia had the fear of death in his avaricious, warped and sadistic soul.
CHAPTER TWELVE
It was a very cold morning, at the freezing point almost, in the public square about half a mile from the Wolffstunn jail, and the square was thronged with eager spectators, of both sexes, with children as well, eager for the treat of seeing a young woman stripped to the waist and flogged by the public executioner, Herr Matthias Ganz, a cadaverous looking, tall man in his fifty-second year, who prided himself on his ability to dispatch condemned criminals with the axe at one whack, and who had boasted that no executioner in Europe could more neatly center brands that would remain indelible on the fair shoulder of some Hure or inflict a more decorative pattern on the backside with the leather thongs of the whip.
Joseph Grundzing was among the spectators, at the command of his royal master, to report on how the unfortunate young woman fared. After the flogging, Frederick Wilhelm I had Ordained, her father was to be dismissed from his post in disgrace. The girl was to be consigned to a convent where she would dine on bread and water and have regular scourgings. But the scheming valet balked at the thought of losing so tempting a prize, and sadistically had proposed another, more shameful alternative.
"Majesty, I have a better idea, begging Your Highness's pardon," he had wheedled. "Since we know the girl's a little slut, why not send her to one of the houses in Mirgien Strasse where she can ply her trade? Half the revenue will go toward the royal exchequer."
"Und Gottes Willen, there are times, Grundzing, when I suspect a glimmer of light in that dark mind of yours," the gouty, choleric monarch chuckled. "I've no objection to that whatsoever. But I'll lay you a wager, Grundzing, that you'll be the girl's very first customer this night."
"Your Majesty is the most perceptive man in all of Europe," Joseph Grundzing bowedingratiatingly, concealing his triumphant smile.
"Very well. Let it be done as you have suggested. But not a word to Frederick. The doltish idiot! I'll send him on a tour of East Prussia, directly after this little episode is over, and I'll assign Kolonel Volkstann as his escort. He will spend several months on the border, inspecting troops, the barracks, and perhaps he will come to have a better appreciation of the drill and the life of a soldier. At any rate, he won't have time for little poetry readings with doxies!"
"Your Majesty may rest assured that he will never learn from me what has taken place," Joseph Grundzing purred. He did not feel it necessary to tell his royal master what the physician's report from the jail had stated, that the girl was pure and spotless. That would be to let her escape with only the flogging and put her beyond his own lecherous grasp. But to make certain that Frederick Wilhelm I no longer concerned himself about the fate of the condemned woman, the valet reminded his master now, "Surely, Your Highness has not forgotten the little seamstress, Elizabeth Luchtau, who is in Kurzwald."
"Verdamnt! Of course I haven't, you idiot! But my wife is still nagging me and I cannot dare risk her shrewish tongue redoubling its venom if she were to discover that I had returned that little bitch here to the palace."
"But if I were to have the girl taken to a little house on the border of the city, Your Majesty, there to await your pleasure, surely Her Majesty would never suspect."
Frederick Wilhelm I chuckled, slapped his thigh, then winced as a pang of gout repaid him for that impulsive gesture. "A capital idea, Grundzing. The half of the revenue you say the Hortzkopf girl's whoring would provide me-let it be expended in the rental of a little house for my little seamstress. The one pays off the other, and thus justice is done all around, eh, Grundzing?"
* * *
Two halberdiers rode side by side with Gerda Hortzkopf standing between them, her wrists bound behind her back with a hempen rope, her cheeks tear streaked and red with shame, and she tried not to hear the hooting of the crowd as the horse-drawn tumbril neared the public square. Her lips moved in prayer, but she prayed not so much for herself as for her gentle, elderly father. If he were to learn what was being done to her this morning, even though it were at the command of the king, it would break his dear heart. Oh, if only Frederick could be told of this! She did not know what would happen after the-after the punishment; perhaps she would be returned to her house, and she could try to console her father as best she could, then. After all, she knew a whipping was really nothing-it was not death or torture and it did not maim. It pained, yes, and it would be humiliating to her to have to expose her person to all of these hostile eyes who saw in her mere sport for their cruel lusts. , And then the tumbril halted, and she uttered a faint little cry of terror. The moment was at hand. The halberdiers jumped down from the tumbril, seized hold of her waist, lifted her up in their arms and set her down on the hard flagging of the street. Her limbs seemed numb, and she looked around her, seeking a familiar face. Old and young, wise and elderly beldames, and even the curious, smirking faces of children surrounded her as in a hideous nightmare. But the cold air and occasional gusts of air tugged at her cloak, for she wore only those clothes in which she had been arrested, reminding her that this was not a nightmare, but a real horror.
The halberdiers seized her by the elbows and thrust her towards the clearing in the center, where a magistrate in morning coat and top hat awaited, clearing his throat to test it against the raw air, and beside him the masked public executioner, in somber black raiment, with a young, stocky assistant behind him fingering the tails of a seven-thonged leather whip with heavy stock hand;e. She caught sight of that dreadful instrument and closed her eyes, stumbling so the halberdiers had to catch her up, and one of them grumbled in her ear, "There'll be time for fainting later on, little bitch! Now get along with you!"
She found herself at last flanked by her guards, facing the bearded magistrate, who sententiously declaimed the edict of the royal court: "It is the sentence herewith of Frederick Wilhelm, this the twentieth day of February in the Year of Grace 1739, that the woman known as Gerda Hortzkopf, having been arraigned on the charge of malicious treason...."
"But this is a lie!" the young brunette cried out, staring incredulously at her accuser.
"Silence, woman! This is from the King himself!" the magistrate replied in shocked tones, and a mutter ran through the spectators who crowded near to hear each word: "How she fancies herself-ja, but wait till she feels Herr Ganz's good whip on her soft backside-she'll sing a different tune, you'll see-what a pity they'll only let us see her naked to the waist-I'd give a week's wages to see the whip come down on the sweet bare Arsch of her!"
"But I am not guilty of treason!" Gerda Hortzkopf said in a clear, sweet voice. "I have done no crime. I am loyal to the King of Prussia, as is my father, who teaches the young what the king's justice is!"
"Gag the bitch, so that she may be silent until I have read the sentence," the magistrate glared.
"No! It is not right-oh stop! You're hurting me," Gerda cried, as one of the halberdiers yanked her wrists sharply upwards behind her back, while the other stuffed a dirty handkerchief between her lips and tied a strip of her own petticoat around her mouth and knotted it at the back of her neck, after having squatted down and run his hands under her cloak and dress and torn off what he needed-to the hilarious approval of the fascinated spectators.
The magistrate went on: " ... of malicious treason against the personage of Prince Frederick of Prussia, it is hereby ordained and decreed and the Royal Seal is hereby appended in verification, that the aforesaid Gerda Hortzkopf shall be delivered over to the public executioner to be given the upper discipline in the public square and thence held at the disposition of Frederick Wilhelm I."
Again the magistrate cleared his throat and added, "And here is the seal of our beloved and gracious ruler. Heir Ganz, carry out the sentence."
The tall, cadaverous-looking man nodded and made a sign to his burly young assistant, who handed him the whip. The assistant moved towards the terrified, gagged young woman, whose eyes widened with horror as she saw this leering face approach. The halberdiers, however, seized her by the elbows to steady her, while the assistant ripped off the cloak, then the dress, tore the camisole and the batiste underdress and yanked the garments down until the magnificent ivory body of Gerda Hortzkopf was naked to the belly.
The admiring gasp chorused from the spectators as they stared avidly at her magnificent titties, rising and falling in turbulence. The cold air made the nipples harden, and some of the men called out, "She's ready for her warming, whether it be bed or whip, Heir Ganz! Don't spoil her too much, then give her to us-we'll warm her where you can't!"
Now the young assistant untied the rope around Gerda Hortzkopfs wrists, then moved around and corded them more securely with a rawhide thong, at one end of which was a short handle-grip by which he would draw the young woman around the square in her destined tour. "Let the gag be taken out!" the magistrate decreed. "Let us hear what penitence she is willing to offer for her crime when she has her punishment."
One of the halberdiers swiftly ripped away the gag and tore out the dirty handkerchief. Gerda Hortzkopf bowed her head, shivering with cold. A fat harridan standing next to a stocky, red-faced butcher, bawled out, "It's the right weather for it, little bitch! The whip will be good and warm for you! What a fancy lady she is, Herr Ganz! I'm wagering you can make her curse and scream as nastily as any trollop!"
The gloomy face of the executioner was lighted now by a tiny little smile to acknowledge this grotesque compliment. He was drawing the seven tapering thongs of the leather whip through his gloved hands, shaking them out, weighing the heft and balance of the instrument. The assistant eyed him and winked, and he nodded in return. The time had come.
"Move along behind me, or you'll be dragged," the burly young aide muttered to the half-fainting, half-nude victim. "Yell all you want-they'll like it all the more, you know. There are four sides of this square, and you will have thirteen strokes at each. Get yourself ready. It won't do you no good to faint-I'll only give you smelling salts and drag you around till the sentence is carried out. Come along." He gave a yank to the handle-grip of the heavy thong which had bound those slim ivory wrists, and Gerda Hortzkopf stumbled forward. As she did so, the executioner raised the lash and brought it down with a sickening crack over the middle of her ivory back. She stiffened, her head rose, her eyes widening with agony, but she ground her teeth together so that only a muffled gasp exuded from her trembling lips. On the smooth ivory sculptuary of her bare back, harsh, darkening splotches rose at once. The cold air seemed to tighten her skin and make it more vulnerable to this brutal lashing.
The assistant drew her forward in slow, calculated steps. A second lash fell to the right of the first about a moment later, then the third to the left, so that her entire middle back had been visited by the burning kisses of the seven leather bands. The crowd marveled at her stamina: not once had she cried out, though each time she had stiffened and then stumbled, but her teeth were clenched and her mouth tight, and only the jerkings of her wrists against the thongs told the executioner's young aide of her real suffering.
They had reached the right-hand side of the square now and there she was halted to take three more cuts lower down to where her clothes circled the beautiful symmetry of her deeply hollowed young back. And there were men who cried out, "Ten thalers, Heir Ganz, if you'll have your man strip her down to the Arsch and lay it down right well there!" But this, fortunately, could not be done without royal decree.
Now they moved on a few steps, and the seventh lash whistled across her dimpled shoulders, making her twist from side to side and gasp in agony. The movement made her pear-shapted titties jiggle, and more cries of lewd excitement greeted this evidence of her vivid young beauty.
Down the street now, halfway, with two more lashes over the shoulders, making a count of nine in all. Each lash seemed to burn and tear the fine skin of her shoulders just below the neck, and she bent slightly over, as if to protect herself. Tears had started down her cheeks, and her lips trembled uncontrollably. The cold was intense now, and her teeth had begun to chatter as well, thus adding to her torment, but the burning pain in her shoulders distracted her from the gusts of wind which kissed her naked titties and the upper slope of her dimpled belly.
A few more steps and still another lash, this one wrapping around her waist, and the tips of the whip biting into her belly itself. It was the cruelest blow of all, and the young brunette finally uttered a hoarse cry: "Oh God, help me! God, deliver me from injustice!"
"Watch your tongue, you bitch!" an old man called from the crowd. "If you revile our beloved king, we'll finish what the executioner doesn't do!"
The young aide dragged her forward now, her back and shoulders throbbing mercilessly. How could she endure the remaining three sides of the square, with thirteen more lashes at each? Her mind strove to calculate, by way of distraction, thirteen here, and then another thirteen, and twice more thirteen would be-fifty-two lashes in all. Oh dear God, it was a sentence for a strong man, not a helpless girl and ... The whip interrupted her frantic thoughts, making her lurch forward with a shriek as the whip wrapped around her ribs and darted against the proud ivory turrets of her titties.
"Oh no! Mercy! Not there, not on my breasts!" she cried, twisting her tearstained face back to plead with the cadaverous man in black who stood there with the whip raised.
"The upper discipline, bitch, and if it bothers your titties, you shouldn't have grown them," the young aide heartlessly intoned, as he dragged on the rough halter which forced her wrists forward and thus dragged the weakening, stumbling, pain-wracked body after him.
When at last the thirteenth stroke had been delivered at the end of this side of the street, she was given a two-minute respite. This she took by sinking down on her knees on the pavement to pray, only to be interrupted by the catcalls and jeers and obscene comments of the avid, excited spectators. Then again the stocky young assistant dragged her to her feet, and again the whip whistled down to visit her naked shoulders once more, and the punishment was resumed.
By the time half of it had been completed, blood pearled on the left shoulder and the naked rib, while the skin was purplish at the lower right edge of her back, almost where her clothes were rolled. She was trembling so violently she could no longer stand, so the young assistant moved up closely in front of her, muttering, "Lean those titties of yours against my back, you little bitch, and it will make it easier for you. But you'll have to pay me for it when Hen Ganz finishes, mind."
At this point the tortured young woman did not care. The cries and jeers of the populace did not reach her ears now. She prayed only for death or a cessation of this atrocious suffering. She leaned forward, feeling her titties flatten against the rough coat of the burly aide, and at that exact moment the whip whistled out to smack with a sickening emphasis, diagonally from the right shoulder down to the left side of her back. A wild cry was torn from her and she stumbled and sank to her knees, only to be wrenched up as the young assistant whirled and faced her, jerking on the handle-grip of the thong that held her. Another stroke whistled toward her, this time smashing around her waist, the tips biting around her belly, and she twisted and jerked and then bent over, sobbing," Oh, dear God, I can't bear it, it's too much-I'm only a poor girl-have pity, have pity on me!"
In this Golgotha, it was time to move to the side of the street which had been at her left at the beginning of the punishment. She was nearly fainting and the executioner's assistant, at his master's sign, took out a bottle of schnapps and forced some down between her panting lips. She panted, coughed and choked, whimpering, and then he took a tighter grip of the thong and pulled her up, so that her head rested on his shoulder. Then again came the whip, and wild screams as the tips darted out to nip her right side and make her twist and jerk in convulsive torment.
Her back was bloodied in a dozen places by the time the thirty-ninth stroke had been administered. During this final respite, the young aide made her drink more schnapps, and then, out of a refinement of cruelty, tilted the bottle down her bleeding back. She screamed and twisted, flinging herself down on her knees, trying to jerk her bound wrists loose to rub at her wounds. And the jeers, the catcalls, the mocking and obscene cries were a jumble of noise and meaningless hubbub around her. Once again she was forced to her feet, and Herr Ganz sent her on the final quadrant of her infernal journey, by directing the whip backhandedly from left side to right. Again she screamed, wildly and raucously, twisting her face back to entreat the executioner with tear-blinded eyes and babbling words for mercy.
And when the final stroke came, she hung, almost lifelessly, against the back of the young aide, while the executioner lowered the bloodied thongs and then, commanding a rag from some nearby woman, callously wiped off the blood and flung the rag into the street. The justice of Frederick Wilhelm I had been carried out.
* * *
She woke, her body feverish, and the merciless, gnawing pains of her back and shoulders drawing her instantly into life to cry out and to sob, to find that her eyes were fixing on the crafty, almost vulpine face of Joseph Grundzing, valet to the King of Prussia.
He had had the unconscious young woman taken in a carriage to his own house directly after the sentence had been carried out, with his cantankerous old housekeeper to look after her. Joseph Grundzing, forty-five, was not wed; but as a procurer for many years for Frederick Wilhelm I, he had had his own ample opportunities for sexual enjoyment without concern for the sacred banns of nuptial bliss. He was in his nightshirt and slippers, and he had just regaled himself with roast pork and half a dozen glasses of a superb Moselle.
"You're safe now, Gerda," he muttered thickly, licking his lips as he stared down at the unfortunate young woman. Her back and shoulders had been anointed with a soothing salve by the old housekeeper, who had then put on the girl a cambric camisole and under her back a pillow containing goose feathers. She lay thus on her back, and it was still torment despite the palliative given her. Her eyes widened now.
"Who-who are you?" she gasped wanly.
"I am your friend, Gerda. You owe a great deal to me. His Majesty was going to send you to a convent, where your pretty back would be kept raw every week, believe me. I interceded for you, you see. I know you are of quality, and that you don't deserve such treatment."
"And Prince Frederick?"
"You'd best forget you ever heard his name, girl. It got you into trouble today, as you know. It can get you sent as far as Kurtzwald Prison for the rest of your life, if you're not careful. Now, is your back better?"
"It-it hurts so!" she faintly complained. "Oh, my poor father!"
"You're not to worry about him, either. He'll be all right. You must think about getting well. Do you have a lover?"
"What are you saying?" A last flare of indignation made the girl's lovely head lift from the pillow, then she winced and groaned as she slowly settled back. "I-I have never had any man, and what they said about me and of the treason-I never did. Oh, if there is a God in Heaven, he will hear my plea for justice!"
"Hold your tongue! You are in Prussia, and Frederick Wilhelm I must be your God as well as your King," the valet superstitiously muttered. His eyes could not move from the thrusting pear-shapted globes under the camisole in which the housekeeper had clothed the luscious brunette victim. He felt his prick ache with anticipation. "I will take care of you," he repeated. "If you will be good to me, I'll see that you don't go to prison. Otherwise, I can't answer for the consequences."
"But I've done nothing-who are you?"
"I am in the household of His Majesty, that is all you need to know."
"Then tell him, oh I beg of you, as God is my witness, I am innocent of all wrongdoing! Prince Frederick did not look with eyes of desire upon me, for I am only a commoner-I wish him only happiness and long years to reign."
"And that you had better not say either, you stupid little bitch!" Joseph Grundzing snarled. "Don't you understand that the King of Prussia isn't going to live much longer, and he hates the idea that that weakling of a son of his will take his place? Frederick's too soft. He likes poetry. He likes to talk with pretty girls like you. Well, that's not for a soldier like his father. Just say what you just did in front of His Majesty, you might even get the headsman." But then, his desire overwhelming him, he cupped her face and crushed her mouth with his.
"Mmfffngg-no-what are you doing to me-stop, you've no right-oh, help me, someone!" the young girl cried as she at last disengaged her mouth from his lecherous kiss. Then he threw off his dressing gown and was' naked, his prick already enormous, throbbing with lust. Then sinking onto the bed, he lofted the hems of her camisole and exposed the crisp black pussy curls of her cunt.
Mad with terror and shame, Gerda Hortzkopf tried to, get out of bed, but the slightest movement caused savage waves of hot torment to seethe throughout her back and shoulders. By then it was too late. His hands gripping her shoulders, his mouth engaged with hers, silencing her, Joseph Grundzing thrust his prick against the silky black pubis until he found the entryway and inserted himself. Discovering the presence of the hymen, he drew himself back and then lunged violently. A wailing cry of desperation and absolute desolation tore from Gerda. She tried to beat him off with her little fists, but she was weakened from the flogging. She felt him tear through her cherry, and then he was flattened over her, his hands squeezing her titties, his mouth silencing her hysterical cries as he fucked her.
"Yes, I'm going to be very good to you," he panted, "and you'd better be especially nice to me.
You know, the King has a special idea for you. He wants you to go to one of those houses where naughty girls earn their living doing this, do you understand. Yes, Gerda, you're going to become a Hure but I can keep you from that and hide you away safely here, if you'll be nice to me. Now put your arms around me and give me a nice big hug and a kiss."
"I-Ahhrrr!-I'd rather die," the young woman moaned, twisting her face to one side, her cheeks taut with anguish as she felt the laceration of her tender virgin cunt. He had begun to fuck her vigorously now, and suddenly with a bellow of delight, he shot his gism into her martyred love canal.
Gerda Hortzkopf uttered a cry of despair to know herself thus sullied. But already he was pulling out, his prick bloodied as a sign that she had truly been a virgin. Gloatingly he kissed her on the forehead, wished her goodnight, and added, "I'm pleased with you, Gerda girl, and so long as you keep me that way, you needn't go to prison or to that other house."
He did not think it necessary to tell her that after he had had his fill of her, he would send her to the house of Madam Hilda Berzbach, one of t! most tyrannical madams in Potsdam, who would see to it that this gentle, ivory-skinned brunette, accustomed herself to the lusts of every comer with money to pay for his priapic pleasures, or thrash her or torture her to death by way of goading her to perform these odious tasks.
He strode out of the room, while Gerda Hortzkopf buried her face in her hands and wept hysterically. And this time she prayed for death in earnest, for her shame was irreparable.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
It was as well for the place of mind of the unfortunate Gerda Hortzkopf that she did not know that about the same time Joseph Grundzing, valet to Frederick William I was taking her cherry, her kindly father had quietly hanged himself in his bedroom. A neighbor had brought him the shocking, incredible news that she herself had seen his daughter takne in a tumbril to the public square near the palace, there stripped to the waist, her wrists tethered in front of her and drawn on by the executioner's younger assistant, while four times thirteen lashes had been laid upon her ivory back with a seven-thonged leather whip. And the neighbor had remarked that she was then to be remanded back to the custody of the jail for eventual determination of her final sentence.
His world had crumbled around him. His lovely virginal daughter, the joy of his declining years, made a public spectacle for all the coarse ruffians to jeer at and to view her in all of their lecherous lusts, thrashed like a whore by the public executioner! No matter what might be done to her after that, he could not live with the knowledge of her degradation. And in a note of farewell to her, he penned the bitter words, "May all forgive me, but let Him also judge how greatly Prince Frederick had a hand in this atrocity against my dearest innocent girl."
But that same evening, Willi Murcht had gone on his errand as a kind of procurer, to the elegant residence of Herr Otto Luftwagge, the white-haired merchant who had shown, despite his weighty years, the most salacious disposition imaginable and who burned with eagerness to know of the arrival of this or that comely prostitute in the city of Potsdam. The conceited footman was certain that the old man would give him a handsome tip for the news that at the very inn where he himself worked, there were two delicious sisters from Vienna who seemed to have ample funds for their stay at the Mackholm and who obviously were searching for a sympathetic gentleman or so to continue them in this leisurely existence.
He was received by the grumbling old majordomo of the wealthy merchant, taken into the latter's sitting room where Otto Luftwagge was smacking his lips over a fat capon and' a glass of superb French Burgundy.
"Ah, it's you, Murcht!" the old man exclaimed, gesturing to the footman to come seat himself. "Guttmann, bring a plate for my friend here, and more wine for both of us. Now then, my fine fellow, what brings you here on this wretchedly cold night?"
"A warmer pair of pullets than the capon you've been devouring, you old dog," Willi Murcht slyly shuckled with a broad wink. "There are two of the tastiest pieces of kootzele ever seen, and you know where they are, Herr Luftwagge? At the Mackolm, where I work."
"Wonderful, wonderful, Willi! Ah, serve my friend the biggest capon left, and some of those mushrooms too and a little browned potatoes in cabbage gravy. Now leave us, and leave that bottle."
"But, mein Herr," the majordomo protested, "The doctor said-"
"Zum Teufel with the doctor!" the white-haired merchant exploded. "I can outdrink, outfuck, yes, and outwork that lazy pillpusher any day in the week. Now do as I tell you and go to bed, Guttmann." He gave the majordomo a querulous glare, waited until the servant had withdrawn and closed the doors behind him, and then moved closer to the footman! "Now tell me more about these lovely bitches! You say they're from Vienna?"
"So they say, Herr Luft' gge. But they seem to have Silesian silver, newly minted, and my master, good Herr Schnurr, thinks that they are trulls. Perhaps they came to us from Vienna, and perhaps from Silesia itself after they had serviced many a stout fellow between their fine thighs."
"You've seen them, you approve of them, Willi?"
"Oh yes. There's a black-haired jade, and her younger sister has fine rich auburn hair and a plumper body. And oh what sparkling eyes. Herr Luftwagge! But it will cost you dearly. Do you wish me to arrange it with either one of them?"
"Why not with both?" the white-haired merchant boasted as he leaned back and belched loudly. Then, refilling his glass, and making certain that his guest wanted for nothing, he eagerly went on, "go this very night and give them each ten florins. Say that I'll call on them. Let's see now. When shall it be? They may have other customers, to be sure-"
"I don't hink so, Herr Luftwagge. They haven't sent any of the boys at the inn out to make assignations for them. I think they're just lying low till they get the feel of the city and know who is who and what is what and who has the money."
"Then they must meet me, for I am very rich. All right then, Willi. Here's what you do. Take them this money, I say, and tell that tomorrow evening promptly at eight, I shall attend them at the inn. You will tell your master to order the finest supper. Spare no expense. Here, take ten florins more for him. A feast, Willi, that's what I want. It will put more juice in my old Schwartz." And with a senile cackle he tapped his prick at the crotch of his elegantly cut trousers.
Willi Murcht was gobbling down capon and potatoes and swilling his fill of good French wine, the kind of treat he never got at the Mackholm. He thought disgustedly at what he had to put up with there, including that fat, unwashed bitch of a Betsy. It was a shame that a fine strapping and appreciative man like himself couldn't have these Linz sisters to fuck in his own bed. Maybe-a roguish idea came to him and he almost swallowed the wrong way. Suppose he were to keep the money, give half of it to those two bitches, and tell them that he himself wanted an hour with them. Then he could always tell this old fool that the women had kept the money and sent him packing. Who could prove otherwise? One never took the word of whores.
"I'll go right this very moment, good master," he fawned as he rose from the table after a last hasty gulp of wine. "I'll arrange it all. You be there tomorrow night and my master will outdo himself. But I'm here to tell you that your own table is better provided for than the very best my niggardly master permits."
"In that case, here is another ten florins for you, Willi. Give them to this skinflint of a landlord, tell him to have tasty viands and good wine. These are what are needed to make a man like myself strong enough to fuck two tasty young whores!"
The footman touched his forehead servilely, "I'm off, Herr Luftwagge, everything will be in readiness, trust me."
* * *
Lovely Estanzia Carola Lienz was restless. Potsdam was such a dreary city, and this drab inn was quite dreary. Almost no one came here, which of course was satisfactory for her purpose of wishing to remain hidden away from her uncle's spies. She and her maid Gilda had been chatting just this afternoon about whether they should try to have an audience with the King of Prussia so that he might send a courier with the letter which the young princess had written. "If Uncle Anton insists that I marry that brute Duke Johann," the spirited young woman declared, "I swear I'll flee to France if I have to. And you shall come with me, Gilda. But do you know, I don't like the looks of our landlord. He's a surly fellow, and I don't think he's accepting us as seamstresses from Vienna. Perhaps we ought to go out a little bit more and pretend to look for employment."
"Whatever Your Highness desires, I will do, of course," the auburn-haired princess fumed. "Just let that landlord or that terribly obnoxious footman with that ridiculous name of Willi Murcht overhear you call me that, and the cat will be out of the bag for certain! We are sisters, our name is Linz, you are Gilda and I am Carola. Don't forget it. Or I vow I'll slap you, you naughty girl!"
"You are too goodhearted to do a thing like that, which is why I love you."
"I know, dear Gilda." The young princess moved towards her faithful friend, kissed Gilda's lips chastely. "And I wish indeed we were sisters, for in that gloomy palace where Uncle Anton parades himself and doesn't know what a fool Maria Theresa is making of him all the time, you are the only and dearest kin to me in spirit. But now, let's talk of happier things. That letter to Uncle Anton. Let me post it, and do you stay here and order supper from the landlord. I wish to look around the city also."
"Yes, but do be careful. If some drunken lout should try to abduct you, what a scandal for the court of Silesia!" Gilda Twornak Tvornak gasped.
"No one will kidnap me, so don't be foolish. See if you can get Herr Schnurr to get us some decent wine tonight. I shall be careful, never fear."
With this, carefully tying on her fur-covered bonnet and donning her heavy coat and boots, the lovely young black-haired princess of Silesia left the inn. Gilda waited, and then peered out of the door down the corridor. Seeing one of the slattern maids she called to the woman, "Would you ask Herr Schnurr to order our supper, and perhaps some good wine?"
"I'll tell him, ja" the woman indifferently responded. But at that very moment Willi Murcht was in the kitchen conferring with his master. "Here are ten florins for you, good master," he told Hans Schnurr. "The old fool wants supper for both wenches, and he himself will be here promptly at eight to dine with them. Outdo yourself, he says."
"For ten florins, the miserable scoundrel? He has bags of gold in his cellar. And you, you knave, why didn't you ask for more?"
"Oh, he said that this was only a down payment, master," the footman lied. "For when he comes here, hell pay you well and add a tip, you'll see."
"That's better talk," the landlord grumbled. "Well then, go up and tell the young ladies they're to have a visitor and that their supper has been ordered. What's this, Elsa?"
"The younger girl, the red-haired one, master," the maid touched her forehead respectfully, "asked me to tell you that they wished their supper. Something tasty and the best wine you can find."
"Go tell the jade she'll have fare good enough for the King himself," the landlord testily retorted. "Very well, Willi, go see to it. I don't want any mistakes this time. And we'll try to add to Herr Luft-wagge's bill as much as we can. Once he's in his cups and roitering with those two pretty bitches, he won't know whether we charge him five florins or fifty for a glass of wine. And you'll have your share, too, you wretch!"
Willi Murcht did not think it necessary to tell his master he had already pocketed a goodly number of florins which had been intended for the landlord himself and the rest for the two unsuspecting young women whom he and Hans Schnurr had mistakenly guessed to be courtesans of a high price....
Meanwhile, in high spirits, the white-haired merchant had his mayordomo dress him in his best, and summon his carriage to take him to the Mackholm Inn. The young princess, interested in the city, doddled on her walk, and finally hired a carriage, inquiring of the coachman where she might post her letter. "I'm sorry, Fraulein there's no place now. You'll have to do it in the morning. Bring it to the guardhouse near the palace, and it will be sent out by courier, depending on where it's intended."
"Thank you. Well, since we're near enough to the palace, may we go by it?"
"Surely, Fraulein. You're new to Potsdam?"
"Oh yes. I hear that the young prince is quite handsome."
"A good lad, a wonderful lad," the grizzled old coachman agreed sadly. "Trouble is, his father hates his guts-begging your pardon, Fraulein. The only hope for Prussia, and you mustn't ever tell anyone I told you this, is for the young prince to sit upon the throne."
"I have heard that he is very gifted, that he writes poetry and that he knows philosophy and several languages."
"That he does. But his father considers these womanish games. Indeed, only the other day a poor girl was stripped to the waist in the public square and thrashed by the public executioner, simply because she was friendly with the young prince. It's a cruel city, Fraulein. Where do you come from?"
"Vienna," the young princess glibly lied.
"Ah, I was a boy there once, hostler for the old Hotel Kortzling. Those were the days! But there's the palace. Not so lovely as the one in which Maria Theresa lives, you may be certain."
"No, it's a gloomy place. Let's go on, coachman. I want to see as much as I can before I go back to the Mackholm."
* * *
Otto Luftwagge arrived in fine fettle, slapping the landlord on the back and even bussing the blowsy maid Betsy in his enthusiasm. "All is in readiness?" he eagerly demanded.
"Indeed it is. Betsy here is going to take up the supper tray and the wine," the landlord assured him. "Why not accompany her?"
"That I will. Come along, wench, lead the way. A pity I've already found two fledglings new to the nest of Potsdam, or tonight you and I would tumble," the white-haired merchant twitted the simpering, plump girl.
Herr Luftwagge himself knocked at the door of the rooms occupied by the young princess of Silesia and her maid. It was naturally Gilda Dvornak who answered. Her eyes widened and she stepped back as she saw the supper tray carried by Betsy. "Bring it in, please. And you, sir, are you looking for someone?"
"Yes, you pretty dear," the old man cackled, chucking her under the chin and forcing his way into the room. "Now bring out your sister. That will do, Betsy. Here's a Schilling for you, girl. We're not to be disturbed, and you tell your master that."
"What is the meaning of this, sir?" the auburn-haired young girl demanded, her brows arching with irritation.
"Don't play coy games with me, girl. I'm Otto Luftwagge. I've money enough to buy the services of you and your sister for an entire month if I've a mind to."
"Buy our services? Can it be that you wish seamstresses to sew for you?"
"Jawohl that's a good one, that is!" the old man cackled with glee. "You're a sharp lass, and I think I'll bed you first."
"How dare you! Take your hand away from me!" Gilda Dvornak cried. For in his carnal excitement, the lecherous old merchant had just slipped his hand into the bodice of her blouse.
"Oh come now. I've already paid Willi for each of you, ten florins for each of you. Ten florins apiece, and that's as good a price as you'll get in all of Potsdam, unless of course, you bed with the King himself!" the old man whined.
"You have made a dreadful mistake, sir, my sister and I are not whores. Now will you kindly remove yourself from our room!" Gilda Dvornak gasped, her cheeks crimson with shame.
"You're lying, but I like it. Give me a kiss, give me a kiss!" he panted as he suddenly grabbed her by the waist and crushed his dry, bad smelling mouth on her ripe lips.
With a shriek of abhorrence, Gilda Dvornak twisted herself out of his grasp and slapped his face with all her might. The white-haired merchant went livid with rage: "You'd dare strike me, you dirty little whore? Then give me back my ten florins. No, twenty, ten for you and ten for that sister of yours. Where is she?"
"It's none of your concern, and I don't know anything about twenty florins. Kindly leave here before I call the landlord and have you taken out by force."
"So you'd sing a tune like that, would you, you clever little bitch? And you're from Vienna, you say? There are ways of making certain of that. I've only to call the police and have them take you to their jail where you will be questioned. I think I will. Either you hand me over my twenty florins now or else apologize for striking me and then take your clothes off. Herr Gott this little argument had given me an appetite for kootzele more than for supper."
With this, he began to take off his waistcoat. Absolutely consternated, Gilda Dvornak regarded him, and then ran to the door, opened it and cried, "Herr Schnurr, come up here, in the name of heaven!"
"What's the need to call for him? We can settle our business, girl. Come back here," the old man panted. He seized Gilda by the hips and tried to twist her round. With a cry of rage, she drove her knee up into his crotch, and the white-haired old merchant screeched with agony as he double over, clutched at his prick and then toppled to the floor. He lay there breathing hard, his face almost purple as he struggled for breath.
Up the stairs there came the heavy tread of the landlord, who came breathless into the room. "What's this, girl?" he growled. "One of my best customers, and you've killed him! You filthy little trull, you and your sister can leave my inn this moment. Let me see-Gott im Himmel, Herr Luftwagge, don't die! They'll close my inn down again for good this time!"
He rose, after assuring himself that the pulse and the heartbeat of the old man were still evident. Then, drawing back his heavy hand, he struck Gilda Dvornak across the cheek with all his strength, toppling her to the floor with a cry of pain. Her eyes stared up at him, stupefied, her face a fiery red. "But-but you don't understand-" she panted. "He forced his way in here, he began to talk about money that he had paid for the two of us. We aren't sluts, and you've no right to think so. I shall have my mistress speak to you when she returns-"
"Your mistress, girl? I thought you were sisters. You just wait, there's more here than meets the eye.
Ah, you're here at last, Willi! Go call the police. And you, Betsy, if this little bitch here tries to sneak out, giver her a smack that will send her flying. I'm closing the door on you now."
Gilda Dvornak rose staggeringly to her feet, ruefully rubbing her cheek where the bruise was darkening. Betsy smirked at her: "You better not try anything, I'll tear your hair out by the roots, you drab! This poor dear old man, you had to go and hurt him. Why, he'd have fucked me and I wouldn't have asked for half as much money as I'm sure he offered you."
"You're welcome to the old fool, and I'm not a prostitute. But we're going to be leaving the inn tonight, so keep your mouth shut." Gilda Dvornak said, her voice trembling with fury.
"I don't think you will. My master's gone to call the police. They'll take you to jail, and there's a lieutenant there who knows how to get the truth out of lying little whores," Betsy mocked.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Leutnant Karl von Pranz had closely cropped blond hair and a waxed moustache of which he was inordinately proud. He had discovered that, as chief adjutant of the magistrate's jail located near the palace, a holding prison which had all criminal cases come before it for ultimate disposition to such more terrible institutions as grim Kurzwald, that if he were to stare at an attractive female prisoner while interrogating her and twirl his moustache while remaining silent and contemplating her with brooding eyes, she would invariably become unnerved enough to babble out a good deal of useful information.
But he had not been prepared for the furious defiance and the raging indignation offered to him by this auburn-haired chit who called herself Gilda Dornat and who persisted that she and her sister were from Vienna, and that they had paid their bill at the Mackholm Inn, that they were certainly not prostitutes and, finally, that she had in no way arranged for the ailing Herr Otto Luftwagge to visit their rooms this evening.
Actually Gilda Dvornak was numb with terror. She believed that she could handle the investigation which was certain to follow after the injury of the old merchant, without involving her royal mistress, the Princess Estanzia Carola Lienz.
It was, moreover, her sworn and bounden duty to hold her tongue and to keep the secret of who her mistress really was. Just so, she realized that she must persist in her lie about herself, lest the ever-present spies which were in the pay of many noblemen and of the various rulers of Europe and who prowled through courts and prisons and palaces with impunity, discover the whereabouts of her mistress and send the latter back in shame and disgrace to her uncle, the King of Silesia.
But she had not been prepared for the horrifying news that had just come in by a police officer; namely, that Herr Otto Luftwagge had had a stroke on the way to the hospital and had died without regaining consciousness.
So she stood now accused of possible murder, and yet she could not tolerate the insolent, overbearing cynicism of this young officer who harangued her.
"You are making things very difficult for yourself, Fraulein Dornat," he drawled as he took out his meerschaum, dug it into a humidor beside him, tapped in the tobacco and sturck a lucifer to Ignite it. "You have shown me no passport, no letters of credit, and so I have only your word that you and your sister are from Vienna, that you are both seamstresses and that you have been staying at the Mackholm Inn until such time as you could find employment in Potsdam. You do not talk or act like a seamstress, Fraulein."
"And you, sir, do not talk like an officer and a gentleman!" the young auburn-haired beauty flashed, her gray-green eyes large and sparkling with anger.
Leutnant Karl von Pranz scowled and reddened at this taunt. He eyed his sergeant-major, old Jakob Greuss. Jakob Greuss was almost fifty, nearly bald, with most of his teeth gone.
He had a flat round moon-face, and he also had a bestial penchant for torture during an interrogation. More than one hapless female prisoner had confessed to anying in the world, even to wanting to assassinate the King of Prussia himself, if only to escape his diabolical cruelties.
"Yes, I think, Jakob, we shall have to teach this little bird how to sing a much more respectful tune." the blond lieutenant remarked.
"Zu befehl, Herr Leutnant" Jakob Gruess snapped to attention and gave his superior a smart salute as well as a bawdy wink which indicated that he was well aware of what was to follow.
"So, Gilda," the adjutant now insolently used the auburn-haired young woman's first name as if they were on intimate terms, which might have indicated to her-had she been able to read his lecherous and casulistic mind-that he had already disposed of her case, "you continue to insult my intelligence by professing to be a seamstress. And yet I have testimony from the landlord and from the footman themselves that you've paid your score in minted Silesian silver. Moreover, that a handsome supper with wine was ordered for you and your sister and paid for by this same unfortunate gentlemen."
"As to that, I have no way of knowing! I only know that that until he entered my room, I had never before seen him in my life. And he attempted to make free with me, and I am a virgin."
"Well now, a rare bird indeed, hein, Jakob?" Leutnant von Pranz sniggered. For that too, I suppose I am supposed to take your word, Gilda. But here in Potsdam," now he leaned forward across his desk, scowling at her, his thin lips twisted in a sneer, "we do not believe everyting that is told us. The king, may his name be blessed and his reign endure, views with suspicion all immoral creatures and particularly of the weaker sex who visit his royal capital for the purpose of trafficking their bodies for hire. We have a street of prostitutes in Potsdam, and the houses there are severely regulated by His Majesty himself. Those who break the laws are sent to Kurzwald. You may not have heard of it, but if you do not tell me everyting I want to know, you shall enter there in the morning and the least I shall give you for attempted murder-for I do not think that you planned this old fool's murder-would be ten years at hard labor."
"Ten years at hard labor?" Gilda Dvornak gasped incredulously, her eyes huge with horror. "No! No! It's a lie, and I didn't kill him. He tried to tear off my clothes, and I thrust up my knee at him. How could I know that he was going to do that? I tell you I'd never seen him before, and I don't care what the footman and the landlord said!"
"But I do. They have resided here in Potsdam a good deal longer than you, Gilda. And they don't have all this money about them, fancy clothes, and no visible means of income-save of course your very delightful body. Jakob and I are going to take you into the interrogation room now and perhaps, when we are alone together, Gilda, you will be less obstinate."
He made a sign, and the fat, almost toothless sergeant-major seized Gilda Dvornak by the elbows and shoved her out of the room.
A clammy, cold terror gnawed her bowels as the smirking blond lieutenant and the gross sergeant-major shoved her through the door of a windowless stone room, while the lieutenant kicked the door shut and then drew the bolt. The auburn-haired young beauty turned, her eyes aghast at what she had seen in that room, fixing the lieutenant with a look of consternation: "You-you've no right to t-to-torture me-I am not a citizen of Prussia-I have done nothing, I swear I haven't!"
"You are here, you are accused of a murderous assault on one of our most prosperous citizens, you little bitch." Leutnant Karl von Pranz obviously relished his words and his power as he stood twirling his moustache and greedily contemplating the courageous yet shrinking captive. "Before you leave this room, you little bitch, you're going to tell Gruess and me everything you know, everything about yourself, and about this sister of yours whom we didn't find. Get her ready, Gruess."
"With pleasure, Herr LeutnantV the man grinned as he moved towards Gilda Dvornak. She uttered a cry as he seized her, and beat ineffectually at his bald head with her little fints. But with a bellowing laugh, he forced her in front of a heavy wooden St. Andrews cross, thrusting first. one of her wrists against an opened iron gyve and locking it snugly: he repeated this with the other wrist, and Gilda Dvornak was stretched on tiptoes against the apparatus.
The moustached lieutenant moved over now and squatted down, seizing Gilda's ankles. "The little bitch may try to kick when you peel her down raw, Gruess," he remarked. "I'll hold her for you. Down to the buff, man!"
"What other way is there, Herr LeutnantV the sergeant-major sniggered.
He began to rip away Gilda Dvornak's frock, then the inner dress, the petticoats and finally the camisole, while she cried out and twisted and jerked at her shackled wrists in vain. In a few moments, panting, her hair disheveled, her eyes mad with shame and terror, she found herself stripped to only her drawers and stockings and shoes, her magnificent high-perched round titties flattening against the hard wood of the cross.
"Let's take off these shoes so the pretty dove can spread her wings," the blond sadist purred as he drew off Gilda's buckled shoes. "Notice these, Gruess. Our noble king would be shocked to see such gaudy footgear on a slut who calls herself a seamstress from Vienna. He would have her thrashed around the public square at least twice, don't you agree?"
"Undoubtedly, Herr Leutnant! "
Leutnant Karl von Pranz cruelly pinched the dainty toes in their white stockings, and Gilda Dvornak tilted up her face and ground her teeth together to keep from giving the torturer any satisfaction.
But Jakob Gruess was passing his calloused hand over her bare back and shoulder blade, and her back was beautifully hollowed and firm and satiny. Now the obsese sergeant-major plunged his thick fingers into her hair and combed it down, letting the cascade stream in a glossy auburn sheaf down her smooth back nearly to the waist. Then, maliciously, gathering it into a thin sheaf, he yanked at it viciously and slapped her face with his other hand: "That's just for starters, slut," he growled, "you've done too much lying to the Herr Leutnant, and I won't stand for it. You're going to tell us everything, because I'll make you, understand?"
"I've told you everything I can-ahhh-my goodness, I demand the rights of a foreign citizen, I am not under the jurisdiction of your king-aahhhrr-oh my hair-don't-ahhha ahhhhooohhh!" Gilda Dvornak wailed as the sadistic bully again yanked her hair and slapped her cheek till it flamed.
Her marvelous skin was pale cream itself, and the lovely titties which heavingly pressed against the harsh wood of the cross were tipped with voluptuously ripe dark coral buds, centered in narrow but brownish-coral aureolae.
Her navel was wide and shallow, just glimpsed at the waistband of her drawers, which were of fine cambric with tiny little ribbons which decorated the legs of this final veil of modesty, lowering to about the middle of her thighs. The grinning sergeant-major ran his hands' down her sides, then up again, and finally cupped her titties and squeezed them hard.
Gilda Dvornak uttered a choking cry of outraged modesty and anguish, and great tears sparkled in her dilated eyes.
"You've no right-ahhh-let me go-I demand to see the Silesian ambassador-oh heaven-this is monstrous-I'm a decent girl-take your filthy hands away, you hideous brute!"
"The Silesian ambassador, hein!" Karl von Pranz rose and moved to stare at the trembling, tearful and squirming captive. "Now what would a slut like you be doing with the Silesian ambassador? You're from Vienna, or at least that's what you've been telling us. No, girl, we're not satisfied at all with your lies. We know here the difference between truth and imagination. Now then, Gruess, in your opinion, how should we begin?"
"She's a pretty l-ulc slut, and I for one would love to thrash her big firm Arsch a little," the sergeant-major cackled. He put both his hands on the plumply rounded, tightly creased bottomglobes and squeezed them lasciviously through the cambric drawers.
Gilda frantically tried to kick, and cried out in her desperate shame. "Don't touch me-you filthy beast-this is unlawful, I'm not a citizen of Prussia!"
"That we know already, but you may for all we know be a spy, in which case you will be hanged. No, my pretty bitch, save your howling for the whip," the blonde lieutenant chuckled. "Let's have the drawers off then, Gruess. You can't really see the marks of the whip on a girl's Arsch unless it's bare, after all."
"As true a word as Solomon himself ever spoke, Herr Leutnant!" the obese sergeant major guffawed. Then, inserting his fingers in the dainty drawers, he ripped them off and flung them to one side, Gilda Dvornak uttered a shriek of consternation and shame, grinding her body against the St. Andrew's cross, naked now except for her white stockings and garters. The muscles of her magnificent naked behind tightened violently to diminish even more the already naturally ambcry-shadowy furrow which separated those luscious nether hemispheres.
"You'll notice, Herr Leutnant" the sergeant-major pointed out as he pinched and patted the squirming, shuddering naked bottomglobes of the gasping, groaning victim, "what fine, delicate skin this little lady has. Now in my opinion, though I'm not a judge of such things, Herr Leutnant, I'd say this bitch can't be a seamstress. Looks to me as if she's some fancy lady's maid. Or of course she may be a bawd new to the trade. But let's find out."
So saying, and squatting down sideways at the girl's right, Jakob Greuss palmed the middle of Gilda's naked bottomcheeks with his left hand, pressing her forward while at the same time his right hand glided up between her straining, clenching legs. There was a shriek as his thumb and forefinger pinched the inner thigh, making her give way a little, just enough for him to slip his calloused thumb and gnarled and pudgy forefinger right into the furry cleft of her cunthole.
"Oh no-my goodness-don't do that to me-oh this is horrible-you filthy, disgusting animal-aaahhh-I demand justice-let me go-oh heaven-" Gilda Dvornak wailed hysterically.
His forefinger had come against her cherry, and the obstruction of her virginity made his eyes blink with surprise as he turned to regard the smirking lieutenant. "Verdamnte, you wouldn't believe this, Herr Leutnantl The little bitch has got her cherry. So she's not a bawd, then."
"Nor is she a seamstress, I'm certain. But perhaps a little dosage of the lash will quicken her tongue," Leutnant Karl von Pranz declared. He made a gesture, and the sergeant-major chuckled and straightened. Striding to the wall on which, from a row of wooden pegs driven into it, hung a fearsome panoply of whipping instruments, the obese sergeant-major hesitated a moment and then took down a short, thick tawse. It was no more than twenty-two inches in length, of which four inches were of doubled thickness and rounded out to make a handle. It was three inches in width, and a good quarter of an inch thick, of solid black, polished leather. At the other end, there were three finger-like strips, each about five inches in length and narrowed and tapering to stinging tips by the craftsman who had carefully cut out the leather to specifications. It was a whip that could be used at extremely short range, and these tips could provide murderously cruel torment to the tender titties, inner thighs and pussy, as well as even to the rectal channel of a female victim.
Then, moving to the victim's left, and seizing the sheaf of her tumbled auburn hair in his left hand and yanking it up above her neck, to force her to stand even more on tiptoe, Jakob Greuss delivered a savage stroke diagonally from the right shoulder down her back, the tips whisking against her neck and shoulder, stinging the pale creamy flesh and making Gilda Dvornak utter a sobbing cry as she ground herself against the cross. Already the marks could be seen emblazoned on her finely grained skin.
"That's just a little sample, bitch," Jakob Greusse said thickly, licking his lips and studying the flexions which surged through Gilda Dvornak's naked posterior and beautifully rounded thighs. "I'm going to take the skin off your back first, before I attend to that lovely big Arsch of yours."
"Meanwhile, I'll spread her legs for you, so you can use the tawse where it hurts the most," the blond lieutenant volunteered. Squatting down, he grasped first Gilda's left ankle and locked it into the gyve at tehe lower leg of this X-shaped apparatus and then the other. The unfortunate young woman was now presented with her body in the form of this X, arching up on tiptoe, all her muscles set into magnificent relief. Beads of sweat already gathered in the softly tufted niches of her armpits. Her face turned back over her left shoulder, frozen in a look of horror and shame as she saw the sergeant-major move further over to smirk at her and show her the infernal tawse. "Take a good look, you pretty slut," he drooled. "It makes little birdies sing a sweet and truthful song, you'll see!"
And with this, he slashed her across the waist, the tips of the lashes whisking round to nip her tender side and belly. Gilda Dvornak uttered a scream and twisted her body, her hips jerking from left to right, the firm cheeks of her naked bottom quaking and rippling violently. It was a spectacle that roused the lust of both men, as the bulge in both of their crotches at once proclaimed. Now, stepping closer back towards his victim, Jakob Greuss again seized the tumbled sheaf of hair in his left hand and drew it clear of her body so that there would be no protection from the lash. Twice more he struck diagonally from her right shoulder down her back, and then a third blow which wrapped the polished leather band around her supple waist and again sent the tips flicking in towards her belly. Gilda Dvornak shrieked and wriggled, yanking at her gyved wrists, tears trickling down her cheeks, her eyes rolling, her body shivering with the waves of hot pain left by the lash.
Then, with fiendish accuracy, the sergeant-major flicked the lash round her so that the tapered tips of leather smacked diabolically into her right armpit. A frenzied cry, prolonged and tortured, rent the air as Gilda Dvornak's head fell back, her eyes rolling to the whites, and with all her strength she yanked at her shackled wrists, her pussy grinding frantically against the wood of the cross: "Eeyeowwweeyahhhohhh!!! Oh heaven have mercy, you've no right to whip a poor girl so, I've done nothing, I'm innocent! Oh heaven, take me to the Silesian ambassador, he'll tell you who I am!"
Even as she said these words, roced to them by the fiendish pain which racked her young body, she realized the terrible error she had made. She would thus betray her royal mistress, and all their flight would have been in vain. And yet her soul as well as her flesh protested against this savage and unjust torture.
"You're sure that she's a virgin, Greuss?" the smirking blond lieutenant urged as he came forward to study Gilda Dvornak's shuddering naked body.
"Well, unless she's gone and grown a new cherry after losing her first one, sir, I'd stake my stripes she's never been ploughed before," the sergeant-major sniggered.
Leutnant Karl von Pranz held up his hand to hold back the tawse; then squatting, ran his hands up the stockinged legs of the auburn-haired captive at the St. Andrews cross. Gilda uttered a cry of indignation and shame, glancing back over her left shoulder, atching and squirming to evade his touches. Now his wiry fingers attained her naked thighs, then pinched her bottomcheeks and then, then, straightening suddenly, used both hands to yawn the globes apart to bare her dainty asshole. With a shriek of anguish, the naked girl tried to contract her gluteal and sphincter muscles amid the uproarious jeers of her two tormentors. Then, maintaining the globes open with left thumb and median finger, the young lieutenant prodded his right forefinger against the girl's asshole and forced it in, twisting and gouging it this way and that, while Gilda Dvornak shrieked and twisted herself desperately.
"And it feels as if she's a virgin here too, Greuss," he pronounced; "Something must be done about these two holes of hers. Do you suppose we can alter them?"
"I'm pretty sure we can, sir, if we think real hard about. And, speaking of being hard, begging your pardon, Herr Leutnant, I've got the hardest bone on I can ever remember having. Just looking at that big white wriggly Arsch of hers makes me want to fuck all night long, sir. Shall I get on with the thrashing?"
"In due time, we've all night to work on her. Let's put our minds together to make the time interesting for allof us," the lieutenant chuckled.
Gilda Dvornak bowed her head and groaned. She knew her ordeal would be brutal and unreprieved, and it sickened her to think of how they would use her. Yet all her loyalty demanded that she portect the identity of her "sister," the Silesian princess who had made a confidante of her and virtually entrusted her with her royal life and reputation. Thus she must play for time, try to remain obstinate so long as flesh and spirit could prevail.
But Leutnant Karl von Pranz perceived that this naked captive was particularly sensitive and hence evidently of better breeding than that of a commoner. His refined tastes coupled with Greuss's brutal, rutting penchants made the two especially dreaded by any female who fell into their clutches. Hence poor Gilda's determination to hol;out only quickened his sadistic desires to attack that sensitivity which he comprehended would heighten his pleasures.
Hence, after withdrawing her finger from her asshole and letting her compose herself a little, he suddenly yawned open her buttocks again, crammed his left forefinger into the rosette this time, and then, moving his right hand round and beneath her, sought to probe her cunt with the other foreginger. To prevent this, Gilda uttered a woeful cry and arched forward; but a vicious pinch high on her inner left thigh made her jerk backwards-and the grinning sadist inserted his finger as he wished, till he came up against the indisputable barrier which proclaimed her virginal cherry.
Maddened with shame, Gilda Dvornak writhed and shrieked, callon heaven to save her from such unjust indignities, while the blond sadist prolonged the palpation, wriggling both fingers about in the intimate crevices till the unhappy girl was nearly mad with shame and tears drenched her congested face. When he at last removed his fingers, he wiped them on her bare ass, then stepped back and gestured.
The tawse swept viciously from left to right, over the very middle of her creamy bottomcheeks. The girl uttered a hoarse cry and dashed her loins forward, while Leutnant von Pranz's eyes glittered to see the angry red band left in the tawse's wake on that hitherto unprofaned, voluptuous region. The tips had not been used, but the broad, thick leather sufficed to send a bruising, burning shock into the girl's nervous system, which would radiate through her nerves, and be augmented by succeeding strokes.
Another lash curled round her bottomcheeks, perhaps an inch lower; then a third still lower. Each drew a wild cry and frantic movements. The lieutenant stepped over to one side, cupped one of her panting titties with one hand and with thumb and forefinger of the other yanked out a sprig of armpit hair. A wild, prolonged cry reverberated through the interrogation room as the maddened naked captive tilted back her head, her mouth gaping, wrenching at her wristgyves, her body threshing wildly against the cross.
"Confess, you bitch," the sergeant-major panted. "How do you really earn your living? My guess is, on your back. Sure, Herr Leutnant I've heard of some fancy whores who can jack a man off with their toes, yes, sir, even with their eyelids and between their titties. Of course, what they can do with their mouth and fingers, everybody knows about. But that kind of Hure is far too rich for my purse."
"Be comforted, Greuss," the blond lieutenant chuckled, "tonight you'll enjoy this little slut's favors without paying a penny, I'll see to it myself. Yes, your Schwartz may use her in any manner it desires. Little Gilda here will be happy to oblige, won't you, my little pigeon?" And, stepping over to one side, he cupped her chin and forced her to look at hurt, devouring the agony and the blurring tears in her dilated grey-green eyes. Then he directed, "Stay with her bottom a bit Greuss, she seems to be more sensitive there than most bitches we deal with." Then, putting his mouth close to hers, he hissed, Kiss me, little whore. You know, it'll help make you passionate, that good leather on your sweet Arsch. Did you know that? Yes, it's quite true. I've interrogated stiany wenches righ here in this very cell, and most of them, after their Arsches have been well warmed, turn out to sizzle in front." He made a sign, and the tawse swept out to dance with a crisp, obscene intonation over the base of Gilda Dvornak's bottomcbeeks. Her body jerked violently, and she tried to wrench her face away, but the sadistic lieutenant dug his fingernails into her jaws, crushed his mouth on hers, and thus drank in her muffled cry of torment.
With his other hand, he fumbled at the buttons of his breeches, liberating from his under drawers his swollen prick. The head bulged, even the foreskin was drawn back to expose the twitching lips, full of juke. "This is only a start, Gilda," he told the sobbing girl. "After Greuss has striped your bottom properly, we're going to put branding irons to your beDybutton and your titties, yes, even to your kootzel." Then, turning to the sergeant-major, he added, "Now see if you can hit the target, Greuss. But, Gott Mfe dich, if you hit me instead I'll break you down to private."
With this, stepping to her left, he put both hands on her buttocks and yawned them open to expose her shrinking asshole. "Now!" he hissed.
The sergeant-major licked Ins lips, nodded, lowered the tawse to the floor and then flicked up his wrist. The vicious, tapered tips darted venomously into the ambery-shadowy groove to attack the petals of her distended asshole. Gilda Dvornak's body writhed savagely as all her muscles fought this unspeakably infernal torture; her head flung back, eyes rolling to the whites and a hoarse and prolonged shout escaped her: "Ahhhowwwouuuahrrreeyahhhrr! Ohhh merciful father in heaven, I can't stand it, oh father, help a poor, helpless, weak girl, ohhh, not there, not there!"
A second fiendishly accurate flick of the tawse sent the pitiless tips whisking against the girl's tender asshold. "Aiiieyeowwwouuuahrrriii!!! Oh kill me, kill me, but not this torture! Oh I don't know anything more, I didn't know the old man, I didn't kill him, oh heaven, mercy!" she shrieked, as her body thudded against the cross, her nostrils clenching and flaring, sweat oozing down her naked sides.
"Confidentially, you sweet bitch, I didn't for a minute think you really had an assignation with that stupid old foyl," the blond sadist purred as he released her shuddering buttocks. "But you have to play fair with us, Gilda. We're just soldiers trying to do our duty. Now, why did you ask us to take you to the Silesian ambassador, hm?"
"Because-because-Oh! no, I mustn't tell, I mustn't" Gilda Dvornak moaned, "I-I must protect her-"
"Protect who?" the lieutenant pursued, staring coldly at the weeping, shuddering captive. Then he turned to the sergeant major. "Tell you what, Greuss. Let's turn the bitch. That way, we can get a good look at her titties and cunt, and she'll be closer to the both of us if she wants to be nice."
"I'm with you, Herr Lieutenant!" the obese, almost toothless sergeant-major guffawed.
Together they unlocked the gyves and turned her so that her back was to the cross, once again pinioning her wrists and ankles in the metal gyves. She slumped, whimpering, as they greedily stared at her panting titties and the thick dark auburn triangle of her cunthole.
Herr GottV the sergeant-major swore, "I haven't seen a shape on a bitch like that since I hid in a whorehouse when I was a kid and saw the girls at work. I'll stand you the best ale in Potsdam for letting me fuck this beautiful piece of kootzele."
"No time for fucking yet, she'd only enjoy it," Lieutenant von Pran chuckled. "Try the tawse on those nice big round titties!"
"Ohh nooo, not there, oh mercy!" Gilda Dvornak shrieked.
But the sergeant-major applied the tawse first over her belly, then over her inner thighs. Poignant wails and sobs escaped the sufferer as she wnt'scd and twisted, her face restlessly turning this wa ,nd that. And then, even as she again begged for mercy, the tawse' smacked wickedly over both her creamy round titties.
"Ahhrwouuuu! Oh Heavens, NOOOOO! OHH I can't bear it!" she shrieked, wrenching at her bonds, weaving her hips madly about.
"Talk, or I'll have Greuss send that tawse right into your tender cunt," the lieutenant hissed. "Yes, I'll have him shave you between the legs, you'll see how he can do it!"
He nodded. The tawse, lowered to the floor, leaped up; the tips crashed into the virgin cunt.
Gilda Dvornak's body convulsively stiffened; then a maddened scream rang in their ears as she twisted, arched, writhed and jerked. "OHHEEAHHRRR! OHH, HEAVENS YOU'RE KILLING MFEE! OH MY PRINCESS, I SUFFER FOR YOU! MERCY ON ME, I CANT STAND ANY MORE!"
"Princess? What princess? Speak, bitch," the lieutenant snarled, pinching the girl's left nipple between thumb and forefinger. "Again, Greuss!"
And for the third time, the tips of the tawse ruffled the thick auburn fleece of Gilda's pussy, biting the chafed lips beneath. It was too much; her eyes revulsing to the whites, her head flinging this way and that her fingers clawing the air, she shrieked, "WOAHHRROUUEEYAJJ! OH NO MORE, NO MORE, PLL TELL, PLL TELL!"
"Be quick, then, or Gruess'll go on till you do," he warned, again pinching her swollen, darkened nipple.
Fighting for breath, her words faltering and interspersed with sobs, the unfortunate naked captive gasped, "I I'm the maid of the P-Princess of S Silesia ... we-we r-ran away together so she wouldn't-h-have to marry a man she hated ... oh Heavens ... I'm innocent as she is ... oh my Princess, forgive me for betraying you-bbut I can't stand the pain iny I-longer, Ohh-now I-let me g-go-"
"Thai's right, Greuss," the lieutenant stepped back, frowning, "seems to me I remember Hauptmann Burger's saying something this morning about a runaway princess Frederick William wanted to find Hr.tr-, there's bound to be a reward for getting the news to His Highness. But there's no need to hurry with it yet. This interrogation is thirsty work, old comrade. Let's go have a flagon or two of ale, and then well come back and make sure this sweet little bitch is really telling the truth. After all, she might have dreamed up the story just to save her hide. Come on, Greuss, let's let her think things over a bit."
And they strode out of the cell, leaving the naked, whimpering girl still bound to the cross, head drooping, great sobs choking her as she realized that all her endurance had been for naught...., Half an hour later, they returned to their heinous work. Bolting the door of the cell, they strode to her. Haggard, she raised her swollen eyes to them: "Oh-I-I've told you the truth-let me go now, please, oh please, I-I hurt so!"
"You know, Greuss, if this bitch is really telling the truth and helped her royal mistress run away from duty, why, she'd be likely to get a sound thrashing when she gets back to Silesia."
"I'd say so, Herr Lieutenant."
"Then why shouldn't we thrash her for the King of Silesia, so he will know that Prussian justice is the best in Europe, nein!" Once again he liberated his swollen prick and advanced towards the horrified, shrinking naked girl, who tried to press herself back through the cross itself.
He pried open her cuntlips, thrust his prick against her cherry, then lunged forward. At the same time, the obese sergeant-major, at her side, cupped one of her titties and slavered er it, pinching and squeezing it. Gilda shrieVed, called on all the saints to protect her. But they did not hear; the lieutenant began to fuck her with savage lunges till he shot his bubbling essence deep into her deflorated sheath. And after he had withdrawn, sponging his prick of the virgin blood and spunk on it with one of her discarded garments, the sergeant-major relaced him and fucked her even more violently.
When both men had had their pleasure and stood watching her,Gilda Dvornak's head droooped onto her panting titties, while from between her hugely straddled thighs there oozed drops of blood and spunk.
They contemplated her for a long moment, then freed her, only to lash her onto the rack, cords at wrists and ankles, and stretched her in the air with a narrow rectangular metal plaque studded with spikes against the small of her back, conveyed upwards by a round vertical short post. Each movement would thus gouge her atrociously. Standing on a footstool, the lieutenant leaned over so that his greasied, limpened prick dangled against her panting mouth. "Suck me back to life, Gilda," he growled, while the sergeant-major took up the tawse again and flicked her cunt and inner thighs till at last, retching and gagging, the unfortunate victim complied.
Then it was the sergeant major's turn to be Frenched in the same coerced manner as the lieutenant applied the tawse capriciously all over her writhing, tethered body, drawing screams and babbling plaints, till at last Jakob Greuss spurted his odious gism into her gaggin mouth.
"Now we'll brand her to show her royal master how we dispense justice here," Lieutenant Karl von Prnaz purred as he seized one of the branding irons from the smoking brazier. He directed the tip, which was formed into the crest of the King of Prussia, against her belly, just below the navel, and pressed it home till the stench of burning human flesh wafted to his flickering nostrils.
Gilda Dvornak fainted. But this did not save her. The two men untied her from the rack, carried her over to a whipping stool, strapped her down bent over its top, then proceeded to bugger her in turn. Only then did they admit they had sated their rut for her voluptuous young body....
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Lieutenant Karl von Pranz himself, after washing and putting on a fresh uniform, took the news of Gilda Dvornak's capture and confession to the palace at Potsdam, and by both threats and the promised bribe of many Thalers, managed to get a liveried flunkey to wake the sleeping Frederick William I.
Furious at having had his slumbers disturbed the elderly, ailing monarch received the blond sadist in an antechamber and bellowed at him, "Now, you whipper-snapper, this news of yours had better be important, or you'll be whipped out of the ranks!" In nightcap and nightshirt, bleary-eyed, he glowered at the young officer.
But when he had heard what Lieutenant Karl von Pranz had had to say, he forgot his anger and rubbed his hands in glee. "Wunderbar, Lieutenant! Have your soldiers go to the Mackholm and bring back this princess here to me. Then we must notify King Anton. All, here you are, Grundzing-wonderful news, man!"
The valet had wakened and, hearing the sound of voices in this antechamber near his quarters, donned a dressing gown and slippers and hurried out to see what was taking place. He cursed his attendance at the palace, wishing he might be home with the lovely daughter of the dead school teacher whose degradation he himself had brought about. But a presentiment had made her leave his house and return to the service of his master.
"Grundzing, dress yourself and go at once with the lieutenant to the jail and bring back this Gilda Dvornak. Then he'll take his men to the Mackholm. Be quick-yes, you dog, I know you'd much rather be in bed with your little Gerda, but that can wait!" The King of Prussia guffawed to see the unhappy look on his valet's face. "Obey me," he glowered....
Estanzia Carola Lienz, returning to the inn, learned that her "sister" had been arrested for the murder of an old merchant. Horrified at this news, she commanded Hans Schnurr to have carriage and horses readied at once to take her to the palace of the King of Prussia. Willi Murcht, gaping at the revelation of her true identity, shuddered at the thought of what a nearly fatal error he had made and effaced himself, praying that the "sister" would not tell her royal mistress that he had been the one who had lured old Otto Luftwagge to the inn to taste the tempting flesh of "two new, very tempting Huren." He swore to himself that henceforth, he would not meddle in other people's business. He kept that resolve for perhaps a week, and then again sought to play the profitable role of procurer but that is quite another story....
Queen Wilhelmina, also roused by all the noise, stalked into the antechamber and berated her old husband for his stupidity in not apprising her of what was going on. "You try to hide your tarts from me without success, Frederick," she chided him, "but when it's a romantic thing like a runaway princess, you don't let me find out a thing. And what's this nonsense about having guards posted at the doors of my son's quarters?"
"He's been mixed up in treason again-"
"Stuff and nonsense! Your son is no more treasonable than I am. It's time you understood that he's almost thirty, that although he had reason enought to want you dead-yes, that time you killed his friend-, today he's a man concerned about your kingdom. I want you to make your peace with him, you understand me? You're ill, Frederick, and you'll not die comfortably if you keep hating him just because you're afraid of what will happen when he becomes King of Prussia. Now, send for him, talk to him."
"Ruhe, woman! All right, all right-have him brought here," Frederick William William I grumbled, "And you, Grundzing, didn't I tell you to be gone?"
But at that moment, a servant entered, bowed low, and announced the presence of the Princess Estanzi Carola Lienz. The black-haired, spirited young beauty entered, curtsied, and came forward to kiss the hand of Wilhelmina, who purred, "What a lovely child you are, my dear! Come, sit on this sofa with me, and tell me what it's all about. My old fool of a husband never tells me anything important." But at this very moment, the tall, handsome Prince Frederick entered, his face grave. From a friendly captain of halberdiers, he had just learned of the tragedy which had befallen poor Gerda Hortzkopf. Harding acknowledging the presence of the young princess, he confronted his father:" I trust you're satisfied at last. You've destroyed two lives-her father's hanged himself, and she's alive and wishes herself dead. I myself will make what amends are in my power, Father. I shall give her much gold-yes, from your own miserly treasury-and send her with a letter to my friend, the Duke of Poltavia. He will give her employment in his household, and I will urge him to search for a tender, sympathetic husband who may one day distract her mind from the horrors to which you unjustly subjected her by giving her children of low."
And thus ended happily what might have been stark tragedy. Frederick the Great had already begun to reign, though officially, of course, it would not yet be for some months. For by his Solomon-like disposition of the welfare of a runaway princess, as by his deep concern for the innocent and victimized young woman who had been only a cherished friend, he had already showed the mettle that was to make his name one to conjure with and one before whom even the imperious Maria Theresa need must bow.
