On Sunday evening, 12th February, she was told that she must be prepared for death on the morrow, and she asked that the block should be brought to her room, that she might learn how to dispose her head upon it. This was done, and she calmly and smilingly rehearsed her part in the tragedy of the morrow. Early in the morning, before it was fully light, she was led out across the green, upon which the hoar-frost glistened, to the scaffold erected on the same spot that had seen the sacrifice of Anne Boleyn. Around it stood all the Councillors except Norfolk and Suffolk: even her first cousin, the poet Surrey, with his own doom not far off, witnessed the scene. Upon the scaffold, half crazy with fear, stood the wretched Lady Rochford, the ministress of the Queen's amours, who was to share her fate. Katharine spoke shortly. She died, she said, in full confidence in God's goodness. She had grievously sinned and deserved death, though she had not wronged the King in the particular way that she had been accused of. If she had married the man she loved, instead of being dazzled by ambition, all would have been well; and when the headsman knelt to ask her forgiveness, she pardoned him, but exclaimed, "I die a Queen, but I would rather have died the wife of Culpeper;" and then, kneeling in prayer, her head was struck off whilst she was unaware.[229] Lady Rochford followed her to the block as soon as the head and trunk of the Queen had been piteously gathered up in black cloth by the ladies who attended her at last, and conveyed to the adjoining chapel for sepulture close to the grave of Anne Boleyn.