"I can glimpse the villa's red roofs above the ranks of poplars, across the intervening valleys. But I can't tell if the house is peopled with my friends and my family, or with rogues who have murdered the servants in their beds. I can't tell if the walls below the roofline are scorched with smoke, or if the doors are marked with an ashy cross to suggest that plague has come to gnaw the living into their mortal rest, their last gritty blanket shoveled over their heads."
What does it mean by "the walls are scorched with smoke"? Smoke from cooking fire? Somke from pollution? Somke from war? What does it imply?
What does it mean by "the walls are scorched with smoke"? Smoke from cooking fire? Somke from pollution? Somke from war? What does it imply?