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On a November night in Egypt, 414 A.D., one of history's most brilliant individuals was assassi-

nated. Her name was Hypatia, teacher and scientist at the fabled Great Library of Alexandria and the

last glimmer of hope before the Dark Ages.

The Roman Empire is crumbling, the fragments of the classical world regrouping in Egypt when Thasos, son of an ill-fated scholar, meets Hypatia of Alexandria. As-tronomer, mathematician, and philosopher at a time when women were shunned from learning, Hypatia is a daring visionary in a world about to change forever.

As an insidious power-struggle erupts between church and state Hypatia finds herself at the forefront of battle, but she is not alone. Those who cherish her, who will re-member her, become her allies – including the powerful Governor Orestes, who keeps his consuming love for her as secret as she keeps her feelings for him.

Lady Philosopher: The Story of Hypatia is a vivid retelling of a now-forgotten historical tragedy, when courage stood against fear, when the legacy of the wise vanished in the dark. Author Brian Trent resurrects the ancient world's most famous metropolis and explores the final days, not just of a brilliant mind, but of a lost era. . .

BASED ON THE TRUE STORY

Prologue

Before he was taken from the cell, Thasos sat in total darkness. The jails of Alexandria were nicer than this, where he might sit at the iron bars and see the ancient stones of the Canopic Way be-neath a starry Egyptian night. Instead he was in this stuffy sar-cophagus. He smelled the musty tang of papyrus and a faint trace of leather. They were probably using a storehouse for his detain-ment, he thought. No point in exposing him to other prisoners and guards. That would be too dangerous. “If you tell me where they are,” the monk said in the darkness across from him, “you might yet be spared the fire.” Thasos hardened his eyes in the direction of his invisible inter-rogator. He scratched his beard gently, rattling the shackles about his wrists. The crowd was gathering outside his door – he could hear their growing din. Two days earlier when his captors pushed him inside, he got a glimpse of his four-walled sandstone prison — as if he were a Pharaoh being entombed alive to preserve the vital-ity of his ba spirit. Wrapped in shadow, Thasos felt incorporeal, more a ghost than a prisoner of flesh. Outside the door now was a shuffle of feet, and the monk ex-haled sharply. Thasos could suddenly smell the man’s stale breath just inches away.

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“You won’t be silent on the pyre! I need to know where the books are, Thasos! If you just tell me, I can convince the Arch-bishop to simply exile you. On my soul, I swear this!” Thasos heard something new in the young man’s voice. He cocked his head, alerted to the first shades of a truthful statement he had heard since these petty interrogations began two days ago “Why?” The monk stood up in a frenzy of black, hidden movement. “Do you not care for your immortal soul?” “I told you the Books of Thoth do not exist.” “I do not believe you!” Thasos stood, his shackles grating. In an awed whisper, he said, “You want the books for yourself.” The monk whirled on him, seizing him by the shoulders. “I want one book! Tell me where you’ve buried them, and I swear be-fore God I will protect the others. I will bury them where no torches can find them. One book is all I seek!” The door burst open. Torchlight pierced Thasos’ eyes. Two pa-rabolans in black robes entered. With the darkness dispelled, Thasos clearly saw the young in-terrogator. His name was Peter the Reader. Thasos was nineteen, and Peter said he was three years younger. But he looked younger than that, with his soft round face and worrisome eyes. “Peter,” Thasos started. The boy raised his hand and the pa-rabolans stopped. He looked so desperate and frightened; Thasos was surprised to feel an unexpected pang of sympathy for this murderous little demon. “Is it the Book of Healing, Peter? Is that what you seek?” The monk nodded, licking his lips. “Someone you love is sick?” Another nod. “And you hope that the lost wisdom of the Great Library can heal them?” Peter swallowed. “Then perhaps you shouldn’t have burned the Library. The Books of Thoth were inside it!” He glared at his guards. “Take me away!”

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They hauled him out into the chill night air. He stumbled on his blistered feet. His tunic was ragged, no longer white but dirtied by miles of travel through the upper Egyptian countryside. When he had first returned to Alexandria, when the Arch-bishop’s men arrested him, only a small mob had been present in the Kinaron. The arrest had been secret. Cyril clearly worried that sympathizers in Alexandria might effect a rescue. Yet over two days word had clearly slithered among the great faithful, and they were gathering in their empowered numbers. The Kinaron court-yard swarmed with nearly two hundred eager, bustling bodies and when they saw him, their yells exploded. “You returned to peddle your witchcraft?” a burly, balding man accused. “We’ll return you to hell!” Thasos, hands shackled in front of him, was pushed ahead of his robed captors. At the end of the courtyard, he saw the execu-tion pyre — a mound of chopped wood, with a wooden stake like an upright needle rising from its center. Wood was expensive; it had to be imported to Egypt. Perversely, he imagined the Arch-bishop’s expenditure note: A few hundred pounds of Lebanese wood for the execution of the last heretic! Beyond the pyre, the stone courtyard ended abruptly at the dark expanse of the Nile ca-nal. The sky was clouded and Thasos could see neither stars nor moon, and so the beloved river appeared like a moving sheet of black silk, less like a giver of life than a stream through the bowels of the underworld. “Burn her last disciple!” a woman shrieked, and Thasos re-coiled as she tried to claw at him from the crowd. His guards led him onto the pyre’s uneven slope. There, they spun him around so he faced away from the canal. His wrists were unshackled, only to be bound to the stake behind him. Not even allowed to face the Nile, he thought, closing his eyes and trying desperately to concentrate on his breathing. Moon or no moon, I should be allowed to see the great river’s waters in my final moments. Suddenly a new cry lifted from the crowd. Thasos opened his eyes to see two wheelbarrows, piled tall with linen-jacketed scrolls and books, pushed toward the pyre by more robed men. “The witch’s books!” someone yelled. “Burn them with her ap-prentice!” At that, a man sprang at one of the wheelbarrows and grabbed a fistful of scrolls. He threw them at Thasos’ feet. “Take these back to hell, pagan! They have no place here!”

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Brian Trent is an award-winning novelist, screenwriter, poet, and essayist.

Working in multiple genres, Trent’s diverse work has ap-peared in over 200 publications including The Humanist, Clarkesworld, The Eclectic Muse, Electric Velocipede, The Copperfield Review, and Strange Horizons, among others.

He is a frequent radio and podcast guest on the ties be-tween history, philosophy, culture and technology, and a guest speaker at Yale on the subject of Hypatia and classical civilization. Trent lives in central Connecticut.

About the Author——

Brian Trent

With the frenetic energy of imitative monkeys, the crowd surged to the wheelbarrows, boldly pushing aside the guards’ swords to scoop the books into their arms in a grotesque parody of embrace. Eyes glittering, mouths twisted in primitive glee, they pelted the prisoner. The bound volumes rained on his defenseless body. Scrolls popped free of their sheaths and unraveled, fluttering to his feet. There, they collected like crumpled souls discarded from heaven.