Chapter 51: Cadets

    It was improper—not a good way to start things.

    I shook my head as I watched the five officer cadets leave the Casa Real through the window of the sala. I had been forced to let them go home at the end of the day.

    I had assumed that these young men, having shown up in the morning, were already committed to training. But Colonel Abad informed me—just after I dismissed the recruits from the plaza—that this was not the case.

    He had merely introduced them as "candidates"; nothing was final yet. None of them had even asked their parents for permission or packed properly for a prolonged stay.

    Truthfully, I had not been prepared to receive them either. Their training regimen, although derived from that of the recruits, was still unwritten. I didn’t even have accommodations ready for them.

    Still, it left a bitter aftertaste. Especially after I had made them take the oath, issued their uniforms, and called them cadets.

    And after making them stand for hours in formation and march under the heat of the sun—giving them a taste of the hardships to come—I wondered how many would return.

    Despite the uncertainty, I ordered Vicente and Dimalanta to vacate the guest room they had been staying in and prepare it for the cadets. There were vacant servant rooms on the first floor of the Casa Real that could be repurposed.

    That night, I sat at my bedside table and wrote another manual—a draft for the officer cadets’ training schedule. Their program would overlap heavily with that of the recruits but would be tougher and more specialized. The goal was to make them physically and intellectually superior to the soldiers they would one day lead.

    It was quite a revolutionary idea for the time. Traditionally, aristocratic officers weren’t expected to train harder than the rank-and-file—only to be noble and brave.

    But if I could manage it, it could make all the difference. An army, after all, is only as good as its leaders.

    I woke up a little late the next day. It wasn’t the crow of the rooster that roused me, but the hurrahs of the soldiers practicing formations in the plaza.

    The NCOs of my escolta—now acting as platoon leaders—had been thoroughly drilled on formations and drills in Malolos. They could manage the first training sessions with minimal input from me.

    When I walked toward the sala, a familiar scene awaited me. The Colonel, the captain, the two lieutenants, and the young men sat at the table having breakfast.

    It took a closer look to spot the difference: only four of the five cadets from yesterday were present.

    "Where is Nieva?" were the first words out of my mouth as I made my way to the table.

    All heads turned. Colonel Abad answered with a cluck of his tongue.

    "About that... I don’t think Nestor will be returning. I was told by their neighbors that they heard Sen?or Nieva shouting at his grandson last night. I think it’s safe to assume he didn’t approve."

    I nodded as I took my seat. I had expected worse. I would not have been surprised if none of them had come back.

    With Nieva out, only four officer cadets remained—a perfect fit for the four platoons they would eventually lead in the final weeks of training.

    "I hope that those who returned already understand: you won’t be returning home at the end of each day, like schoolboys," I said. "No matter how near your residence is."

    "I made sure they know that, Heneral," Colonel Abad answered.

    "I want to hear it from them, Coronel," I said, giving Maximo a hard stare. As a schoolteacher, Maximo had always been patient and gentle—especially with the children of his friends. But he was now in the army, and that softness would have no place here.

    "You two Madrigals... Roque and Nepomucena..." I turned to the cadets. "Have you told your mothers you won’t be seeing them for a while? And your fathers that they might see me putting you through hard work, but that you consented to it, as future officers of the Republic?"

    Asynchronously, each of them answered with a weak and nervous yes.

    I liked it.

    There was nothing to be enthusiastic about in what they were about to go through.

    ---

    Not long after breakfast, I immediately started the cadets’ training—which should have begun at dawn.

    The morning sun found us once again marching toward the barrio of Buliasnin, though with a much smaller procession. Pedro Madrigal rode with me at the head, followed by the armed escorts, then the cadet column.

    I was well aware of the many questions the cadets might have asked if not for the fact they were no longer allowed to speak freely.

    Why were they marching instead of sitting in a classroom, learning theory and tactics? Why did the recruits seem to have it easier, running around the plaza? And why were they carrying weighted bags on top of everything?

    To their credit, they fared better than yesterday. Perhaps because they knew we were only heading to Buliasnin instead of Mogpog, or perhaps because their bodies were beginning to adapt.

    When we arrived at Pedro’s residence, I let them rest for a long thirty minutes. The next part of their physical training would be tougher than the march.

    When they had recovered enough to be talking and laughing among themselves, I decided it was time to start.

    "Alright... time to turn your soft baby flesh into muscle. As it stands, it’s hard to tell you apart from the ladies," I said, walking between them as they stood in formation, squeezing their arms and jabbing at their abdomens.

    "We will not leave until each one of you has done 30 push-ups, 30 sit-ups, and 30 squats," I said, raising my voice slightly. "First... we warm up."

    "Permission to speak, sir!" Dimalanta said.

    "Yes, teniente?"

    "What’s a... what’s a ’warma,’ sir?" he asked.

    "How do you not know tha—" The realization hit me mid-sentence. I had accidentally spoken English words. Thankfully, there was no one around who could recognize them. There were no direct equivalents for "push-up," "sit-up," and "squat" in Tagalog.

    But there was a bigger problem.

    It had escaped me, while sleepily drafting the routine, that calisthenics in general would be a completely alien concept in the 19th century. Exercise routines were a fairly modern invention.

    "Oh boy..." I muttered to myself as it dawned on me. I would have to demonstrate each exercise myself, with Martin’s old, untrained body.

    Needless to say, it was a messy and agonizing affair I’d rather not recount in detail. It took them a long time even to imitate the movements, and even longer to do them repeatedly.

    In the end, I had to settle for them doing only 10 repetitions of each exercise.

    We spent so much time on it that midday found us still at the beach. We ended up eating lunch at Pedro’s residence.

    On the way home, all my joints ached and I felt slightly feverish. I swung my arms around and twisted my neck occasionally to relieve the discomfort.

    Unfortunately for me, I wasn’t the only one suffering that day.

    Colonel Abad was standing by the doors of the Casa Real when we arrived, arms crossed and frowning.

    He waited for me to dismount before delivering the bad news.

    "Sen?or Contreras and the gobernadorcillo are waiting for you in the conference room," Maximo told me grimly. "And they don’t look too happy."